Peter the Great’s Ship Discovered in Baltic Sea
By Ali Nassor
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a Russian battleship designed by Peter the Great in Amsterdam and which played a key role in a 1719 victory over Sweden in a war on the Baltic Sea. A team including professional archeologists, divers, a film-producer and a cameraman located the 54-gun “Portsmouth” battleship at a 12-meter depth in the waters off Kotlin Island near Kronshtadt last week during final stages of a three-month mission as part of the “Secrets of the Sunken Ships” project. The team was back on dry land on Tuesday. “We are currently lobbying for an immediate raising of the wrecks to serve both as a museum and as objects for research,” said Andrei Lukoshkov, head of the research team, adding that the discovery is unique because the ship, which was designed by Peter the Great, disappeared with another ship, the “London,” on the way back to the port of Kronshtadt. However, pending further studies of the wrecks, the archaeologists are yet to establish if wreckage found near the “Portsmouth” also belongs to the “London.” “We have so many collections that we need to establish a museum of marine archaeology and shipbuilding,” said Lukoshkov. He said the Kronshtadt district administration has signaled support for the scheme but has yet to reveal the action plan. Lukoshov said a total of 11 shipwrecks, including the remains of the “Oleg,” a cruiser built in St. Petersburg in 1901-1903 but sunk by an English torpedo on July 8, 1919, and those of an aircraft resembling Li-2 model belonging to the First Long Range Aviation Division Guard downed in 1944, have been found during the three-month mission. Others include unidentified wreckage of a European mast ship, a German boat “Frida Horn” registered at Schlezwig, both tracked to the second half of the 19th century, and a well-preserved earlier version of a mainly iron battleship equipped with rifles. Among the tasks carried out by the expedition team was the continuation of a study of the badly damaged 16th century 40-meter-long mast-ship discovered last year, belonging to the same class as the famous Swedish “Vasa” battleship also discovered last year. “Vasa” is believed to have sunk between 1580 and 1610 during Boris Gudunov’s reign when the Swedes had conquered the Northwestern part of Rus, the ancient state that predates Russia. The recent breakthrough brings to a total of about 30 wrecks of warships discovered in the “Secrets of the Sunken Ships” project. Others include the “Hanhoot,” built in 1892, the “Jigit” and the “Haezdnik,” both built in 1856, making a total of about 50 wrecks including the merchant and passenger ships in the Gulf of Finland, River Volkhov and Lake Ladoga. Meanwhile, at the behest of the museum of the Siege of Leningrad (Blockade Museum), the archaeologists also carried out a special expedition in the Neva River in search of a boat that went down during the Nazi blockade of the city. They have reportedly located an unspecified number of tanks and arms on the Neva riverbed. www.baltic-sunken-ships.ru
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