THE POLISH FLEET

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 13802, 20 November 1942, Page 7

THE POLISH FLEET

MOBILISATION OF ALL AVAILABLE MEN Training In Britain Needs of Immediate PostWar Period The Polish Government, through M. Kwapinski, Minister of Industry, Trade and Shipping, has made an appeal for the mobilisation Of all Poles available for the development and advancement of the Polish merchant marine and Navy. The men, to be trained in Great Britain now, will meet Poland's needs in the immediate post-war period.

Minister Kwapinski said that it is vitally necessary to increase the number of trained Polish seamen for the enlargement of the Polish Fleet; to look after the Polish seacoast which will be far more extensive than before the war; to reorganise ports and shipyards; to set in motion and to serve Polish sea trade which, after the war, would be larger than ever. He said:

"We fully realise the necessity of training now while the war is going on a group of Poles- capable of exploiting to the full the extended Polish coastline. The difficulties we shall meet in the execution of this task are obvious, the chief is to find the right kind of men for training as seamen. We need about a thousand young and healthy men of suitable educational standards. The army is the best source and it is hoped that we shall find there as well as among the Poles in Russia candidates for the maritime school. "Acting on the assumption that directly after the war we shall have at least seventy Polish ships at our immediate disposal, we shall still lack about 2 50 young officers and wireless officers. We may partly avail ourselves of wireless officers demobilised from the Polish Navy. We need about 200 young men with high school certificates to be trained in maritime school of Great Britain during the war. We shall need many pilots for the Polish ports, a number of these posts will be taken by officers leaving their ships: we shall have to replace those men with trained ships officers.

"Considerably more men are required for the Merchant Marine, the most modest estimate shows that we need at least 400 trained men. At the present time there are about 1,200 Poles and about 400 British and other sailors on Polish ships. The present situation is disturbing and requires immediate rectification. There is a continual decrease among Polish seamen. We must train as many sailors as possible if we wish to avoid the danger of Polish merchant ships being laid up after the war.

"In addition, there should also be trained in Great Britain at least 75 men as skippers for fishing fleets, 150 shipbuilders, 25 port administrators and 50 for the development of our seaborne trade. Taking even such modest figures of the number of men required it already amounts to about 1000. The programme for the future Polish Merchant Marine and Navy we want to prepare, foresees a Merchant Marine and Navy of nearly 1,000,000 tons: that is about 200 ships.