Batory (ship)
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The Batory was a 1936 posed in service Transatlantic - passenger ship of the Polish shipping company Gdynia-Ameryka line , which for passenger traffic from Gdynia to New York had been built. During the Second World War , the ship served as an Allied troop transport . After the war, the Batory was used on various routes to the USA, Canada and the Middle East for over 20 years until she completed her last voyage in December 1968. It was then used as a hotel ship in Gdynia until it was scrapped in Hong Kong in 1971 .
Commissioning
The 14,287 gross registered tonnes (GRT) motor ship Batory was ordered on November 29, 1933 and laid down on May 1, 1934 at the Cantieri Riuniti dell 'Adriatico shipyard in Monfalcone near Trieste . The launch of the 160.2 meter long and 21.6 meter wide ship took place on July 3, 1935. On April 23, 1936, the Batory was completed. It was two neunzylindrigen diesel engines from Burmeister & Wain driven rendered the 12,680 horsepower and could accelerate the ship up to 18 knots. 796 passengers could be taken on board, 46 of them in first, 370 in second and 400 in third class. There were also 350 crew members.
The passenger ship, which was named after Stefan Batory , a Polish king from the 16th century, was the sister ship of the Piłsudski (14,294 GRT), which was built at the same shipyard and put into service in 1935. The two ships were built for the shipping company Gdynia America Shipping Lines, Ltd. ( Gdynia America Line ), which was founded in 1930 by the Polish government to provide regular passenger and freight service from Gdynia via Copenhagen to Halifax and New York. They were the largest ships of the Gdynia America Line until then and were among the first motor ships to have an indoor swimming pool. Many well-known Polish artists contributed to the luxurious furnishings.
On May 17, 1936, the Batory ran in Gdynia on her maiden voyage to New York. Like her sister ship, she proved to be a reliable and very popular ship. By 1939 she carried over 30,000 passengers. On a trip to New York in June 1937, the Batory suffered fire damage in the engine room , so that she had to be repaired in New York. This delayed the return trip to Gdynia by a month.
Second World War
When the Second World War broke out on September 1, 1939 , the Batory was in the middle of the North Atlantic . Upon arrival in New York on September 5, she was handed over to the British government for use as a troop transport. At the end of December 1939 she drove from Halifax to Great Britain and on January 10, 1940 she ran from the Clyde to Suez . The Batory spent the next few weeks with troop voyages in the Mediterranean until she arrived back in Liverpool on February 22, 1940 . In April and May 1940 the ship brought Allied troops to Harstad (Norway). Between June 13 and 27, 1940, she called at several ports in southern France to save troops from the approaching Germans. During this time she became the flagship of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny , commander in chief of the 1st French Army.
On July 4, 1940, the Batory in Greenock ran under heavy guard by British escort vehicles to Halifax. On this trip she transported numerous irreplaceable Polish art objects that had been salvaged from the Kraków Wawel , as well as gold bars from the Bank of England worth £ 40 million , which were to be deposited in the Bank of Canada . In the course of the war , the Batory made further trips to New Zealand , Australia , India , Gibraltar , Algeria , Malta , Egypt and Iceland . During her service, the Batory survived several attacks by ships and aircraft and was therefore nicknamed The lucky ship ("the lucky ship"). Her sister ship, the Piłsudski , was less fortunate; it fell victim to German sea mines as early as 1939 .
After the end of the war, the ship was not immediately released from military service. It was not until December 28, 1945 that the Batory returned to the Clyde after another long service in the Mediterranean. After an extensive overhaul in Antwerp in 1947, which was dragged out by a fire on board, the Batory returned to the North Atlantic route from Gdynia via Copenhagen and Southampton to New York.
New routes after the war
Between May 1949 and January 1951, there were repeated politically motivated incidents in New York Harbor in which dock workers refused to unload or wait for the ship. This resulted in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey refusing to allow the ship to continue calling. The Batory therefore had to be relocated to a different route and retired from the North Atlantic service. From August 1951 the ship, which in the meantime had become the property of the newly founded shipping company Polskie Linie Oceaniczne , sailed from Gdynia via Southampton to Bombay and Karachi via Gibraltar, Malta, Aden and Suez . The Suez crisis in 1956 put an end to this line service after five years.
After a refurbishment in Bremerhaven in 1957, in which the passenger capacity was changed to 76 passengers in first class and 740 in tourist class, the Batory returned to the North Atlantic. From now on she headed for Canadian ports instead of New York. In the summer months Quebec and Montreal were the ports of destination, while in winter Halifax, located further south, was called due to the icing of the northern sea routes.
Since the number of ship travelers on the Atlantic decreased noticeably in the 1960s due to the mass air traffic, the now over 30-year-old Batory was withdrawn from service in December 1968. On February 20, 1969, a farewell ceremony was held in Tilbury , which was also attended by some people who had been evacuated to Australia as children during the war on board the Batory . After decommissioning, the ship served as a floating restaurant and hotel in Gdynia for two years until it was sold to Hong Kong for demolition in 1971 for US $ 570,000 .
Despite the decline in the passenger business, the Batory received a successor on the North Atlantic route in 1969, the roughly equal size Stefan Batory .
Web links
- The sister ships Piłsudski and the Batory (construction dates, historical, photos)
- Information about the Gdynia America Line in The Ships List