The Possiet Gulf or Posyet Bay (Russian: Залив Посьета) is a bay

Bay

A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...

 in the south-western part of the Peter the Great Gulf

Peter the Great Gulf

The Peter the Great Gulf is the largest gulf of the Sea of Japan adjoining the coast of Russia's Primorski Krai...

, 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, is irregular and indented.
Several townlets are situated on the bay, including Possiet, Zarubino

Zarubino, Primorsky Krai

Zarubino is an urban locality in Khasansky District of Primorsky Krai, Russia, and a port on the Posyet Bay. Population: It was established on October 18, 1928...

, and Kraskino

Kraskino

Kraskino is an urban locality in Khasansky District of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located on the shore of the Posyet Bay, southwest of Vladivostok, near the border with North Korea. Population:...

.

The crew of the French corvette Caprice visited the bay in 1852, giving it the name of d'Anville

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville , was both a geographer and cartographer who greatly improved the standards of map-making. His maps of ancient geography, characterized by careful, accurate work and based largely on original research, are especially valuable...

. Two years later, the coastline was mapped by the expedition of Yevfimy Putyatin

Yevfimy Putyatin

Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin was a Russian admiral noted for his diplomatic missions to Japan and China which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855.-Early life:...

, 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

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

, the bay was visited by an Anglo-French squadron whose leaders called it "The Raid of Napoleon", after the first French battleship, Le Napoléon

Le Napoléon (1850)

The Napoléon was a 90-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, and the very first purpose-built steam battleship in the world . She is also considered the first true steam battleship, and the first screw battleship ever . Launched in 1850, she was the lead ship of a class of 9 battleships, all...

. 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

Battle of Lake Khasan

The Battle of Lake Khasan and also known as the Changkufeng Incident in China and Japan, was an attempted military incursion of Manchukuo into the territory claimed by the Soviet Union...

.

External links

• Posyet in the Unofficial site of the village Posyet.