At the beginning there was a dream ...

Having regained, in 1918, its independence - so very much desired after 150 years of partitions - Poland was still lacking access to the sea. It was only on l0th February 1920 that nuptials of Poland with the sea could be performed in Puck. It was a symbolic act meaning that our nation's dreams of regaining access to the Baltic, of having its own fleet, of being a sea power could start coming true. Under the Treaty of Versailles a small portion of the Baltic coast was granted to Poland.


Not later than three months afterthe ceremony in Puck, engineer Tadeusz Wenda was delegated by vice-admiral Kazimierz Porębski, the director of Maritime Affairs Department of the Ministry of Defence, to go to Pomerania and search for a most suitable place to construct a naval port. As soon as in June 1920 Tadeusz Wenda submitted a report on his survey of Pomerania. He wrote the following:

"(...) the most suitable site for the construction of a naval (and possibly a commercial) port is Gdynia or, putting it more accurately, the plain between Gdynia and Oksywie, 16 kilometers from Gdansk's New Port.
The location in question has the following advantages:

1. It is sheltered by the Hel Peninsula even from those winds Gdansk is not free from (from 21' NE to 54'20" NE).
2. Deep waters are close to the coast, the 6-metre depth line being 400 metres from the coast, and that marking 10-metre depth 1300-1500 metres from the coast.
3. The coast is low, elevated 1 to 3 metres above the sea level.
4. There is plenty of fresh water thanks to "Chylonja" brook.
5. Gdynia railway station is situated nearby (at the distance of 2 kilometres).
6. The holding ground on the roadstead is of good quality."

The reasons given by engineer Wenda were convincing, but not for everybody. There were people advocating some other locations, such as the Żarnowieckie Lake area, Puck or Rewa. Objections were also raised as to the scale of the harbour-to-be. The following is an excerpt from a letter (dated l2th November 1920) by the Supreme Chamber of State Inspection to vice-admiral K. Porębski: (...)"Sharing, in general, the opinion of the Minister of Defence, as expressed in the urgent proposal to the Economic Committee of the Council of Ministers regarding construction of the harbour in Gdynia, so far as independence of the interests of Polish State from Gdansk and development of fishing industry is concerned, it is, nevertheless, the assumption of the Supreme Chamber that the work should be limited to the construction of the now planned breakwater, harbour and wharf with railway lines. Any further expansion of the inner (artificial) harbour is deemed purposeless (...)."


It was in spring 1921 that the first piles were driven to construct what was termed as the "temporary naval port and fishermen's haven", and already in autumn of the same year a daring idea of a great, versatile (commercial, fishing and naval) "national" port with transhipments reaching a minimum of 6 million tonnes annually was presented by Tadeusz Wenda.
All aspects of Construction of the "national port" were comprehensively dealt with in a pamphlet written by T.Wenda together with vice-admiral K. Porębski and aimed at popularization of the idea of that project. Although the pamphlet has never been published and only one of its chapters was saved till our days, the pains taken by both authors to make the "national port" of Gdynia a reality proved to be successful. Even before the Act of construction of the port or, more accurately, on "independent organization of the sea base" (dubbed "Gdynia's Magna Charta" by a pre-war lecturer of the Maritime School, Dr Aleksy Majewski) was passed by the Polish Parliament, holiday-makers would come to the idyllic "God's Inlet" at the bottom of Kamienna Góra (Rocky Mountain) and the Orlowo cliff. Among them was one of Poland's greatest contemporary writers, Stefan Żeromski. In the year 1921 he would keep a keen eye on the work at construction of the temporary naval base and fishermen's haven being just in progress, and he was inspired by the work in which he saw the onset of a new epoch and Poland's great chance. He then wrote his book "Wiatr od morza" (Wind From the Sea), giving a surprisingly accurate (as it was proven shortly afterwards) picture of the harbour and city of Gdynia, at that moment not existing yet.

On 23rd September 1922 the Parliament passed the Act on Construction of the Port in Gdynia, Pomerania Region, as a Public Port. The construction of the port of Gdynia, a project of nation-wide importance, paid for itself even before the World War II, while having played the role of catalyst for social energy and patriotism. It was thanks to Gdynia that Poles started believing they could achieve the wildest dreams and face the most ambitious challenges of the 20th century. The man to give political dimension and status of the national project to the engineering thought of Tadeusz Wenda and literary vision of Stefan Żeromski was Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, a chemical engineer by profession and a politician by passion. Since the moment of his taking the position of the Minister of Industry and Commerce in 1926 (and also during his being a deputy Prime Minister of Poland's last government, before the outbreak of the World War II), the matters of the port of Gdynia, not given enough attention, got a move on. For Kwiatkowski was a zealous promoter of the state's maritime policy, which basis was the modern port of Gdynia.

Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski was a man of great calibre, and so were his works of which the most famous, and probably the greatest was Gdynia. It was through his advocacy that the Parliament would allocate funds for the development of the city and port which for the pre-war generation of Poles was a true Promised Land, an America. In the years 1927-1928 the Government's expenditures on the construction of Gdynia harbour amounted to 34.8 m zloties, compared to mere 6.5 m zloties in the period 1925-1926. During Kwiatkowski's occupying the position of the Minister of Industry and Commerce, the total value of construction work done at the harbour of Gdynia amounted to 88 m zloties.


Being a politician, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski was gifted with a special talent of a publicist, which he used, among other things, to make popular the matters of Gdynia. He would persuade sceptics to follow the idea of Poland as a seafaring nation. He would infect people with his passion and zeal. He would impress and move them with unselfishness and patriotism.
Along with Tadeusz Wenda and vice-admiral Porębski he is deemed to be the father and creator of Gdynia. Inhabitants of the city conferred on Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski Gdynia's honorary citizenship in 1931.

Brothers Robert and Franciszek Wilke - a firm founded in 1931 - reflects the very essence of Gdynia's dynamism and initiative. Their business started in summer.They started taking tourists for rows on board of the old fishing smack. They had treated this activity marginally. Pretty soon, however, their idea took more mature shape of the firm called:Robert Wilke - Passangers Motorboats. The old fishing smack was soon sold and replaced by a better company of several motorboats built in Gdańsk Shipyard. The first one was given the proud name of The Dalphin. Short after that The Dalphin was joined by The Shark, The Gryphon, Jaś and Małgosia.


During the summer season in Gdynia, the Wilke brothers used to service around 200 thousand tourists, longing for the sea adventures. Rows around the port, and further - to Orłowo, Sopot, Gdańsk Jastarnia and Hel - the very tip to the peninsula, were the main attraction for Gdynia holiday makers.
With the beginning of the Second World War the firm ceased to exist.

A rapid growth of Gdynia in the 15-year period starting from 1926 was dramatically hampered by the outbreak of the World War II. The city did not suffer much from bombardment, especially when compared with Warsaw or Gdańsk, but the harbour and shipyard were completely destroyed. And it was people - Gdynia's main assets - that suffered most. The bulk of Polish inhabitants were expelled by Germans or sent to concentration camps, many were killed at the fronts.

The survivors would quickly start coming back to the city, liberated in March 1945. Along with native inhabitants of Gdynia people from Warsaw, Lvov or Vilnius, having lost everything and looking for a place to set up a hearth of their own would appear just as years before Gdynia was viewed a Promised Land again. The post-war time once again became the pioneering time.

Before the shipyard came to its former shape, it had rendered all kinds of services. Its portfolio of orders included, for example, making a toothed-wheel for a tape-recorder, a chimney-pipe for a portable stove, repair of cars (among them those fueled with wood gas)...



It has fallen a lot of the post-war generation to witness the tragedy of bloody events of December 1970, when shipyard workers of Gdynia, just like their Gdańsk colleagues, took - on behalf of the whole nation - the rebellion against the government of People's (only by name) Republic of Poland.
Gdynia remembers them. Two monuments to the victims of December 1970 have been erected in the city ...

There were also the joyous days, filled with rebellion and hope, in August 1980 when SOLIDARITY was born.

Today Gdynia has more than 250.000 inhabitants and is an important centre of naval economy, international trade, science and academic education, culture, tourism. It is frequently cited as a city of success, a city dwelled by people of initiative, active and daring ones.

We, inhabitants of Gdynia, are well aware of the opinion, for which the two previous generations should be credited to a great extent, but which has also been a merit of the last years. Although the present-day Gdynia, as opposed to the city before the World War II, is no more Poland's only sea port, but it must be determined in the struggle to keep its position in the Baltic sea. The competition is fierce, the pace of changes frantic. Thanks to excellent geopolitical position Gdynia, aspires to be a centre of international meetings and trading. It is an ambitious continuation of Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski's dreams ...
It is already the third generation building Gdynia. We have to face new challenges.

Gdynia is a unique city, created out of dreams - about sea, about free access to the world, about welfare. Those dreams do not leave us now that we contemplate the future of Gdynia.