Gdansk, Poland
The Baltic city of Gdansk – or Danzig as it was known for the greater part of the second millennium – was the third largest of the Hanseatic cities after Lübeck and Hamburg. Its prosperity depended on a fertile hinterland, for it was the principal supplier of grain to the Hanseatic world. Like other Hanseatic cities, it was built on a protected island site, in this case surrounded by the waters of the Motlawa river. By the end of the nineteenth century newer steam ships were proving too big to navigate up the Motlawa and a new port was built at the mouth of the estuary. It was here, at Westerplatte, on the first day of September 1939 that the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish garrison that was guarding the harbor entrance of the free city, thereby inaugurating the Second World War. A monument marks the spot, visible just a few hundred yards from our moorings at Nowy Port.
Another notable monument was visible as we drove into the old city for our morning tour. The imposing monument to the Solidarity movement, three anchors on towering concrete crucifixes that stand at the entrance of what was, in Soviet times, the Lenin shipyard, one of the largest such facilities in the world. It was there that the first free trade union in the Soviet bloc emerged defiant and, led by the charismatic Lech Walesa, then a shipyard electrician but later to become President of Poland, succeeded in bringing democracy to his long-suffering country. The old city, lovingly rebuilt after the destruction of the war, was thoroughly explored on foot in the morning. We passed through the Green Gate, which houses the offices of the Lech Walesa Foundation, and visited both the Town Hall and the impressive St Mary’s Church, the largest brick-built church in the world with its celebrated fifteenth-century astronomical clock. Most impressive, and emblematic of the Hanseatic city, was the mediaeval crane incorporated into the Gate of the Holy Spirit, a wonderful example of Hanseatic practicality, once used to hoist grain and masts for the Hanseatic cogs, those eminently practical if inelegant cargo ships that once crowded the harbor of the old city. Returning to the ship for lunch we passed the city’s new soccer stadium which cheerfully references the Baltic’s amber coast.
In the afternoon there were optional visits to the Maritime and Archaeological Museums, the latter currently housed in a former grain storage warehouse on Granary Island. For many, the highlight of the day was a chance to return from the old city to the ship by Zodiac through the historic shipyard, as impressive for its extent as for the historic scenes it had witnessed. As we departed Gdansk, after a full and rewarding day in welcome sunshine, we were treated to a selection of Polish cold cuts and vodka as the sun began to set over the receding southern Baltic shore.
