Posliinirinne

Posliinirinne is a slope dive, not a wreck dive. From a boat moored over the south side of Finnskär island, divers descend the seabed and work the lower slope and the foot of an adjacent cliff. The shallowest known structure sits at about 15 m and the bottom of the artefact concentration at around 24 m. There is no hull silhouette to anchor on. The visual interest is the scatter field itself — roughly 50 by 50 m of mid-1800s porcelain tableware lying partly in dense piles, interpreted as transport boxes that sank intact and broke apart on impact, and partly as scattered single pieces around them. Plates, bowls, soup bowls, broken coffee cups and cream pitchers rest against bare Baltic substrate, some plain white, some patterned with landscape motifs. A leisurely sweep of the field fits better than a deep stop.

Almost everything else in Finnish wreck-diving is hull-anchored. Posliinirinne is the opposite: an artefact field on a slope, with the cargo doing the work the structure usually does. The pieces are dated and stamped — one platter carries an 1860 mark, others run 1853-1858, with English-origin items in the assemblage. This is concrete, datable evidence of the mid-19th-century Baltic ceramics trade, visible on a single recreational-depth dive. In spirit it sits closer to the inner-Saaristomeri heritage wrecks (Vrouw Maria, Borstö 1) than to the deeper Utö wrecks, but at a depth and complexity any reasonably experienced diver can handle.

The artefact field is dated to the mid-1800s by stamps on the recovered pieces. Two December 1862 wreckings near Finnskär are the candidates for the cargo source: the Finnish-flagged Hanna and a Helsinki brig that broke up at Finnskär the same month. Researchers have openly speculated that the two events may be connected and that both may have contributed to the dispersion. Neither hull has been located, and neither has been confirmed as the source ship. A formal inspection by the Finnish Maritime Museum took place over four days in June 1996, and the field was registered with the Finnish Heritage Agency in 2001. Selected pieces have been recovered by Finnish dive clubs over the years under specific Museovirasto agreements and added to the Kansallismuseo collections.

This is a no-touch dive. The field is protected under the Finnish Antiquities Act as an irtolöytö (loose finds) site, which makes lifting or moving any item illegal without a specific Museovirasto permit. Hover off the structure, stay off the seabed near the piles, and brief the team on no-contact technique before splashing. Plan a multi-day window. Open-Baltic exposure off Finnskär regularly costs entire trips to wind and seas, and a 1998 Heritage Agency expedition lost its full planned slot. A drysuit is the practical exposure suit even in summer because the artefact concentration sits below the thermocline. Saaristomeri National Park has zone-specific restrictions in this part of the outer archipelago — confirm the current restriction-zone status with Metsähallitus before an organised visit.