Construction Gdynia America Line (Gdynia–Ameryka Linie Żeglugowe, GAL), a Polish-Danish partnership based in
Gdynia, was formed in 1934 as successor to
Polskie Transatlantyckie Towarzystwo Okrętowe (PTTO), an enterprise originally dedicated to transporting Polish migrants to the
USA. It changed its focus to leisure travel and for that purpose decided to commission a new vessel.
Batory was built in 1934–5 at the
Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico Monfalcone shipyard in
Trieste, Italy, under an arrangement where part of the commission was paid in shipments of coal from
Poland. She was among the best-known Polish ships of all time. She was launched on 3 July 1935. She was powered by two
Sulzer diesel engines driving two screws giving a speed of . She began regular service in May 1936 on the
Gdynia — New York run, and by 1939 had carried over 3,000 passengers.
World War II Mobilized at the outbreak of
World War II, she served as a
troop ship and a
hospital ship by the Allied Navy for the rest of the war. In 1940 she, along with , transported Allied troops during the
Norwegian campaign. She was also one of the last ships to leave St Jean de Luz during the
final evacuation of Polish troops from France. She was also used for secretly shipping many
valuable Polish treasures to Canada for safekeeping. She participated in the evacuation of
Dunkirk late May early June, taking aboard 2,500 people. Later she carried as many as 6,000 people in one evacuation. In June to July, she secretly transported much of the UK's gold reserves (£40 million) from
Greenock, Scotland, to
Montreal, Canada, for safekeeping (
Operation Fish). On 5 August 1940 she left Liverpool with convoy WS 2 (Winston's Specials), evacuating 477 children to Sydney, Australia, under the
Children's Overseas Reception Board until the war was over. She sailed via Cape Town; India; Singapore to where she had carried 300 troops; and Sydney. The journey was a happy one, with so much music and laughter that the
Batory was dubbed the "Singing Ship" and was the subject of a book of the same name. In April 1942 British writer
Roald Dahl boarded the
Batory, bound for
Halifax,
Canada. She was involved in the Allied invasion of
Oran, Algeria in 1942 (
Operation Torch). That same year she took troops to India and later took part in the
Allied invasion of Sicily and southern France (
Operation Dragoon), where she was the flagship of General
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Commander-in-Chief of the
French Army. She came under attack several times from the ground and the air, but managed to escape serious damage. Dubbed the "Lucky Ship" for her military career during World War II, she was a
sister ship of the less fortunate , which sank in November 1939 off the east coast of Scotland.
Postwar career Returned to
post-war Poland in 1946, she resumed civilian service after a refit, transporting such eminent people as
Ryszard Kapuściński. From May 1949 through to January 1951, she was the subject of several political incidents in which American dockers and shipyard workers in the United States refused to unload her cargo, or to service the ship. After these incidents, she was withdrawn from the North Atlantic route, refurbished at
Hebburn for service in the tropics, and sailed in August 1951 from Gdynia and
Southampton to
Bombay and
Karachi, via
Gibraltar,
Malta,
Aden, and
Suez. In 1957, she returned to the North Atlantic run. She continued in service until 1969, when she was decommissioned and became a floating hotel in Gdynia. However, after about a year, she was sold back to Polish Ocean Lines, and from there she was sold for scrap to
Hong Kong. She left Gdynia on 31 March 1971 and arrived to the scrapyard on 26 May. On 2 June, the Polish flag was lowered and the scrapping process began. The ship had been scrapped completely by 1972. She was replaced by a larger vessel , which operated from April 1969 until 1988. ==Gallery==