Treasures from the bottom of rivers and canals of St. Petersburg

Sailing along the rivers and canals of St. Petersburg, we can hardly imagine what lies beneath the water surface. Yet the city holds many secrets and mysteries...

Strangely enough, until recently, no official scientific research and exploration works were conducted, and most findings at the bottom of St. Petersburg's waterways were made accidentally. Both workers engaged in cleaning operations and amateur searchers have had the chance to discover something interesting.

In a city built on swampland, the riverbed quickly gets covered with silt — over 10 years, the bottom layer "grows" by 50-80 centimeters. The Neva is a navigable river, so cleaning and deepening its channel is necessary. This was already understood during the times of Peter the Great. A considerable part of the bottom sediments consists of a cultural layer, bearing traces of human activity from the corresponding period.

Today, the Committee for Nature Management, Environmental Protection and Ecological Safety regularly conducts cleaning operations. Usually, they manage to clean two or three sections of about 1.5 kilometers each season. Serious equipment is used for these works — dredging machines, pontoon-mounted excavators, washing complexes, diving stations, etc. Despite the fact that the bottom cleaning has been carried out regularly almost since the city's foundation, specialists constantly bring up various objects from the bottom.

Of course, most findings are modern household items. Besides obvious trash, they often discover road signs, pipes, manhole covers, iron fences, anchors, shopping carts, and once they even found a motorcycle.

Periodically, they retrieve all sorts of weapons — both modern ones and those from the Great Patriotic War, sometimes even sabers and sword hilts. From the bottom of the Obvodnoy Canal, they once pulled out four loaded grenade launchers, which probably ended up there in the 1990s... Unexploded wartime shells are often found, so the bottom is always checked for explosive objects. Specialists carefully extract such findings and defuse them at special testing grounds.

Coins from different periods are frequently found — throwing them into water seems to be a very old tradition. Of course, imperial-era coins are less common than Soviet ones, as they are located in the lower layers of bottom sediments. Other small items (like buttons and fishing tackle) are also common.

St. Petersburg has many waterways, and they are cleaned unevenly — depending on the degree of pollution and citizens' appeals. Naturally, the probability of finding something is greater in canals that are cleaned less frequently... All collected silt is unloaded at the mouth of the Krasnenka River. There might be as many valuables per square meter of St. Petersburg's riverbed as in the Hermitage, but so far no one has examined the extracted soil. Perhaps someday it will have its turn.

Sometimes truly valuable items are found by amateur searchers. Most often, they search using the simplest methods — for example, wading knee-deep into the water and washing the bottom soil through a large sieve. No metal detector needed! (Russian legislation does not prohibit searching for treasures; this is regulated by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation — Article 233. Treasure). The state only taxes what can be considered cultural value. Usually, small items found in canals do not fall into this category, and the finder can dispose of them at their own discretion. Most such findings are sold on themed forums, flea markets, or on Avito.

Using this method in the 1990s, about 1,200 "300 years of the Romanov dynasty" medals of varying degrees of preservation were discovered in the Fontanka River near the Staro-Kalinkin Bridge close to the shore. Presumably, they ended up in the water in 1917, shortly after the October Revolution.

After deepening the bottom of the same Fontanka River, the shore slid and in some places exposed the old cultural layer, where researchers discovered many copper coins from the second half of the 19th century.

On the Spit of Vasilievsky Island opposite the Stock Exchange, they found a larger quantity of coins from the times of Catherine II, and near the treasure — boat hooks. Presumably, the coins were being loaded onto a ship in bags but fell into the water, and people tried to retrieve them with boat hooks, only tearing the bags... Unfortunately, it's difficult to confirm this legend.

From the bottom of the Ekateringofka River, where warehouses have been located since Peter the Great's time, prospectors raised lead seals, the earliest of which dates back to 1750.

Someone was lucky enough to find a handful of Komsomol badges.

The banks of the Smolenka River at the beginning of the 20th century were filled with construction and household waste, so its bottom is strewn with fragments of dishes and architectural ceramics. In addition, water erodes the cemetery located on its banks, so human remains regularly end up in the water. But people prefer not to touch such findings.

On the banks of the Neva near the "Elizarovskaya" station, many pieces of porcelain and ceramics are found — it seems that waste from the Imperial (Lomonosov) Porcelain Factory was dumped there.

In 2019, specialists from the St. Petersburg Center for Underwater Research of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) together with the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to create a map of the Neva water area. Scientists assumed that the Neva delta within the city limits had been thoroughly researched and held no surprises, but it turned out that no serious scientific studies of the bottom of St. Petersburg's waterways had ever been conducted. Of course, the bottom was spot-examined before the construction of facilities (such as the Betancourt Bridge or the Western High-Speed Diameter), as well as during design works, but this did not provide a complete picture.

As a result, they decided to create an electronic database of objects hidden under water, which the state could take under protection. The Neva is a zone of active navigation, so scientists assumed that many sunken ships lie at the bottom. The very first stage of expedition work confirmed this. In early November 2020, a wooden ship hull and an admiralty anchor, dated to the 19th century, were discovered in the Neva near the Hermitage. The side structures, frames, and parts of the deck were preserved... The find became a sensation and was widely covered in the press. Whether the anchor is contemporary with the vessel and has any relation to it at all is a big question. After all, the fact that objects lie next to each other on the bottom doesn't mean anything — they could have been brought by the current.

In addition to the barge near the Hermitage, three more ship hulls were discovered in the Neva: two near the Rumyantsev Garden (next to the Menshikov Palace) and one under the Birzhevoy Bridge. Presumably, these are "barkas" — wooden vessels used to transport goods in the 18th-20th centuries. Moreover, one of these barges carried a cargo of ship parts — bronze portholes, metal doors, and brass artillery shells.

Today, with the help of an echo sounder, scientists have conducted a detailed survey of the riverbed relief. In the Neva channel, from the mouth to the Volodarsky Bridge, they managed to record more than 150 hydroacoustic anomalies. Of course, not everything is of interest to historians, but supposedly almost 80 objects are hulls of various types of vessels. It turns out that the bottom of the Neva today represents a peculiar ship graveyard.

All findings (descriptions, photos, video materials, etc.) are entered into an electronic database, which corresponds to the map. However, only underwater excavations will help assess the scientific value of the findings.

Individual parts of the found ships are planned to be raised to the surface for scientific analysis, but the vessels themselves will remain underwater for now — it is premature to raise them. The ships lie under a layer of silt and river sand, and there is a high risk of damaging them. Additionally, it has not yet been decided where to store these historical and cultural valuables (although the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg has already expressed interest).

However, ships are not the only surprise. In December 2022, during underwater research at the Petrovskaya Embankment (near the mooring of the cruiser "Aurora"), divers retrieved icon covers from the bottom of the Neva, lying under a layer of silt at a depth of 4 meters. Two gilded and one silver covers date back to the 19th century. One of them is severely damaged. The icons themselves could not be found, but fragments of wood are visible on parts of the covers. One can only guess when and how the covers ended up in the Neva.

The latest sensational find was a retro car "Moskvich-403," discovered in summer 2024 near the Bronze Horseman by employees of the special motorized regiment of the Northwestern District of the Russian National Guard. The car lies at a depth of 6 meters.

In general, many interesting discoveries await us ahead, as professional guardians of the city's cultural heritage are only just beginning to explore the underwater treasures. Everything is just beginning!