Die Fahrwasserbezeichnung des Danziger Hafens

Abstract

Due to the morphological circumstances of their locations, the aspiring port settlements and maritime towns on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea were compelled at an early date to indicate their entrances with nautical marks. The entrance to Gdansk often shifted due to changes in the courses of the Vistula and Motlawa. There is documentary evidence of the channel having been marked by a beacon since the thirteenth century, but the practise presumably began as early as the ninth or tenth centuries. In the course of the centuries, a long series of beacons were erected, adapting to both the shifting channels and the ongoing technical advancements. In the mid eighteenth century, through the erection of the two towers of Nowy Port, the very first range light system on the southern Baltic Sea coast was established. From the early seventeenth century on, the channels in the Gdansk Bay were also lit: by the beacons of Cape Rozewie and Hela in the west and those of Pillau and Krynica Morska in the east. In present-day Poland, particularly in Gdansk, there is a great amount of public interest in beacons and in the social, technical-historical and landmark preservation issues connected with them.