The new Poland of 1919 had only a small outlet on the Baltic Sea. Yet that outlet put the Polish people as part of the Hanseatic maritime tradition of the area. Part of the embracing of this was Poland acquiring a sailing ship, the Lwow, to train a new generation of Polish mariners. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The Poland of 1980 had a much longer coastline than the Poland of 1920. In fact at the Gdansk shipyard, there was a new Polish tall sailing ship under construction to continue the training of sailors for the navy and the merchant marine. This would be the first constructed in Poland and still serves as the Dar Mlodziezy. It makes 1980 a great time for a stamp issue to remember the ships and men that came before and built the tradition.
Todays stamp is issue A753, a 2 Zloty stamp issued by Poland on July 21st, 1980. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The Lwow was built in 1869 at Birkenhead in England as the commercial vessel. She was made of steel and had diesel engines in addition to her sails. In 1893 she was sold to an Italian firm and renamed Lucco. In 1898 she was caught in a bad storm off of the Cape of Good Hope where she lost several of her masts and nearly sunk. She was able to make it to Durban in South Africa but was then stuck there awaiting repairs. The ship was eventually bought by a Dutch firm there, repaired and put into use as the Nest, now out of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. The ship then retired to Holland in 1915 still in good condition.
It was in Holland where it was spotted by Poland and acquired cheap. The ship became the Polish Navy training ship Lwow. She was to be based out of the newly constructed seaport at Gdynia. The Poles were building this port opposite the then free state of Danzig as though they were supposed to have port rights in Danzig, the German dock workers there would always go on strike when there was a Polish ship to service. The first Captain of the Lwow as seen on the stamp was Tadeusz Bonifacy Ziolkowski. He was a Pole from the Polish part of Pomerania who had previously served in the Imperial German Navy. The ship was used heavily to teach navigation skills but it also had to earn a living taking cargo around the Baltic.
A naval tradition built quickly around the ship. One of it’s later Captains was Mamert Stankiewicz who later became famous. He was another Pole from Courland in modern Latvia who first served the Czar of Russia’s Baltic fleet. After serving the Polish Navy he was made Captain of the ocean liner MS Pisudski. The ship had been built in Italy and then bartered in exchange for Polish coal. After the war broke out in 1939 the ship made a quick conversion to troopship in England. On her first voyage as such, she was torpedoed by German U boats though there was no record of it on the German side. Captain Stankiewicz was the last to leave the ship after trying to save his crew in the best naval tradition but later died of hypothermia from being in the cold waters. There are armchair quarterbacks who argue the ship instead hit a mine and could have been saved by a more experienced crew. Armchair quarterbacking is pretty much what we do here at The Philatelist but is it really so terrible to let Poland have her heroes.
The Lwow was retired in 1930 and scrapped in 1938. She was replaced by a German made tall sailing ship called Gift of Pomerania in Polish service. Soon enough the rest of Pomerania itself would be gifted to Poland.
Well my drink is empty and nobody is going to sea these days here in the USA or in Poland and so I might as well have another. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.