The Possiet Gulf or Posyet Bay (Russian: Залив Посьета) is a
bay in the south-western part of the
Peter the Great Gulf
The Peter the Great Gulf (Russian: Залив Петра Великого) is a gulf on the southern coast of Primorsky Krai, Russia, and the largest gulf of the Sea of Japan. The gulf extends for from the Russian-North Korean border at the mout ...
, between the promontories of Suslov and Gamov. It stretches for 31 kilometres from northeast to southwest and for 33 kilometers from northwest to southeast. The coastline, which forms part of the
Khasansky District
Khasansky District (russian: Хаса́нский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #161-KZ and municipalLaw #187-KZ district (raion), one of the twenty-two in Primorsky Krai, Russia. It is located in the southwest of the krai, wedged between ...
, is irregular and indented.
Several townlets are situated on the bay, including
Possiet,
Zarubino, and
Kraskino.
The crew of the French corvette ''Caprice'' visited the bay in 1852, giving it the name of
d'Anville
Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville (; born in Paris 11 July 169728 January 1782) was a French geographer and cartographer who greatly improved the standards of map-making. D'Anville became cartographer to the king, who purchased his cartographic ...
. Two years later, the coastline was mapped by the expedition of
Yevfimy Putyatin
Yevfimiy Vasilyevich Putyatin (russian: Евфи́мий Васи́льевич Путя́тин; November 8, 1803 – October 16, 1883), also known as was an admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy. His diplomatic mission to Japan r ...
, including the schooner ''Vostok'' and the frigate ''Pallas''. Putyatin had the bay renamed after
Constantine Possiet, one of his associates. In 1855, at the height of the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
, the bay was visited by an Anglo-French squadron whose leaders called it "The Raid of Napoleon", after the first French battleship, ''
Le Napoléon''. In July 1938, the construction of an airfield and a submarine servicing facility in the bay aroused the ire of the Japanese and touched off a
Soviet-Japanese border conflict known as the
Battle of Lake Khasan
The Battle of Lake Khasan (29 July – 11 August 1938), also known as the Changkufeng Incident (russian: Хасанские бои, Chinese and Japanese: ; Chinese pinyin: ; Japanese romaji: ) in China and Japan, was an attempted military incu ...
.
[G. Patrick March. ''Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific''. Praeger/Greenwood, 1996. . Page 216.]
External links
Posyetin the Unofficial site of the village Posyet.
References
{{coord, 42, 30, N, 130, 55, E, display=title
Bays of Primorsky Krai