The history of ships sunk in the Black Sea is so great that no one has yet taken up its complete and reliable description. The reason is that even the number of the remains of ships resting at its bottom is unknown. And there is no way to count them. Technical problems, depths and other difficulties as time passes, are resolved and will most likely be resolved in the future. But time itself is an insurmountable obstacle, hiding ships deep in silt or destroying them without a trace with the help of rust and rotting processes.
The reasons for the death of ships
The warm waters of the Black Sea have been navigable since ancient times. We learn about the first sailors from the legends of Ancient Greece. Trying to stay closer to the shore, they crashed on the rocks during storms and bad weather. They reached our shores. Ancient amphoras with wine, incense and oils, which our seabed researchers find, speak of this.
A variety of ships died during military campaigns, which these waters saw in abundance. Wooden sailboats and modern ships, receiving holes, went under water. Most often with his team. The Black Sea bottom is a huge mass grave that continues to replenish throughout the history of navigation.
But other causes of the death of ships sunken in the Black Sea are also known. Here are some documentary facts.
Flooding of ships in Tsemess Bay
In June 1918, by order of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Soviet sailors sank ships near the Novorossiysk port. The Black Sea Fleet is not mentioned in the Brest Treaty, but due to the circumstances it was demanded for extradition by the German side in Sevastopol. The Soviet leadership, forced to accept this condition along with other requirements, sent two orders to Novorossiysk, where the ships were. The official order demanded that Captain 1st Rank Tikhmenev take the ships to Sevastopol and hand them over to the representatives of Germany, the secret order was to flood them near Novorossiysk.
The commander, after long and difficult discussions of both orders with the ship committees, decided to carry out the official version. But not all teams obeyed him, and 16 military courts, among them the battleship Free Russia, were flooded. With the signal flags “I'm dying, but I don't give up”, the ships went under water.
The fate of ships and people after flooding
The ships that left for Sevastopol remained in the service of Germany until its defeat, and then transferred to the Russian squadron. Tikhmenev fought on the side of the whites, and the Bolsheviks who led the flood were Raskolnikov, Kukel and Glebov-Avilov, who later occupied prominent posts in the USSR, but were repressed in the late 1930s.
The fate of the ships sunk in the Black Sea was more positive. Two years after the events in Tsemess Bay, their gradual rise, restoration and further operation began. Only two ships remained at the bottom: “Free Russia” and “Loud”.
Monument to heroic sailors with the inscription: "I'm dying, but I don't give up!" installed on the Sukhumi highway. On a huge granite stone, the names of all the sunken ships are listed with the exact coordinates of the places of their temporary (or permanent) stay. But for almost a hundred years, historians and sailors continue to argue about what to do in that distant year to save the Black Sea Fleet.
The death of "Admiral Nakhimov"
On August 31, 1986, the history of the death of the large passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov caused shock and desperate helplessness before formulating the cause of the accident: the “human factor”. Comparison of this event with the death of the “Titanic” from a collision with an iceberg in 1912 had a right to exist only because a lot of people died on our ship: 423 out of 1243 people (for comparison: 1496 people died on the “Titanic”). But we had a warm sea, and there were no icebergs. There were only decisions of two captains and one assistant.
"Admiral Nakhimov" (cruise ship) left Novorossiysk in Sochi in the late evening. The weather is nice, the sea is calm, passengers had fun or took a rest. Captain Markov, a man with great experience, calmly took his ship out of the bay. The only ship sailing at the port at that time was Peter Vasev, a cargo ship with Captain Tkachenko at the head. He said that he was letting Admiral Nakhimov into the gates of the bay first. At 23-00, during this maneuver, Captain Markov, having left the watch to his assistant Chudnovsky, leaves the wheelhouse.
In the course of the investigation, which was conducted by the government commission, much remained incomprehensible to ordinary, uninitiated in secrets, citizens. Why, then, two captains on catastrophically approaching forehead in forehead vessels, seeing this by radar and with their own eyes, did nothing to save the situation. The watchmen on both ships indicated to them the approach of the accident, clarified who was letting someone pass, but what happened happened.
Two huge colossus collided, despite desperate attempts to change something in the last minutes. "Admiral Nakhimov" in 8 minutes went to the bottom with its passengers, replenishing the ranks of sunken ships in the Black Sea.
The team of “Peter Vasev”, along with the vessels that came from the port to the aid, conducted rescue operations. Assistant Chudnovsky went into his cabin and remained aboard the dying ship. Both surviving captains were tried, they received 15 years each.
Warship "Estuary"
The story of inexplicable disasters does not end there. More recently, on April 28, 2017, the world exploded with numerous reports that a Russian warship sank in the Black Sea when it encountered a cattle ship Yozasif-H sailing under the flag of Togo. All crew members were rescued and delivered to Russia, and the Liman ship lies off the coast of Turkey at a depth of 80 meters.
It was built in 1970 at Polish shipyards and worked for the first years in the Baltic. In 1974 he was transferred to the Black Sea Navy, in a separate reconnaissance division N519. As a scout, he monitored the ships of a possible enemy, his negotiations, could use the high-tech weapons “Needle”. To carry out his mission, he was equipped with sets of special reconnaissance equipment and the modern Don radar system, Bronze sonar system and some other secret devices.
The wreck of the ship "Liman" in the Black Sea, while on alert, received a hole and a few hours later went to the bottom.
