The yacht of Poland's girl scouts stands in Klaipėda. The story of Grażyna, the first all-female seagoing vessel

The hull built in 1922 at a Finnish yard, which before the war carried the name Grażyna and served as the flagship of Poland's girl scouts, has survived and is today in Klaipėda. It stands in the open air on the grounds of the Memelburg castle site in the centre of the city, and until recently appeared in Lithuanian heritage documentation under the Soviet-era name Krasnaya Zvezda, meaning Red Star.

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05 august 2026   |   09:12   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe / NAC

In April 2022 the vessel's owner, the Lithuanian public body Lietuvos marinistinės kultūros išsaugojimo centras, applied to the country's Cultural Heritage Department to restore the name given to the yacht at the Finnish yard in 1922. Bartas Markevičius, who heads the centre, told the newspaper Vakarų ekspresas that the decision had been maturing for some time but was finally settled by Russia's attack on Ukraine on 24 February of that year. The vessel therefore recovered her original name: Turo.

In Lithuanian accounts the history of this hull runs from the Finnish yard through the Soviet period to the present day. The Polish chapter, six seasons in which the yacht trained girl scouts and had the country's first female captain in command, does not appear. In Polish accounts the reverse holds: the story stops in 1939.

A Finnish hull and Polish subscriptions

The yacht was built in 1922 at a Finnish yard under the name Turo. In 1934 she was rebuilt and handed over to Poland's girl scouts.

The vessel was funded by voluntary subscription. A substantial contribution came from Michał Grażyński, then voivode of Silesia, and it is from his assumed surname that the yacht's name derives.

The purchase was not a purely sporting matter. Sailing practice of the day did not admit women aboard as crew, and girl scouts were not even permitted to set foot on Zawisza Czarny, the movement's sail training vessel. A yacht of their own was the only route to putting girls to sea at all.

Rig and accommodation

Grażyna was a yawl of 12 metres with two masts. She carried four sails totalling 76.5 square metres: two staysails, the fore staysail and jib on the bowsprit, a gaff mainsail and a bermudan mizzen.

The interior was fitted out for seagoing training. The yacht had seven berths, a primus stove, a pantry and lockers for sailing and domestic equipment. At that length and berth count, a two-week cruise with a full crew meant conditions that today would be called spartan.

The first woman in command

The first captain of Grażyna was Jadwiga Wolff-Neugebauer, the first woman in Poland to hold a yacht master's certificate. She obtained it in 1933, a year before taking command.

An all-female crew aboard a seagoing sailing vessel was without precedent in Polish sailing at the time. The yacht quickly came to be regarded as the flagship of women's sailing in Poland.

Jadwiga Skąpska and the training cruises

In 1935 command passed to Jadwiga Skąpska, later known as Skąpska-Truscoe. Her biography is a story in itself: she was born in 1907 in Siberia, a descendant of a Polish exile, and belonged to the Siberian Troop, a scouting group originating in Vladivostok and formed in 1918.

It was she who in 1930 initiated water training camps for girls. Instruction in swimming, rowing and sailing was a departure at the time, and Grażyna became its natural extension out to sea.

Every summer season between 1934 and 1939 Skąpska ran two-week training cruises aboard the yacht for girls from across the country. Under her command the first Polish seagoing cruises with all-female crews took place.

The 1935 storm and the voyage to Denmark and Sweden

In 1935 Grażyna sailed on one of her first Baltic passages with a crew of twelve girls. It was then that the vessel had the episode that entered the history of Polish sailing: with a squall approaching, difficulties arose in reefing the mainsail, and official guests were aboard. The crew brought the situation under control and the yacht returned safely to Gdynia.

Two years later, in 1937, the scouts under Skąpska's command sailed to Denmark and Sweden. For an all-female crew from a country where, a few years earlier, women had not been allowed aboard a training yacht, this was a departure beyond the Baltic in a sense far wider than the navigational one.

A song attributed to the wrong vessel

One of the best known Polish sailing songs came out of Grażyna's cruises and is today associated with an entirely different vessel.

The song known as "Pod żaglami Zawiszy", whose words praise sailing aboard the flagship of the Polish Scouting Association, in its original form by Maria Bukarówna concerned cruises on Grażyna. The text arose from the memorable 1935 passage, after which the song gained currency in scouting circles. Only later was it reworked for Zawisza Czarny, and in that form it settled into general awareness.

The effect is that the best known memento of Poland's first yacht with an all-female crew survives today as a song about the vessel those women were not allowed to board.

The Lithuanian chapter

The hull's fate after 1939 is not documented in Polish sources. Lithuanian accounts pick up the thread only in the Soviet period, when the vessel carried the name Red Star, and follow it to the present.

The yacht now belongs to the public body Lietuvos marinistinės kultūros išsaugojimo centras and stands ashore, in the open, on the grounds of the Memelburg castle site in central Klaipėda. The Soviet name remained in heritage register documentation until the 2022 application to restore the original name Turo.

The Lithuanian context matters here. Klaipėda has seen a wider debate in recent years about the protection of historic vessels, in which the recurring argument is that heritage ships are difficult to enter in the register of immovable cultural property, and that without such an entry their owners cannot count on state support. Similar problems affect other vessels in the city, among them the 1906 lugger Olga and the 1911 yacht Lady Sophie.

What remains to be established

Three questions require verification before the account can be closed.

The first is the date of the naming ceremony. A chronology of Pomeranian sailing history gives 29 July 1934 and Jastarnia as the venue. Scouting materials and studies devoted to Poland's first women sailors give 29 November 1934 and the girl scouts' centre on Hel. The same day of the month with a different month suggests a transcription error, but settling it requires contemporary press or the records of the scouting organisation.

The second is the vessel's route between 1939 and the Soviet period. It is not known in what circumstances the hull came to be east of the former border, or when it was given the name Red Star.

The third is the identity of the hull itself. The year of construction, the Finnish yard and the original name match across Polish and Lithuanian sources, but formal confirmation should come from the owner or from the Lithuanian register of cultural property.

s/y Grażyna jacht harcerek pierwsza polska kapitan jachtowa Jadwiga Skąpska-Truscoe Pod żaglami Zawiszy pochodzenie piosenki polski jacht w Kłajpedzie Turo

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