Members of the Pamyat Baltiki team proudly hold a ship's magnetic compass recovered from HMS Myrtle.
Twisted, smashed, rusted, rotting, the ghostly hulks of scores of doomed warships lie buried in sand and silt under the freezing and murky Baltic waters of the Gulf of Finland.
Even the most modern underwater photographic equipment can sometimes discern only shadows, which to one observer appear be the outline of a submarine, and to another just a trick of the light.
That is the vast and unforgiving world which is gradually yielding its secrets to St Petersburg's naval treasure-seekers. A group of enthusiasts for all things historical and watery, "Pamyat Baltiki" ("Memory of the Baltic") have been exploring the inhospitable region for five years, ever since some fishermen accidentally came across a British minesweeper.
HMS Myrtle exploded in 1919 near the Island of Saaremaa (present-day Estonia) whilst on a mission to help the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian civil war. Skin-divers from "Pamyat Baltiki" reached the wreck at a depth of 34 meters (120 feet) and recovered a magnetic compass and mechanical log.
The bow of the ship was ripped off and "Pamyat Baltiki" could not manage to find it.
The compass, with its manufacturer's stamp, "Dobbie McInnes Ltd, Glasgow," still clearly legible, is now in the Kaliningrad Museum of World Oceans. Konstantin Shopotov, the former naval captain who founded "Pamyat Baltiki," was excited at such an early success, but the Greenwich National Maritime Museum in South London showed no interest. He was only able to get background information about the Myrtle when he made contact with someone from England at a St Petersburg international fishing expo.
"The British have a devil-may-care attitude to their own sailors," said Mr Shopotov. "There is no way we can find out who died on the Myrtle as all the literature is in England."
For "Pamyat Baltiki," which calls itself a "military-patriotic organization," the Russian civil war is of secondary importance in comparison to the triumphant victory over King Gustav III of Sweden's forces in 1790. The Swedes, which never forgave Peter the Great for stealing land at the mouth of the River Neva a century before, were attempting to reseize St Petersburg but were repelled by Catherine II's Baltic Fleet under the command of Admiral Chichagov.
Artifacts recovered from the sea bed.
When news of the raid first arrived at Catherine II's court, she was asked by a French envoy if she intended to move somewhere out of reach of the Swedes, such as Moscow. The empress swiftly rebuffed him with the words, "I shall not leave, you can be sure." Thus all the diplomats were obliged to remain in St Petersburg out of politeness.
Russia suffered no losses in a battle described by one British historian as a "Baltic Trafalgar." Somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland there are seven Swedish battleships, three frigates and more than 50 galleys. In the course of the expeditions led by "Pamyat Baltiki" a number of these vessels have been located.
This summer's trophy was the 74-cannon battleship Louisa Ulrika. The kind of objects which have been retrieved from the Swedish ships include a bottle containing a statue of a royal personage on a horse, ceramics from the facing of a hearth, pieces of mast, and a massive section of a keel.
"Pamyat Baltiki" is a voluntary society which does not have the enormous funds which would be required to raise whole ships. "It would cost millions and in the first place you have to decide why you want to bring these ships up," said Mr Shopotov.
A mystery client funded a separate expedition to the Gulf of Finland in September organized by the scientific research company INTAARI, based in St Petersburg's Arctic and Antarctic Institute. INTAARI has hydrolocators and custom-made underwater photography devices and the week-long trip resulted in the unexpected discovery of several more Swedish ships and also German vessels which sank during World War II.
The client's anonymity was guaranteed in a contract with INTAARI and it will not release photographs of the ships, which can be examined in minute detail on computer.
The logical conclusion to draw from all this secrecy is that someone expects to find something very valuable somewhere underneath the Gulf of Finland.
Thousands of objects from hundreds of ships are strewn
across the Baltic's floor.