The Possiet Gulf or Posyet Bay (Russian: Залив Посьета) is a
bay
A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...
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 ...
, 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 () 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 the Tumen River and the Peter the Great ...
, 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, 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 between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
, 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 (), also known as the Changkufeng Incident (Chinese and Japanese: zh, s=張鼓峰事件, labels=no; Chinese pinyin: zh, hp=Zhānggǔfēng Shìjiàn, labels=no; Japanese romaji: ), was an attempted military incursion b ...
.
[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