Video by Alan Cummings 

A man snorkelling off Gyllyngvase beach believed that he might have discovered metal dumped off the Russian tanker Kuzma Minin.

Alan Cummings was doing his regular swim from Gyllyngvase round to Swanpool when he discovered several large sheets of rusted metal, some of which had portholes on them.

He initially thought that they could have been pieces of salvage metal offloaded by the Russian vessel to lower its weight when it dragged anchor and became grounded on December 18.

Alan said: "I've done that swim 200 times. Before that boat was there I'd never seen any scrap metal."

He described the wreckage as "piles of perforated sheet metal" with "strange machine-like shapes".

But a local diver from the Cornish Diving Company said that the rusted metal was more likely to be from the wreck of the SS Ponus, a World War One tanker which sank off Gyllyngvase beach on November 3 1916.

Falmouth Packet:

The SS Ponus, which dragged anchor off Gyllyngvase beach in 1916

The diver said that the wreckage may not have been visible before the recent storms as they could have been laying under the seabed.

It was only during the strong winds which caused the Kuzma Minin to drag its anchors that the wreckage would have emerged as the sand was disturbed.

He said: "The storms have churned up everything, we even found two cannons off Pendennis Point."

The steamer SS Ponus dragged anchor onto the rocks at the south western end of the beach not far from the spot where the Kuzma Minin was grounded.

The rescue operation for the Ponus was less successful than the one for the Kuzma Minin however, and attempts had to be abandoned due to adverse weather.