Baltiysk is a small military town located in the very west of Russia. During Soviet times, the city was closed to visitors, but today all tourists traveling in the Kaliningrad region can visit it.
Few people know that in Baltiysk, which is a large naval base and meets and escorts ships daily, you can see not only the grandeur and beauty of the latter, but also their terrible deplorable helplessness.
People come here, as a rule, to assess the strength and power of the Baltic Fleet, and many do not know that there is a graveyard of warships in Baltiysk. How to get to it, and what is it? The answer to these questions can be found later in the article.
Baltic Sea
This sea is a real cemetery of sunken ships. Only in the Kaliningrad waters today there are more than a hundred. Most of them are German warships of the Third Reich, which are still fraught with danger.
None of the existing ammunition depots can be compared with the number of shells located at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Sludge hides a huge number of aircraft, as well as bombs with various toxic substances. Dozens of fascist barges with chemical weapons after the Second World War were flooded near the island of Bornholm and the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda.
The Baltiysk warship cemetery is just a piece of what is contained in the depths of the sea itself.
Research in the Baltic
Professor of the Institute of Oceanology E. Emelyanov knows a lot about the seabed. For many years he has been studying the Baltic. As a result of research with a group of scientists, he was proved that the Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted natural reservoirs in the world. However, it is noted that it is cleaner off the Russian coast than in other areas.
Over the past 17 years, the level of radiation has been monitored in the Baltic Sea. The reference point is the Chernobyl accident. According to the observations of scientists, a high level of radiation in the Baltic Sea is caused by relative shallow water and isolation.
In addition, according to Professor Emelyanov, the main feature of the Baltic Sea is that the hollows of this reservoir are filled with hydrogen sulfide, and therefore the bottom becomes lifeless. Due to the lack of oxygen, all living things die out.
Cemetery location
Baltiysk Ship Cemetery is a place for the disposal of ships that are withdrawn from the Baltic Fleet. There are no direct roads to it, and part of the way has to be walked. It is located on the southeastern outskirts of Baltiysk, at the entrance to the Sevastopol harbor. In this place, on the shore of the Kaliningrad Gulf, the rest and the remains of the famous patrol ship "Indomitable" were found.
This area adjoins the village of Sevastopol, nicknamed by the locals "Kamsigal". It is formed from the German word kamstigall.
Description of the area
There is very little information about this place on the web. The remains of the ships amaze with their former grandeur and scale. Falling apart from the corrosion of metal, they slowly die, and everything that has not yet had time to die is sawn into scrap metal. It is very sad to be in this place, but in this life nothing lasts forever.
Baltiysk Ship Cemetery (photo presented in the article) - a pretty depressing sight. These ships represent a kind of symbol of the collapse of the powerful empire of the Soviet Union. This area is constantly visited by metal hunters to stole anything, since everything of value here has long been disassembled. The main exhibits today are cut parts of the watchtower wreck of the ship "Invincible". After he drowned, he was lifted from the bottom, and then sawn into pieces.
Recently, the Baltiysk ship cemetery has been very popular both as an informal tourist destination and as an exotic place for photo shoots. The remaining parts of the ships on the shore create a post-apocalyptic landscape that gives the surrounding area a mystical atmosphere. This is a place of sorrow and memories of the past greatness and indomitability of the fleet.
"Indomitable"
Few people think about what happens to the ship after a certain period of its service. The ship is usually decommissioned, but not in the case of the watchdog “Invincible”. The project 1135M ship (power - 34,000 horsepower, speed - 32 knots, capacity - 190 people), remained unnecessary and forgotten. It stands out in the Baltiysk ships cemetery for its size. This is a huge military ship, reaching the height of a five-story building. The person next to him appears to be a fine grain of sand.
“Invincible” during his service kept his watch in various parts of the World Ocean: he went to Gdynia, Lagos, Szczecin, Luanda, Rostock, Kiel, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The crew of the ship were repeatedly awarded prizes and awards of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy for anti-aircraft, artillery and anti-submarine training.
In 2005, in preparation for the parade in St. Petersburg, the ship received serious damage to the hull, and in 2008, a person died on board a ship as a result of a fire. Since 2009, the ship was withdrawn from the Russian fleet, and in 2012 it sank at the pier.
How can I get to
Baltiysk Ship Cemetery is located 3.5 kilometers from the city center. By car, you can drive along the street. Serebrovskaya and the Lower Highway to the Sevastopol harbor.
On the city bus number 1, you should go to the final stop "pos. Sevastopol ”, and then go on foot. On foot you can move along the route from Lenin Avenue, and then along the streets of Romanov, Chernomorskaya, Mostovaya, Kirkeneskaya and Nakhimov.