It is autumn of 1253. This is when the village of Gdina is first mentioned in the books of Bishop Wolimir of Włocławek. However, it took another seven centuries for the small Pomeranian settlement to become known throughout Poland. For the creation of Gdynia can be compared both to a very turbulent family relationship and to an economic miracle.
But let's start from the beginning. Poland regained its independence in 1918 after 123 years of partitions, but it did not yet regain direct access to the sea. The ratification of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ensured the recovery of Pomeranian lands, which was symbolically sealed by the Poland's marriage to the sea in Puck in 1920. This gave us a 147-kilometre stretch of coastline, but without the essential port. There was one in the neighbouring Free City of Gdańsk, but it lay outside the borders of the Second Polish Republic. Therefore, just a few months after the marriage ceremony, the search for a location to build a port along the newly regained lands became imperative.
Vice Admiral Krzysztof Porębski, then Director of the Maritime Affairs Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs, sent to Pomerania his best engineer, Tadeusz Wenda. Wenda travelled to the coast with little luggage and only essential drafting tools. He travelled the entire length of the regained coastline and, after conducting hydrological studies, found the ideal location for the construction of a new port. “(...) the most suitable location for the construction of a war port (and, if necessary, a commercial one as well) is Gdynia, or rather the lowlands between Gdynia and Oksywa, located 16 km from Nowy Port in Gdańsk”, reads Wenda's eleven-page report. The writer Stefan Żeromski was also enchanted by the place. At the height of his popularity, he wrote “Wiatr od Morza” (Wind from the Sea), faithfully capturing the character of the port emerging from the sea foam like Aphrodite.
The work progressed so smoothly that the first harbour of the Temporary War Port and the Fishermen's Shelter were ready in 1923. At the same time, Wenda was working on the design of the main port, which, as it turned out, surpassed even his boldest expectations. He was echoed by Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, who claimed that “Poland without its own seacoast and without its own fleet will never be united, independent, economically and politically autonomous, respected within the great family of states and nations, nor capable of securing the conditions for the existence, work, progress and prosperity of its citizens.” Therefore, as Minister of Industry and Trade, a position he assumed in 1926, he spared no expense on this visionary project, which was growing at an impressive pace.
The Council of Ministers did not rest on its laurels and noted that a small fishing village, which had only 1,268 inhabitants in 1921, had, within just a few years, attracted thousands of people eager to take part in creating this port miracle. Thousands of travellers, tourists, business people, sailors, military personnel, drifters, emigrants, re-emigrants, seasonal workers, people commuting from the region and coming from nearby villages passed through the city and the port (as we read in Grzegorz Piątek's “Gdynia Obiecana” [Promised Gdynia]). All these driving forces led to Gdynia becoming a fully fledged city on 10 February 1926, when the act granting city rights was signed: “(...) on granting the rural commune of Gdynia in the Wejherowo County in the Pomeranian Voivodeship permission to adopt the system according to the Prussian municipal ordinance for the six eastern provinces of 30 May 1853”.
At the moment the act was signed, Gdynia already had 12,000 inhabitants. And that was not the end of it... A small, poor fishing village had transformed into a vast city of the present — or perhaps even of the future. A place of bold experiments, as Maria Dąbrowska wrote.