- How the Gdańsk Shipyard worked. Preserved elements of the industrial heritage of the Gdańsk Shipyard and their production function in the 1970s and 1980s
- authors of the text: Andrzej Trzeciak, Andrzej Nawrocki
- content: texts, photographs and maps
- language of the publication: English
- type of binding: hardcover
- pages: 204
- size: 25 x 27.5 cm
This is an extremely valuable publication, which presents the history of the shipbuilding industry in Gdańsk from its very beginnings up to the present day. It was at the Gdańsk Shipyard that the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” was founded, with Lech Wałęsa as its leader, and it was thanks to Solidarity that the shipyard became known throughout the world.
The aim of this publication was to present the role of individual shipbuilding structures and surviving elements of the industrial infrastructure against the background of the complex technological processes of shipbuilding and ship equipment. The book illustrates the vibrant and varied production of this unique facility. The authors described in detail the shipyard’s facilities, which represent a unique set of post-industrial cultural monuments and are the material historical heritage of the Gdańsk Shipyard. The book is also illustrated with unique photographs.
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From the introduction to the book:
The main focus of this study is on the operation, activities and production of the Gdańsk Shipyard in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when, after the workers’ revolt of December 1970, the social processes that led to the creation of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” began, and it was thanks to Solidarity that the Gdańsk Shipyard became widely recognised worldwide. At the same time, this was a period of large-scale, but unfinished, modernisation of the plant to upgrade its infrastructure and increase its production capacity. It should be emphasised that the issues related to the freedom legacy of the Gdańsk Shipyard were only a starting point for the authors. Therefore, due to the publication’s profile, the freedom and solidarity narrative was consciously omitted almost in its entirety. Similarly, a complete overview of the changing methods of shipbuilding, forms of industrial activity and the organisation of shipyard work and production over the years was not presented, and the focus is mainly on the activities during the period in question. However, an outline of the former history of the Gdańsk Shipyard and its predecessors operating on the site of the Gdańsk Shipyard before 1945 could not be omitted.
The initial study for this publication was expert material on the industrial history of the Gdańsk Shipyard; hence, the language of the study may seem somewhat hermetic at times. To make reading more accessible, a few basic terms that may cause the reader difficulty are explained in a separate overview.
The body of buildings we have described, together with the more minor elements of the shipbuilding infrastructure remaining in their interiors or immediate surroundings (such as hall cranes, a few pieces of equipment, tracks, mooring polders, piping channels and technical installations, flyovers, electrical switchgear, surfaces, lamps and many others), constitute a unique set of post-industrial cultural monuments, the essence of the material historical heritage of the Gdańsk Shipyard. In these buildings, although still often nameless for most people, the rich memory and industrial heritage of the historic Solidarity shipyard, an integral part of the industrial and economic, but also political legacy of Gdańsk and Poland, is preserved.
Describing the history and industrial function of individual shipyard buildings – reconstructed from publications, documents, iconographic material and from the precious and, at times, colourful accounts of long-term employees of the plant who worked in individual buildings for up to several decades of their professional lives – is intended to perpetuate this memory by permanently inscribing it in the dynamically changing space of the historical Gdańsk Shipyard as part of the city.
Andrzej Trzeciak, Andrzej Nawrocki
authors of the book
