Ship anchors, no doubt, are the most mass kind of the objects laying at the bottom of surveyed water areas. First, from 3 up to 10 anchors were onboard of each of the lost vessels and, as a rule, are found during survey, and, these ships were often lost being at anchor during a storm. But, besides, archival materials state numerous cases of ship anchors losses for various reasons. More often as a result of anchor cable breakage during a storm, less often owing to mechanical breakages of anchor chains or anchor cable damage. In XVIII century leaving of anchors at the bottom when an urgent anchorage escape was necessary for ship was rather frequent. It took them more than an hour to weigh bower anchor manually, therefore at force majeure the captain ordered either "to pay out" an anchor cable, or to chop it off. Thus, for example, not less than 100 anchors were left at the bottom during the Vyborg sea battle. Some of them were found during search and mapping operations and this find has allowed a more precise reconstruction of ship arrangement during a battle (fig...). The total amount of anchors at the bottom can be approximately estimated as minimum 100000 units.
According to the results of the archival materials analysis it is possible to state that there are inshore station areas with hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of anchors of the different countries at the sea-bottom which have collected there for 300-500 years (fig...). Basically this quantity allows to create in due course the world's largest collection of the anchors illustrating almost the whole creation history of these "symbols of hope”.