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In the Bay of Progulochnaya near the Pacific port of Nakhodka local divers have found the remains of an old vessel and even managed to recover two masthead lamps from the sunken vessel.

Local museum workers together with divers from the ‘Grinda’ diving center made their first attempt to research the sunken vessel on October 12 after they had received information about if from one of the divers. Andrei Pankov found the remains of a sunken vessel and reported them to Nakhodka’s museum.

“Time has done its deed – the panneling of the vessel peels off from one touch,” Alexander Spichka, one of the divers who submerged to explore the vessel, revealed. “The visibility underwater was poor but we could clearly see the ship’s head and stern,” he said.

After the divers carefully inspected the remains of the vessel they reported that it possibly hit underwater rocks and sank as a result of that collision. The divers lifted two old masthead lamps from the vessel, one of them having the word Liverpool on it and the other having the mark of the German port Kil.

“The find is unique. A sunken vessel, the age of which surpasses the hundred-year mark, was discovered of the coast of Nakhodka for the first time,” museum worker Marina Nurgaliyeva commented.

“It is altogether possible that it belonged to a shipping company owned by Shevelev, an industrialist in the middle of the 19th century operating passenger transportation along the Primorye coastline,” Nurgaliyeva supposed. “Or perhaps it is a representative of the British Navy, researching the region in the first half of the 19th century. We will search the archives for documented evidence of our hypotheses,” she added.

Meanwhile museum workers and divers plan to perform another dive to try to find the trademark or possibly parts of the name of the vessel.