Gdynia (ship, 1927)
 The Gdańsk and the Gdynia
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The Gdynia was a Polish passenger ship built in 1927 . It served temporarily as a presidential yacht and then went on to sail as a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea. During the German invasion of Poland , the ship was sunk on September 2, 1939 by a bombing raid by the German Air Force .
Construction and technical data
At the same time as the new city of Gdynia was being built , tourism on the Polish coast also developed, but in the 1920s only fishing boats, tugs or ships from Gdansk were available to tourists for excursions. In order to be able to offer excursions and connections along the Polish coast also by Polish ships, the Ministry of Communication ordered two small passenger ships for coastal shipping in 1926 . Even before these ships could be assigned to a shipping company , the Danzig shipyard received the order for what would later become Gdynia and its sister ship Gdańsk in April 1926 . The state-owned shipping company Żegluga Polska, founded in November 1926, was supposed to manage both ships .
In the Gdańsk shipyard, the ship with hull number 48 was probably launched around May 1927 and was named Gdynia . Its length was 53.70 meters, it was 9.30 meters wide, had a draft of 3.30 meters and was initially with 547 GRT or 234 NRT and after a conversion in the winter of 1927/28 with 586 GRT or 281 NRT measured. The drive consisted of a three-cylinder triple expansion machine that achieved 650 hp and acted on one screw . With that she reached a top speed of 11.0 knots . The crew consisted of 27 to 32 officers and men. For trips lasting several days, cabins for up to 120 passengers were available; for shorter trips, the ship was approved for 700 deck passengers.
history
Passenger ship Gdynia of the White Fleet
After delivery by the shipyard and commissioning in July 1927, Gdynia became the home port of the ship of the same name. For the young Polish merchant fleet , the Gdynia was the second passenger ship after the Gdańsk, which had been in service a month earlier . Before the ship began its first regular voyages, it briefly served the Polish President Ignacy Mościcki as the presidential yacht during his visit to Gdynia in early August 1927. Then in August the first trip as a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea to Bornholm .
During his missions it turned out that the ship's design did not meet expectations: for a passenger ship, it was slower than ordered and not agile enough. In addition, the draft of the ship was too great to be able to call at the port of Hel, for example. The ship also took in too much water at sea and was considered very wet. The Gdynia was therefore already rebuilt in the winter of 1927/28 in order to better adapt the ship to the requirements of a cruise ship. The salon was converted into a smoking room and additional cabins were installed at the stern. The side walls were raised so that the ship could then also be distinguished externally from its sister ship. After the renovation, the shipping company used the Gdynia almost exclusively as a cruise ship. The trips led to the ports of the Baltic Sea such as Renne, Copenhagen , Visby , Riga , Tallinn , Gothenburg , Helsinki , Hanko and, in some cases, to Oslo . In the 1930s, trips abroad became unprofitable and the ship, like the Gdańsk, was only used in the summer season.
Tender Gdynia of the Polish Navy during World War II
Shortly before the start of the Second World War , the Polish Navy took over the ship. As part of the mobilization , the Navy set up two squadrons with auxiliary minesweepers from fishing cutters . On August 28, 1939, she used the Gdańsk and Gdynia as escort ships for the squadron . The ships kept their civilian crew as well as the white paint and remained without armament. Only a few days it was run as ORP Gdynia . At the start of the German attack on Poland sunken dive bombers of the type Junkers Ju 87 of IV./LG1 the Gdynia on September 2, 1939, four bombs in the Puck Bay before Danzig . In 1948 the ship, which had broken in two, was dismantled on site.
literature
- Maciej Neumann: Flota II Rzeczypospolitej i jej okręty [The fleet of the Second Republic and its ships] , Wydawnictwo LTW, Łomianki 2013, ISBN 978-83-7565-309-0 .
- Stanisław M. Piaskowski: Okręty Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1920–1946 [The Ships of the Republic of Poland 1920–1946] , Planów album, Warsaw 1996, ISBN 83-900217-2-2 .
- Jan Piwowoński: Flota spod biało-czerwonej [Fleet under white and red] , Nasza Księgarnia Publishing House, Warsaw 1989, ISBN 83-10-08902-3 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Seekrieges 1939–1945 , edited by the working group for military research and by the library for contemporary history , Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching o. J. [1968], ISBN 3-88199-0097 , extended online version .
Web links
- ORP Gdynia at dobroni.pl (Polish), accessed on June 14, 2019
- Gdynia's program for cruises in the Baltic Sea (1928) at polona.pl (Polish), accessed on June 14, 2019
- City history of Gdynia on old postcards at naszagdynia.com (Polish), accessed on June 14, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ Piwowonski, p 56
- ↑ a b ORP Gdynia at dobroni.pl
- ↑ Neumann, S. 242f.
- ↑ a b c d e Piwowonski, p. 57f.
- ↑ cf. technical data of the sister ship “Gdańsk” at: Reinhart Schmelzkopf: Foreign ships in German hands 1939–1945. Strandgut-Verlag, Cuxhaven 2004, DNB 972151001 , p. 90
- ↑ a b c d City history of Gdynia on old postcards at naszagdynia.com
- ↑ ORP is the abbreviation for "Okręt Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej" and the name prefix of Polish ships. ORP means "Warship of the Republic of Poland".
- ^ Chronicle of the Naval War: September 2, 1939
- ^ Piaskowski, p. 60
- ^ Neumann, p. 244