Sailing into history: Dar Młodzieży trades Caribbean blue for the Hudson

After nearly two months at sea, Poland's most famous tall ship has made fast in the capital of the Bahamas. In the turquoise water of Nassau her crew is catching its breath before the grand finale of the entire voyage – a parade of sail on New York's Hudson River. A finale that will fall on a date that is anything but accidental. And just over the horizon waits a question no one aboard can yet answer: where will Dar Młodzieży return once she finally comes off the run?

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11 june 2026   |   12:12   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Uniwersytet Morski w Gdyni

There is something delightfully incongruous about the sight. A three-masted frigate built on the cold Baltic, forged in a Gdańsk shipyard to harden young sailors against the gales of the North Sea, now lies alongside in Nassau, in the very heart of the Caribbean. Her white hull is mirrored in water of a blue no marine paint could ever reproduce. After a long Atlantic passage the crew finally has a moment to step ashore, breathe and recover. As the ship's commanding officer, Captain Michał Sadowski, reported, sailors and trainees alike are making the most of the islands – and the beaches, by all accounts, are leaving the strongest impression.

It is a well-earned stop. Dar Młodzieży – the sail-training flagship of Gdynia Maritime University and the pride of the Polish merchant marine – left Gdynia on 16 April, bound for the United States. The voyage was split into three legs. The first ended in early May at Cádiz, where students from Gdynia Maritime University and pupils from the Maritime School Complex in Świnoujście stepped ashore. The second, now drawing to a close, runs from Cádiz by way of the Bahamas to the American seaboard. Aboard this stretch are first-year cadets of the Navigation Faculty, for whom the ocean crossing is the first true school of the sea.

Air conditioning and a small tropical drama

A great voyage rarely passes without surprises, and this time the adversary proved a mundane one: a failure of the air-conditioning system. It sounds trivial – until you remember we are talking about a steel hull driving through the tropics, where temperatures below deck can turn messes and cabins into an oven. The fault forced a stop of several hours at Martinique, the French island in the Lesser Antilles, where the problem was brought under enough control for the frigate to press on. Even so, the captain reported, the crew is in good spirits.

These small troubles are part of a story that has been written aboard the ship for more than four decades. Dar Młodzieży is a floating university – and every breakdown, every unplanned manoeuvre, is a lesson no lecture hall can teach. The cadets, who caught a brief phone signal as they passed Tenerife, are reportedly taking the lack of connectivity remarkably well, according to the captain. Some even welcome it: a few weeks lived to the rhythm of the watch, free of notifications, face to face with the ocean.

Course for New York and a parade like no other

From the Bahamas the route now runs straight for the United States. In the second half of June the frigate, with her crew of 33, will enter American ports, calling among others at Norfolk, New York and Boston. It is there, in New York, that the third and final leg will begin on 3 July: a new group will come aboard – roughly 120 second-year Navigation Faculty cadets, who will sail on to Boston.

But the true heart of the expedition is a single date. On 4 July, Dar Młodzieży will take part in an international parade of tall ships on the waters of New York – a celebration woven into the 250th anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. The white frigate will lie rail to rail with the most beautiful vessels in the world, carrying the Polish ensign before millions of spectators. After the New York spectacle the long road home begins: from Boston the ship will head back across to Europe, calling at ports in the United Kingdom and Germany. Her return to Gdynia is scheduled for 24 August.

And yet that date – 4 July – means far more to Dar Młodzieży than the American calendar lets on.

The ensign and the anthem: a birthday to the day

Turn the clock back 44 years. It is 4 July 1982, eight o'clock in the morning, at the Pomeranian Quay in Gdynia. To the shrill of bosun's pipes and the strains of the Polish national anthem, the white-and-red ensign rises for the first time on the flagstaff of a new frigate that still smells of fresh paint. Her godmother is Helena Jurkiewicz – wife of master mariner Kazimierz Jurkiewicz, long-serving commander of the previous training ship Dar Pomorza and chairman of the committee that built the new vessel. It is a symbolic changing of the watch: the old Dar Pomorza is ending her service, and her place in the great relay of Polish sail-training ships – after Lwów and the "white frigate" – is taken by Dar Młodzieży. Six days later, on 10 July, she would put out on her maiden voyage.

The Pomeranian Quay remains the ship's permanent berth to this day. And that is exactly what makes this year's 4 July so extraordinary. On the day America marks 250 years of independence, Dar Młodzieży will be celebrating her own 44th birthday – to the very day. The ensign first hoisted that morning at the Gdynia quayside in 1982 will fly this time over the Hudson, amid a parade of the world's great sailing ships. It is hard to imagine a finer bookend – or better proof that this vessel and the world's great maritime occasions simply belong together.

And yet behind that ceremonial date lies the shadow of a question now growing louder back home. For this voyage may be one of the last long-haul undertakings of an ageing frigate.

Gdynia will not surrender its legend without a fight

Dar Młodzieży is now 44 years old, and Gdynia Maritime University has issued a tender for the construction of a successor – a modern, three-masted sailing ship with room for 169 people, including 33 crew and cadets. The estimated cost is around 350 million złoty. Once the new vessel enters service, the question already stirring the maritime community will demand an answer: what next for Dar Młodzieży?

In Gdynia the answer is unequivocal – the ship must stay. City councillor Jakub Ubych has drawn up a petition, at once an appeal to the city authorities, calling for the frigate to remain in her home port once her training service ends, as a lasting fixture of Gdynia's seascape and maritime heritage. The petition envisages working out a plan for the ship's future in cooperation with the Maritime University, several government ministries, the Port of Gdynia Authority and the honorary committee for the city's centenary. A grassroots signature drive has been launched alongside it.

A voice in the matter has also come from Lechosław Bar – the man who in 1978 began the very fundraiser that built Dar Młodzieży. He is appealing for the ship to stay in Gdynia and has pledged help, financial support included. The formal argument sits with the city: Gdynia has been the frigate's home port from day one, Gdynia Maritime University remains her operator, and the historic raising of her ensign took place here, in 1982.

Szczecin reaches out for the frigate

On the other side of the country, however, a different resolve has taken hold – to fight for her. The master-mariner community of Szczecin argues that, once her service ends, the ship could grace the capital of the West Pomeranian region. An appeal to that effect has been issued by the Maritime City Szczecin Association; in its reasoning, taking over the frigate and displaying her on the Oder would fit squarely with the city's recognisable "Floating Garden" branding. Among those raising the subject in the press has been Captain Włodzimierz Grycner, head of Szczecin's Master Mariners' Club.

Szczecin points to its own many ties with the ship – Dar Młodzieży has called there repeatedly during Sea Days and great tall-ship gatherings, and the city has for decades been one of the pillars of Poland's sailing tradition. The dispute is therefore no simple tug-of-war between two ports; it is rather a question of whom a maritime legend belongs to – a single city, or the whole country.

There is a broader thread running through the debate, too, one that reaches beyond the choice of address. A proposal has surfaced to use the question of the ship's future as an occasion to address the rules governing historic vessels – not least the matter of mandatory crewing levels, already resolved in other countries. That opens a fundamental question: is the frigate to become a static monument and museum at the quayside, or – after a refit and modernisation – to keep sailing, perhaps in a tourist role?

For now, though, all that is a song of the future. Today Dar Młodzieży rides in the turquoise water of Nassau, her cadets are learning the ocean, and ahead of her bow loom New York and a parade the likes of which the frigate has never seen. The decision over where she will spend her maritime retirement can wait. The great voyage goes on.

Dar Młodzieży żaglowiec Dar Młodzieży rejs do USA Dar Młodzieży na Bahamach parada żaglowców Nowy Jork 2026 Dar Młodzieży na Sail4th 250

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