No one has dived on the wreck so far

Director of the Regional Diving Center for Underwater Demining and Diver Training, Vesko Mijajlović, reacted to the text yesterday. "They discovered a submarine whose wreck has been known for more than a century", published on August 3, 2020.

"A combat vessel with torpedo weapons was found at the bottom of the sea near Ada Bojana by local fishermen Ivo Knežević and Fikret Dermaja while fishing with nets that were attached to the shipwreck at a depth of about six meters. They informed the competent ministry about this by communicating directly with the Minister of Agriculture, Milutin Simović, and then immediately followed the institutional communication with the Regional Diving Center from Bijela, after which, without bureaucracy and administrative procedures, a concrete action by RCUD professional divers followed.

During the first dive that we did between 6 and 8 in the morning on August 1, our divers found that it was the wreck of a vessel about 50 meters long armed with four torpedoes located on the deck in their bays. We assume that there are more torpedo weapons and other unexploded ordnance on board.

On the second day, after a two-hour dive in the early morning hours, when it is only possible to dive on the wreck due to waves and sea currents, we found that it is possible that it is a French submarine of the Fresner type that disappeared near the mouth of Bojana in 1915, for which until now it was believed to have been destroyed by the Austro-Hungarian destroyer "Warasdiner". Over a hundred years buried in sand drifts at the bottom of the sea, it finally revealed its position and shape. I emphasize that so far no one has discovered this shipwreck, nor has anyone dived on it, and if it has been known for more than a hundred years that a French submarine was sunk near Ada Bojana, and any layman can get to that knowledge and other details about that submarine via internet whenever he wants.

In further underwater research, this wreck represents one of the main points of support regarding the chronology of objects from the everyday life of submariners or sailors from those times marked by the events of the First World War. Depending on the type of weapons and the nature of other cargo, tonnage and position, this wreck will provide us with basic information about the history of the war and allow us to better understand the character, scope and direction of the naval battles of that time. That is why I believe that the competent state authorities should establish what kind of combat vessel it is. We can assume.

Regarding the speculations of certain media and attempts to make fun of this very significant discovery with the title that they 'discovered' a submarine whose wreck has been known for more than a century, I wonder if in this way some journalist would make fun of the people who discovered the "Titanic" wreck (which sank in 1912 and was discovered in 1985), because its wreck was known for more than 70 years.

I use the opportunity to tell those for whom the Montenegrin undersea has become an eldorado for any kind of robbery, devastation and illegal enrichment that they will be stopped in the same way as it was done to the dynamite with the full involvement of NGOs, and the competent institutions, especially the Police Administration", it is written in Mijajlović's reaction.