Gdansk ship tour: the old port and the shipyard from the water

A Gdansk ship tour makes the most sense once you know how old the port is. The Port of Gdansk Authority traces its first written mention to The Life of Saint Adalbert in 999.¹ The city joined the Hanseatic League in 1361, according to the same port timeline, and King Casimir Jagiellon signed his great privilege for the city on 15 May 1457.^5,6 The quays you sail past grew out of those centuries of trade.

The port authority notes that more than three million tourists visit Gdansk each year and that every third visitor comes from abroad.⁷ That is a lot of people on a compact waterfront, which is one more reason to get onto the water. The postcard view is the Long Embankment. The working side, with its shipyard halls, dry docks, cranes and the quays of the inner port, is hidden from the street behind fences and gates, and that is exactly the ground a boat covers in an hour.

The site's own galar cruise, a guided boat tour in Gdansk with live commentary, is one way in. Its route includes the port cranes, specialist vessels and the inner quay of the Port of Gdansk, and the shipyard areas where German submarines were built in the Second World War. A yacht cruise goes further into the port, and a small harbour boat follows the shipyard from the Old Town. Each is covered at the end of this page, with its own strengths.

Shipbuilding is the younger of the two trades on this water, and its story is told in brick along the Martwa Wisla. The National Institute of Cultural Heritage records that Gdansk's first shipyard opened in the 1830s where the Radunia Canal meets the river, a small private yard building sailing ships and river steamers.²⁰ By the Martwa Wisla the Prussian authorities then set up a navy yard, named the Imperial Shipyard in 1871.²

In the 1890s Ferdinand Schichau, who already owned a shipyard in Elblag, built a second large yard nearby.²¹ Between them they filled the land along the Martwa Wisla up to the Old Town bastions with halls, workshops, docks, ramps and cranes, some of which still stand.²⁶ The Imperial Shipyard is the oldest part of the whole complex, and the regional conservator described it as covering about 10 hectares.^27,28 Its brick halls are the first old buildings you meet beside the galar's berth.

The wider former shipyard covers more than 70 hectares and developed from the 19th century into the early 1990s.²⁹ It is now planned as a new district, Mlode Miasto, the Young City, with homes, offices and shops.³⁰ From a boat you see both layers at once: listed brick buildings from the Imperial era and new blocks rising behind them. The galar's shipyard start sits right in this landscape.

Work restarted quickly in the ruined city. Shipbuilding began again in 1945, and in 1947 a state-owned Gdansk Shipyard was formed from the former Imperial and Schichau yards.⁸ It took the name of Vladimir Ilich Lenin in 1967.⁶⁶ Over the decades it built more than 1000 vessels of many types, according to the national heritage register, many of them to plans from its own design office.²²

One vessel from that era is moored downtown. The museum ship Soldek, on Olowianka, was the prototype of Poland's postwar seagoing fleet, and no other steam coal and ore carrier survives anywhere.²⁴ Its working life ran from 1949 to 1981, with 1479 voyages in all.⁴⁰ If your Gdansk tourist boat passes Olowianka, look for it at the quay; climbing aboard afterwards completes the story the shipyard begins.

The yard also made political history. On 14 August 1980 a strike began here in defence of Anna Walentynowicz, who had been fired, and the agreement that ended it was signed in the BHP Hall, once a torpedo store of the Imperial Shipyard.^67,49,50 The monument to the shipyard workers killed in 1970, three steel crosses each 42 metres high, stands at the shipyard gate.⁵¹ From the river you see the yard; the gate and the hall are a short walk inland.

The galar is the gentlest introduction: 70 minutes, commentary from a live guide in both Polish and English, and a route that runs from the shipyard through the canals to the Old Town and past the inner quay. It starts from €19, and the price includes the guide's commentary for the whole ride. Because it is small and low, it also slips into corners the big boats cannot use, which makes it a good Gdansk ship tour for history rather than scale.

For more of the working port, a yacht cruise of 50 to 110 minutes leaves from the quay on Wartka Street, from €17. Its listing names port cranes, quays, dry docks and ships under repair or loading, and on the 110-minute option the yacht reaches the harbour mouth and may enter the bay in good weather. It has two decks, open and covered, plus a toilet, and serves a non-alcoholic welcome drink.

A third choice is a small harbour boat of up to 7 guests along the Old Town and the shipyard, an hour long, from €17. Its guide speaks German and Polish, and it sails only on rain-free days, with a full refund otherwise. The galleon-style ships on the Motlawa follow a longer harbour route out to Westerplatte via the shipyards and the docks.⁷³ Pick by how much of the port you want and in which language.