Museum of the Navy

The Navy Museum is as quiet as the ocean floor. Even flies do not dare to disturb the peace of exhibits that survived more than one battle and were witnesses of feats and discoveries. Passing through the ancient (XVIII century) doors of the museum, as if through the gates to the past, you get into the world about which you only read. Here you can see a piece of the sheathing of the cruiser "Aurora" and the sleeve, similar to the one that remained from the epochal shot, the atmosphere of the cabin company of the first icebreaker "Ermak" and take a picture at the helm of the icebreaker "F. Litke" (in 1934 in one navigation passed along the Northern Sea Route from east to west). The first hall is devoted to the history of the naval fleet. Here is a model of the hero of the novel Ivan Goncharov – the legendary frigate “Pallada” (Pushkin and his wife were present during the descent of this masterpiece of shipbuilding). The frigate made in the late 40s of the XIX century a long voyage with a diplomatic mission from Kronstadt to Japan and sank a few years later in the waters of the Tatar Strait. Goncharov himself served on the ship as a secretary and kept travel notes, which then turned into a book. Next to the model of the frigate under the dome lies a piece of wood raised from the seabed and proving that the "Pallada" really existed. In the corner of the hall there is a rusted anchor of the V century. “With such anchors, the ancient Romans entered Chersonese,” explains the director of the museum Alexander Alekseevich Kupriyanov. Nearby in the window - soldiers in sea uniforms of different eras. “Each button they have separately glued — handmade,” explains the Director. - Exactly in this form, for example, the Decembrist Bestuzhev brought to the Senate Square the first guards naval crew, sailors-Decembrists. Many exhibits of the museum were found in unexpected places. “I found this gun on the street in front of Admiral Mikhail Lazarev’s house. The same thing that the money issued for the construction of the house, built a marine library in Sevastopol, says Kupriyanov. And this rusty machine gun, a witness of the revolution of 1917, was brought to the museum by schoolchildren. They found it at City Hall while it was being renovated. Dragged in the subway, closing the muzzle with a mitten.” Next to the machine gun is a white bust of Lenin found in the basement of the Hotel Ukraine. A lot of space in the museum is devoted to admirals, discoverers and hero sailors. Among them is a portrait and belongings of Georgy Mikhailovich Egorov, who commanded a submarine during the Great Patriotic War. In September 1942, the boat, flooding the fascist transport with a displacement of 10 thousand tons, blew up on a mine and settled at a depth of 60 meters. Egorov managed to force her to surface and lead her to the base through minefields.