About Dal, Life, and Lifebuoy
Anna Müller and Małgorzata Kot
Małgorzata Kot, known to her friends and colleagues as Małgosia, has been working for the Polish Museum of America in Chicago for the last 26 years. Working with the past and present of the Polish American community, she communes daily with the various objects that surround her, inspire her, and speak to her about their experiences and the people whose complicated lives they accompanied. Some of them are part of larger collections, some found their home in the museum almost by accident, lost in incidental boxes, somehow strangely disconnected from where they originally belonged while creating a new set of meanings. “Various objects appear by surprise and they bring a story with them. (Przedmioty pojawiają się z zaskoczenia i przynoszą ze sobą historie),” says Małgosia.
There are many objects that move her – one of which is a yellow lifebuoy from an 8.5-meter sailboat, named Dal, on which Andrzej Bohomolec sailed from Gdynia to Chicago from June 1933 to August 1934. He started in Gdynia and travelled via Copenhagen (Denmark), Ostend (Belgium), Le Havre (France), Plymouth (Great Britain), and Bermuda until finally arriving in New York, from where he continued sailing through American inner waters – through Albany, to Buffalo, Cleveland, Hamtramck, Mackinac, and finally arriving in Chicago on August 1934 for the World Fair Century of Progress. Based on his travels, he wrote an autobiographical book: The Voyage of the Yacht Dal: From Gdynia to Chicago, which was recently translated into English by Irene Tomaszewski. Małgosia takes a deep breath and begins her story about Bohomolec and Dal: he was a daredevil and visionary, who risked his life in order to realize his dreams. He wore a signet with the Bogoria coats of arms, a town in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, where Małgosia spent her childhood. He kept it on his finger, she keeps it in her heart. According to Małgosia, Dal - the name of the yacht - is one of the most graceful words in the Polish language - it means distance, it suggests a horizon, or the space that separates one from one's goals. And this yacht, the adventures it promised, the dreams and anxieties it uncovered, were Bohomolec’s dal. He had two crewmen - Jan Witkowski and Jerzy Świechowski. Near Bermuda, the crew experienced a heavy storm that broke a mast. Bohomolec promised that if the voyage was successful, he would fund a chapel devoted to the Mother of all Seas.
For Małgosia Kot, the yellow lifebuoy has yet another meaning. It reminds her of Mieczysław Haiman, the godfather of the Museum and one of the most distinguished historians of American Polonia. Haiman was a sailor, and his love for sailing and sea travel is clearly visible in the memoirs and memorabilia he collected and left for the museum. The life condition of an immigrant has something in common with sailing. For Małgosia, sailing means the courage to challenge one’s path, it means searching rather than finding, it means risking one’s comfort and sense of safety. But the lifebuoy is an ever-present protection and a chance at being saved that accompanies the turns of daily life. For Małgosia it also symbolizes the trust that such support exists, one that is important for her as an immigrant and a passionate Museum employee.
The lifebuoy from Bohomolec’s yacht has lived its own metaphorical life. The one that is in the Museum is not from Bohomolec’s original Dal. The yacht has its own complicated history. After it sailed to Chicago in 1934, Bohomolec sold it in December 1934 to a committee of Polish Americans who placed it in Jackson Park at Lake Michigan, from where in 1942 it was moved to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, where it stood for over 20 years - first on the water and then on land. In 1968, the Museum decided to remove Dal from its exhibition. It was then that another adventurer, Ireneusz Gieblewicz, decided to change the fate of Dal by fundraising money to restore the ship and return it to Poland. His vision was to repeat Bohomolec’s success by freshly laminating the ship and sailing it all the way back. However, this was not what Bohomolec had in mind. The ship was not to be laminated. Moreover, it belonged to America. And that’s where it was supposed to remain. Regardless of the ongoing conflict, Gieblewicz began a public fundraising campaign. He managed to collect enough money to attempt the return; however, the yacht was in poor shape, and its frame was badly damaged, despite careful laminating. In the end, Dal was transported to Bramenhafen in a shipping container, and from there it sailed along the shore to Gdynia as an aging, yet still proud fragment of history. It was August 1980. Polish attention was acutely centered on another historical event and only a few noticed the return of the famous Dal.
Currently, Dal is on display in the modern Vistula River Museum in Tczew, a branch of the National Nautical Museum in Gdańsk. It was lovingly restored in 2015 and shines with majestic grace the way only beautiful yachts can. Its neighbors on display are the Kumka IV Yacht from 1937 - the first Polish (and probably also first of its kind in the world) fully-welded vessel - and the Opty yacht on which Leonid Teliga circumnavigated the world solo. In a conversation with me, Radosław Paternoga and Katarzyna Schaefer from the Nautical Museum carefully narrate the process of Dal’s restoration and the decision to restore it to its 1930s form. After the laminate was removed, they saw little rivets on the sides - clearly a sign of some previous material. Without any old photos, they were moving a bit in darkness, but the object itself dictated fragments of its history. Radek reached out to Bohomolec’s memoirs to realize that there had indeed been copper plates covering the sides. Radek recollects that in the book, Bohomolec mentions that one of the team members had to scuba dive to secure a piece of copper plate. He called Gieblewicz to ask if he remembered removing the copper plate, but he did not. Who knows at what point in Dal’s history they disappeared?
Dal in the Vistula River Museum in Tczew
Dal’s body is beautifully displayed in Tczew. It tells a history of Polish-American dreams, cooperation, and conflict. In Tczew, there are also two sets of Dal masts, one of which is the original wooden one from 1934. It made it to Poland even before Dal – on a plane. There is also a new mast, the one with which Dal sailed in 1980. But the lifebuoy from Dal’s second trip – the one that inspired Małgosia – is in Chicago. Why? Perhaps it was donated by Ireneusz Gieblewicz? It exists in the photographs from the PMA Archives. The yellow lifebuoy that Małgorzata passes by daily during work plays a number of roles: it’s a historic artifact from the yacht’s second trip; it is a metonym of support and assurance; but for Małgosia, it is also a metaphor for adventure, the journey to one’s inner self via a dangerous and hard path, but ultimately of the stability that can facilitate more dreaming. “A lifebuoy is important,” ends Małgosia. “It is our security that makes life and work sustainable.”
Dal in the Vistula River Museum in Tczew