Exhibition "Captured by Poseidon. Pages of shipwrecks history"
The exposition recounts the wreck of the 74-gun ship "Ingermanland" (1842), frigate "Diana" (1855), 84-gun ship "Lefort" (1857), clipper ship "Oprichnik" (1861), propeller-driven frigates "Oleg" (1862) and "Alexander Nevsky" (1868), corvette "Novik" (1863), coast defence battleship "Rusalka" (Mermaid) (1893), squadron battleship "Gangut "(1897) and other vessels of the Russian Imperial Navy.
According to the oceanographers, at least one million ships are lying on the bottom of the ocean at present; from the year 1500 to our time, about three thousand vessels sank in the sea every year. According to the estimates, there is, on the average, one sunken ship per every forty square kilometres of the bottom of seas and oceans.
Even our enlightened age does not belittle the hazards lying in wait for the seafarer out in the ocean. At first thought, it seems strange and absurd that the development of science and technology does not reduce the number of sea accidents on the whole. The mankind is more knowledgeable about the structure of Martian deserts than the vast secret depths of its own planet - and regular shipwrecks are its telltale evidence.
The history of conquering the ocean and, accordingly, the history of shipwrecks counts about ten thousand years. Sea accidents have been claiming human lives since time immemorial; valuable goods, mechanisms and equipment – the dumb witnesses of history and culture - go to the bottom. Stories of treasures lying beneath the ocean so far excite imagination of numerous adventurers and explorers of sea depths' mysteries.
The exhibition will be open from May 18 to August 19, 2018
Curator of the exhibition - A.Yu. Evstafiev
Artwork: Design director of Central Naval Museum V.Yu. Sergeev.