_(cropped).jpg) MSBatory ca 1937-1939 | |
| History | |
|---|---|
.svg) Poland | |
| Name | Batory |
| Namesake | King Stefan Batory |
| Owner |
|
| Operator |
|
| Port of registry | Gdynia |
| Ordered | 29 November 1933 |
| Builder | Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico,Monfalcone |
| Yard number | 1127 |
| Laid down | 1 May 1934 |
| Launched | 3 July 1935 |
| Acquired | 23 April 1936 |
| Maiden voyage | 18 May 1936 |
| In service | 1936 |
| Out of service | 1 July 1969 |
| Identification |
|
| Nickname(s) | Lucky Ship |
| Fate | Became a hotel ship in Gdynia, 1969. Sold back to Polish Ocean Lines in 1970, scrapped between 1971 and 1972 in Hong Kong. |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Ocean liner |
| Tonnage | |
| Length | 160.4 m (526.25 ft) |
| Beam | 21.6 m (70.87 ft) |
| Draught | 7.5 m (24.6 ft) |
| Decks | 4 + 3 in superstructure |
| Installed power | twoSulzer 2SSA 9-cylinderdiesel engines, 12 680hp (12 500 hp from April 1947) |
| Propulsion | 2 propellers |
| Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h) |
| Capacity |
|
| Crew |
|
MSBatory was a Polishocean liner which was the flagship ofGdynia-America Line, named afterStefan Batory, the sixteenth-centuryKing of Poland. She was the sister ship ofMS Piłsudski. After Allied wartime service, mainly under the UKAdmiralty, she became in 1951 the flagship of thePolish Ocean Lines and the Polish merchant fleet. She is often described as the "Pride of thePolish Merchant Marine".Batory along with her sisterPiłsudski were the two most popular ocean liners of Poland.
Gdynia America Line (Gdynia–Ameryka Linie Żeglugowe, GAL), a Polish-Danish partnership based inGdynia, was formed in 1934 as successor toPolskie Transatlantyckie Towarzystwo Okrętowe (PTTO), an enterprise originally dedicated to transporting Polish migrants to theUSA. It changed its focus to leisure travel and for that purpose decided to commission a new vessel.Batory was built in 1934–5 at theCantieri Riuniti dell'AdriaticoMonfalcone shipyard inTrieste, Italy,[1] under an arrangement where part of the commission was paid in shipments of coal fromPoland.
She was among the best-known Polish ships of all time. She was launched on 3 July 1935. She was powered by twoSulzer diesel engines driving two screws giving a speed of 18 knots (33 km/h). She began regular service in May 1936 on theGdynia — New York run, and by 1939 had carried over 3,000 passengers.
Mobilized at the outbreak ofWorld War II, she served as atroop ship and ahospital ship by the Allied Navy for the rest of the war. In 1940 she, along withChrobry, transported allied troops during theNorwegian campaign. She was also one of the last ships to leave St Jean de Luz during thefinal evacuation of Polish troops from France. She was also used for secretly shipping manyvaluable Polish treasures to Canada for safekeeping. She participated in the evacuation ofDunkirk late May early June, taking aboard 2,500 people. Later she carried as many as 6,000 people in one evacuation. In June to July, she secretly transported much of the UK's gold reserves (£40 million) fromGreenock, Scotland toMontreal, Canada for safekeeping (Operation Fish). On 5 August 1940 she left Liverpool with convoy WS 2 (Winston's Specials) evacuating 477 children to Sydney, Australia, under theChildren's Overseas Reception Board until the war was over.[2] She sailed via Cape Town, India, Singapore to where she had carried 300 troops and Sydney. The journey had been a happy one, with so much music and laughter that theBatory was dubbed the"Singing Ship" and was the subject of a book of the same name.[3] In April 1942 British writerRoald Dahl boarded theBatory, bound forHalifax,Canada.
She was involved in the allied invasion ofOran, Algeria in 1942 (Operation Torch). That same year she took troops to India and later took part in theAllied invasion of Sicily and southern France (Operation Dragoon), where she was the flagship of GeneralJean de Lattre de Tassigny, Commander-in-Chief of theFrench Army. She came under attack several times from the ground and the air, but managed to escape serious damage.
Dubbed theLucky Ship for her military career during World War II, she was asister ship to the less fortunatePiłsudski which sank in November 1939 off the east coast of Scotland.
Returned topost-war Poland in 1946, she resumed civilian service after a refit, transporting such eminent people asRyszard Kapuściński. From May 1949 through to January 1951, she was the subject of several political incidents in which American dockers and shipyard workers in the United States refused to unload her cargo, or to service the ship.
After these incidents, she was withdrawn from the North Atlantic route, refurbished atHebburn for service in the tropics, and sailed in August 1951 from Gdynia andSouthampton toBombay andKarachi, viaGibraltar,Malta,Aden, andSuez. In 1957, she returned to the North Atlantic run. She continued in service until 1969, when she was decommissioned and became a floating hotel in Gdynia. However, after about a year, she was sold back to Polish Ocean Lines, and from there she was sold for scrap toHong Kong. She left Gdynia on 31 March 1971 and arrived to the scrapyard on 26 May. On 2 June, the Polish flag was lowered and the scrapping process began. The ship had been scrapped completely by 1972.
She was replaced by a larger vesselStefan Batory, which operated from April 1969 until 1988.
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