Chaika (boat)
A chaika was a wooden boat that could have a mast and sail, a type of galley, used in early modern warfare and cargo transport by the: Zaporozhian Cossacks in the 16th–17th centuries in Ukraine on the Dnipro River and the Black Sea. Serbs in the 16th-19th centuries on the Danube, known as Šajkaši, under Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire and Habsburgs. Slovenes from the 16th to the early 20th century on the Drava River. Tschaika were either 12 metres in length, operated by sail or oars. Between 30 and 50 men were in service, commanded by an officer, with an NCO helmsman, an armourer, a drummer, two bowsmen, up to 36 oarsmen. Chaikas were between 18 and 20 metres in length, 3 and 3.5 metres in width, 3.5 and 4 metres in depth. The bottom of a chaika was carved out with sides built out of wooden planks. To protect the boat from enemy guns or from sinking, reed bales were tied to the gunwales of the boat. Chaikas had two helms, so that the boat never needed turning around in order to switch direction.
One such boat could carry around up to 6 falconets. A similar, but larger boat used by the Zaporozhian Cossacks for both transport and warfare was called a baidak; the Viking "drakkar" and the Kozak "chaika" Media related to Chaika at Wikimedia Commons
Admiral
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies, in many navies is the highest rank. It is abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"; the rank is thought to have originated in Sicily from a conflation of Arabic: أمير البحر, amīr al-baḥr, "commander of the sea", with Latin admirabilis or admiratus, although alternative etymologies derive the word directly from Latin, or from the Turkish military and naval rank miralay. The French version – amiral without the additional d – tends to add evidence for the Arab origin. In the Commonwealth and the U. S. a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army, is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet. In NATO, admirals have a rank code of OF-9 as a four-star rank; the word admiral in Middle English comes from Anglo-French amiral, "commander", from Medieval Latin admiralis, admirallus. These themselves come from Arabic amīr, or amīr al-, "commander of", as in amīr al-baḥr, "commander of the sea"; the term was in use for the Greco-Arab naval leaders of Norman Sicily, ruled by Arabs, at least by the early 11th century.
The Norman Roger II of Sicily, employed a Greek Christian known as George of Antioch, who had served as a naval commander for several North African Muslim rulers. Roger styled George in Abbasid fashion as Amir of Amirs, i.e. "Commander of Commanders", with the title becoming Latinized in the 13th century as ammiratus ammiratorum. The Sicilians and Genoese took the first two parts of the term and used them as one word, from their Aragon opponents; the French and Spanish gave their sea commanders similar titles while in Portuguese the word changed to almirante. As the word was used by people speaking Latin or Latin-based languages it gained the "d" and endured a series of different endings and spellings leading to the English spelling admyrall in the 14th century and to admiral by the 16th century; the word "admiral" has today come to be exclusively associated with the highest naval rank in most of the world's navies, equivalent to the army rank of general. However, this wasn't always the case.
The rank of admiral has been subdivided into various grades, several of which are extinct while others remain in use in most present day navies. The Royal Navy used colours to indicate seniority of its admirals until 1864; the generic term for these naval equivalents of army generals is flag officer. Some navies have used army-type titles for them, such as the Cromwellian "general at sea"; the rank insignia for an admiral involves four stars or similar devices and/or 3 stripes over a broad stripe, but as one can see below, there are many cases where the insignia do not involve four stars or similar devices. Admiral is a German Navy OF-9 four-star flag officer rank, equivalent to the German Army and German Air Force rank of General. Post-WWII rank is Bakurocho taru kaishō or Admiral serve as Chief of Staff, Joint Staff（幕僚長たる海将） with limited function as an advisory staff to Minister of Defense, compared to Gensui during 1872–1873 and 1898–1945. Admiral of Castile was a post with a important history in Spain.
Comparative military ranks Laksamana, native title for naval leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia Ranks and insignia of officers of NATO Navies Admiralty Nebraska admiral "Admiral". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911. "Admiral". New International Encyclopedia. 1905
Polish Navy
The Polish Navy is a military branch of the Polish Armed Forces responsible for naval operations. The Polish Navy about 12,000 commissioned and enlisted personnel; the traditional ship prefix in the Polish Navy is ORP. The Polish Navy has its roots in naval vessels that were used on Poland's main rivers in defense of trade and commerce. During the Thirteen Years' War, this small force of inland ships for the first time saw real open sea combat. At the battle of Vistula Lagoon, a Polish privateer fleet defeated the Teutonic Knights Navy and secured permanent access to the Baltic Sea; the Second Peace of Thorn acquired for Poland the strategic naval city of Danzig, with it the means of maintaining a large fleet on the Baltic. In 1561, following a victory over Russian Naval forces in the Baltic, the Polish Navy acquired a second key port at Riga, in modern-day Latvia. At that time, as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became involved in conflicts in Livonia, Polish king Sigismund II Augustus organized a Sea Commission operating in the years 1568–1572 and supported the operations of privateers, but that met with opposition of the Poland's primary port, Gdańsk, which saw them as a threat to its trade operations.
This led to the development of a privateer port in Puck. Around the start of the 17th century, Poland became ruled by the House of Vasa, was involved in a series of wars with Sweden. Vasa kings attempted to create a proper fleet, but their attempts met with repeated failures, due to lack of funds in the royal treasury. During the reign of Sigismund III of Poland, the most celebrated victory of the Commonwealth Navy took place at the Battle of Oliwa in 1627 against Sweden, during the Polish–Swedish War; the victory over Sweden fleet secured for Poland permanent access to the Atlantic, laid the foundations for expeditions beyond Europe. The plans for the independent fleet fell through shortly afterwards due to a badly executed alliance with the Habsburgs who in 1629 took over the fleet; the Commission of Royal Ships was created in 1625. This commission, along with the ultimate allocation of funds by the Sejm in 1637, created a permanent Commonwealth Navy. Władysław IV Vasa, Sigismund's son and successor who took the throne in 1632, purchased 12 ships and built a dedicated port for the royal navy called Władysławowo.
The Fleet, was destroyed in 1637 by Denmark, without a declaration of war. Support for this navy was weak and it withered away by the 1640s. A small privateer navy was created by Augustus II the Strong in 1700 during the Great Northern War; the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, though the dominant force in Central and Eastern Europe during the 16th–18th centuries, never developed its navy to its full potential. The proportionally small Polish coastline and the limited access to the Atlantic never allowed for a massive buildup of naval forces to the level of colonial powers such as England and France; the Partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century brought an end to the independent Polish Navy. Following World War I, the Second Polish Republic on 28 November 1918, by the order of Józef Piłsudski, commander of the Armed Forces of Poland, founded the modern Polish Navy; the token naval force was placed under the command of Captain Bogumił Nowotny as its first chief. The first ships were acquired from a division of the Imperial German Navy.
In the 1920s and 1930s the Polish Navy underwent a modernisation program under the leadership of Vice-Admiral Jerzy Świrski and Rear-Admiral Józef Unrug. A number of modern ships were built in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom. Despite ambitious plans, the budgetary limitations placed on the government by the Great Depression never allowed the navy to expand beyond a small Baltic force; the building of one submarine, ORP Orzeł, was funded by a public collection. One of main goals of the Polish Navy was to protect the Polish coast against the Soviet Baltic Fleet, therefore it put emphasis on fast submarines and armed destroyers and mine warfare. By September 1939 the Polish Navy consisted of 5 submarines, 4 destroyers, big minelayer and various smaller support vessels and mine-warfare ships; this force was no match for the larger Kriegsmarine, so a strategy of harassment and indirect engagement was implemented. The outbreak of World War II caught the Polish Navy in a state of expansion.
Lacking numerical superiority, Polish Naval commanders decided to withdraw main surface ships to Great Britain to join the Allied war effort and prevent them from being destroyed in a closed Baltic. On 30 August 1939, 3 destroyers sailed to the British naval base at Leith in Scotland, they operated in combination with Royal Navy vessels against Germany. Two submarines managed to flee from the Baltic Sea through the Danish straits to Great Britain during the Polish September Campaign. Three submarines were interned in Sweden, while remaining surface vessels were sunk by Ge
Hel Peninsula
Hel Peninsula is a 35-km-long sand bar peninsula in northern Poland separating the Bay of Puck from the open Baltic Sea. It is located in Puck County of the Pomeranian Voivodeship; the name of the peninsula comes from old-Polish word "hyl/hel" meaning empty, exposed place. Similarity to the word "hell" and to name of Norse goddess Hel is coincidence. Bus transport on peninsula is realized by only one route - accidentally its number is 666; because the name of this place sounds similar to English word "hell" this coincidence is a reason for numerous jokes. The width of the peninsula varies from 300 m near Jurata, through 100 m in the most narrow part to over 3 km at the tip. Since the peninsula was formed of sand, it is turned into an island by winter storms; until the 17th century the peninsula was a chain of islands that formed a strip of land only during the summer. A road and a railroad run along the peninsula from the mainland to the town located at the furthest point, Hel, a popular tourist destination.
Other towns and tourist resorts are Jurata, Jastarnia, Kuźnica, Chałupy, Władysławowo. The Hel Peninsula was part of Prussia and Germany from 1772 until 1919. After the peninsula became part of the Second Polish Republic after World War I, it acquired considerable military significance, was turned into a fortified region, with a garrison of about 3,000. In the course of the Battle of Hel in 1939, Polish forces dynamited the peninsula at one point, turning it into an island. During the years of German occupation, Hel's defenses were further expanded, a battery of three 40.6 cm SK C/34 gun was constructed, though the guns were soon moved to the Atlantic Wall in occupied France. The peninsula remained in German hands until the end of World War II, when the defending forces surrendered on May 14, 1945, six days after Germany had capitulated. After the war, when Hel again became part of Poland, it continued to have military significance, with much of its area reserved for military use. Additional gun batteries were built during the 1950s.
Today many of the fortifications and batteries are open to tourists, though some areas of the peninsula still belong to the Polish Armed Forces. Hel Fortified Area Westerplatte Hel lighthouse
Cossacks
Cossacks were a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking people who became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semi-military communities, predominantly located in Eastern and Southern Ukraine and in Southern Russia. They inhabited sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper, Don and Ural river basins and played an important role in the historical and cultural development of both Ukraine and Russia; the origins of the first Cossacks are disputed, though the 1710 Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk claimed Khazar origin. The emergence of Cossacks is dated to the 14th or 15th centuries, when two connected groups emerged, the Zaporozhian Sich of the Dnieper and the Don Cossack Host; the Zaporizhian Sich were a vassal people of Poland–Lithuania during feudal times. Under increasing pressure from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the mid-17th century the Sich declared an independent Cossack Hetmanate, initiated by a rebellion under Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Afterwards, the Treaty of Pereyaslav brought most of the Cossack state under Russian rule.
The Sich with its lands became an autonomous region under the Russian-Polish protectorate. The Don Cossack Host, established by the 16th century, allied with the Tsardom of Russia. Together they began a systematic conquest and colonisation of lands in order to secure the borders on the Volga, the whole of Siberia and the Yaik and the Terek rivers. Cossack communities had developed along the latter two rivers well before the arrival of the Don Cossacks. By the 18th century Cossack hosts in the Russian Empire occupied effective buffer zones on its borders; the expansionist ambitions of the Empire relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension given their traditional exercise of freedom, self-rule, independence. Cossacks such as Stenka Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, Ivan Mazepa and Yemelyan Pugachev led major anti-imperial wars and revolutions in the Empire in order to abolish slavery and odious bureaucracy and to maintain independence; the empire responded with ruthless executions and tortures, the destruction of the western part of the Don Cossack Host during the Bulavin Rebellion in 1707–08, the destruction of Baturyn after Mazepa's rebellion in 1708, the formal dissolution of the Lower Dnieper Zaporozhian Host in 1775, after Pugachev's Rebellion.
By the end of the 18th century Cossack nations had been transformed into a special military estate, "a military class". Similar to the knights of medieval Europe in feudal times or the tribal Roman auxiliaries, the Cossacks came to military service having to obtain charger horses and supplies at their own expense; the government provided only supplies for them. Cossack service was considered the most rigorous one; because of their military tradition, Cossack forces played an important role in Russia's wars of the 18th–20th centuries, such as the Great Northern War, the Seven Years' War, the Crimean War, Napoleonic Wars, the Caucasus War, numerous Russo-Persian Wars, numerous Russo-Turkish Wars and the First World War. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tsarist regime used Cossacks extensively to perform police service, they served as border guards on national and internal ethnic borders. During the Russian Civil War and Kuban Cossacks were the first people to declare open war against the Bolsheviks.
By 1918 Russian Cossacks declared the complete independence and formed independent states, the Don Republic and the Kuban People's Republic. The Ukrainian State emerged. Cossack troops formed the effective core of the anti-Bolshevik White Army, Cossack republics became centers for the anti-Bolshevik White movement. With the victory of the Red Army, the Cossack lands were subjected to Decossackization and the Holodomor. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cossacks made a systematic return to Russia. Many took an active part in post-Soviet conflicts. In Russia's 2002 Population Census, 140,028 people reported their ethnicity as Cossacks. There are Cossack organizations in Russia, Ukraine and the United States. Max Vasmer's etymological dictionary traces the name to the Old East Slavic word козакъ, kozak, a loanword from Cuman, in which cosac meant "free man", from Turkish/Turkic languages quazzaq rabble rouser, trouble maker, outcast rebel, from Tatar languages Kazak skinny bollard The ethnonym Kazakh is from the same Turkic root.
In modern Turkish it is pronounced as "Kazak". In written sources the name is first attested in Codex Cumanicus from the 13th century. In English, "Cossack" is first attested in 1590, it is not clear when new Slavic people apart from Brodnici and Berladniki started settling in the lower reaches of major rivers such as the Don and the Dnieper after the demise of the Khazar state. It is unlikely it could have happened before the 13th century, when the Mongols broke the power of the Cumans, who had assimilated the previous population on that territory, it is known that new settlers inherited a lifestyle that persisted there long before, such as those of the Turkic Cumans and the Circassian Kassaks. However, Slavic settlements in southern Ukraine started to appear early during the Cuman rule, with the earliest ones, like Oleshky, dating back to the 11th century. Early "Proto-Cossack" groups are reported to have come into existence within the present-day Ukraine in the mid-13th century as the influence of Cumans grew weaker, though some have ascribed their origins to as early as the tenth century.
Some historians suggest that the Cossack people were of mixed ethnic origins, descending from Russians, Belarusians, Turks and others who settled or passed through the vast Steppe. However some Turkologists arg
Dominium maris baltici
The establishment of a dominium maris baltici was one of the primary political aims of the Danish and Swedish kingdoms in the late medieval and early modern eras. Throughout the Northern Wars the Danish and Swedish navies played a secondary role, as the dominium was contested through control of key coasts by land warfare; the term, used in historiography, was coined in 1563 by the king and grand duke of the Polish–Lithuanian union, Sigismund II Augustus, referring to the hegemonial ambitions of his adversaries in the Livonian War. The first written reference stems from the Dutch-Swedish treaty of 5 / 15 April 1614, concluded in The Hague. Several European powers regarded the Baltic Sea as of vital importance, it served as a growing market for many commodities. So large did the importance of the region loom that it became of interest to powers that did not have direct access to it, such as Austria and France. For several centuries and Denmark would attempt to gain total control of the sea, a policy which other local and international powers opposed.
Historians have described the control of the Baltic as one of the main goals of Denmark's and Sweden's policies. The Scandinavian powers, who sensed opportunity in the power vacuum created by the weak or non-existent naval power of the Holy Roman Empire and Poland–Lithuania, adopted expansionist policies which fostered conflict over the Baltic. Denmark and Sweden used their control of parts of the Baltic to fuel their militaries; each claimed the Baltic as their own, promised to protect foreign shipping. While the Nordic powers vied with one another over control, they both agreed that it should be the domain of one of them, not of an "outsider" like Poland or Russia; the Scandinavian powers tried to prevent the rise of their opposition through diplomatic treaties, which forbade other powers like Russia or Germany to build navies, through military actions, whether targeting opponent naval forces, or through taking control of the Baltic ports. In one of the most notable actions to retain its monopoly over the Baltic, Denmark in 1637 destroyed, without declaration of war, the nascent Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Navy.
The numerous wars fought for the dominium maris baltici are collectively referred to as the Northern Wars. Denmark had the upper hand, but it lost ground to Sweden. Neither Denmark nor Sweden managed to realize thorough military and economic control of the Baltic, though Sweden during her time as an empire came closest to that aim before the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. Historiography uses the term dominium maris baltici either in a narrower sense as a new Swedish concept of the Early Modern era tied to the Swedish Empire, or in a wider sense including the preceding Danish hegemony in the southern Baltic Sea. Denmark had subdued the southern Baltic coast from Holstein to Pomerania in the 12th century, but lost control in the 13th century after her defeat by German and Hanse forces in the Battle of Bornhöved, retaining just the principality of Rügen. Thereafter, the Hanseatic League became the dominant economic power in the Baltic Sea. Robert Bohn credits Valdemar IV "Atterdag" of Denmark as the first Danish king to pursue a policy of establishing a Danish dominium maris baltici, aiming at adding to Denmark's naval dominance an economical hegemony at the expense of the Hanseatic League.
To achieve this aim, Valdemar sold Danish Estonia to the Teutonic Order state in 1346, consolidating his finances and raising an army from the revenue. After initial territorial gains, Valdemar conquered the Hanseatic town of Visby in 1361, resulting in a war decided in favour of the League in the peace of Stralsund in 1370, which marked the climax of Hanseatic power. Atterdag's daughter and de facto successor, Lady Margaret, managed to concentrate the crowns of Denmark and Sweden in her Copenhagen-centered Kalmar Union from 1397. In 1429, Kalmar king Eric of Pomerania started to raise the Sound Dues from merchants entering or leaving the Baltic Sea, allowing the Copenhagen court to benefit from the Baltic Sea trade profits without engaging in economic adventures itself; the Sound Dues, imposed until 1857 and constituting a primary source of income for the Royal treasury became a contentious issue, which brought Denmark into conflict with the Hanseatic League and the neighboring powers. After the break-up of the Kalmar Union in the early 16th-century, the Kingdom of Sweden became Denmark–Norway's primary rival for hegemony in the Baltic Sea.
Christian IV of Denmark's victory in the Kalmar War in 1613 marked the last instance of a successful defense of a Danish dominium maris baltici against Sweden. The period of Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648 is considered part of the wars for the dominium maris baltici—in this war, the opponent was not the Swedish king, but the ambitious Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, who temporarily planned to establish the Empire as a naval power in the Baltic, he assigned this task to Albrecht von Wallenstein, leading to a concerted action by Denmark and Sweden in the defense of Stralsund. The Danish defeat in the Battle of Wolgast and the subsequent Treaty of Lübeck in 1629, removed Denmark from the battlefield. After Sweden had become independent from the Kalmar union, she became Denmark's major rival for the dominium maris baltici; the first war ascribed to this conflict is the Northern Seven Years' War, which between 161
Gdańsk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast. With a population of 464,254, Gdańsk is the capital and largest city of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and the capital of Kashubia, it is the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area. The city is located on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay, in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the Tricity, with a population approaching 1.4 million. Gdańsk is the largest city of Kashubia. With its origins as a Polish stronghold erected in the 980s by Mieszko I of Poland, the city's history is complex, with periods of Polish rule, periods of Prussian or German rule, periods of autonomy or self-rule as a "free city". In the early-modern age Gdańsk was a royal city of Poland, it was considered the wealthiest and the largest city of Poland, prior to the 18th century rapid growth of Warsaw. Between the world wars, the Free City of Danzig, having a majority of German population, was in a customs union with Poland and was situated between German East Prussia and the so-called Polish Corridor.
Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motława River, connected to the Leniwka, a branch in the delta of the nearby Vistula River, which drains 60 percent of Poland and connects Gdańsk with the Polish capital, Warsaw. Together with the nearby port of Gdynia, Gdańsk is a notable industrial center. In the late Middle Ages it was an important seaport and shipbuilding town and, in the 14th and 15th centuries, a member of the Hanseatic League. In the interwar period, owing to its multi-ethnic make-up and history, Gdańsk lay in a disputed region between Poland and the Weimar Republic, which became Nazi Germany; the city's ambiguous political status was exploited, furthering tension between the two countries, which would culminate in the Invasion of Poland and the first clash of the Second World War just outside the city limits. In the 1980s it would become the birthplace of the Solidarity movement, which played a major role in bringing an end to Communist rule in Poland and helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Gdańsk is home to the University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk University of Technology, the National Museum, the Gdańsk Shakespeare Theatre, the Museum of the Second World War, Polish Baltic Philharmonic and the European Solidarity Centre. The city hosts St. Dominic's Fair, which dates back to 1260, is regarded as one of the biggest trade and cultural events in Europe; the city's name is thought to originate from the Gdania River, the original name of the Motława branch on which the city is situated. The name of a settlement was recorded after St. Adalbert's death in AD 997 as urbs Gyddanyzc and was written as Kdanzk in 1148, Gdanzc in 1188, Danceke in 1228, Gdansk in 1236, Danzc in 1263, Danczk in 1311, Danczik in 1399, Danczig in 1414, Gdąnsk in 1656. In Polish the modern name of the city is pronounced. In English the usual pronunciation is or; the German name, "Danzig", is pronounced as. The city's Latin name may be given as either Gedanum or Dantiscum. Other former spellings of the name include Dantzig and Dantzic.
On special occasions the city is referred to as "The Royal Polish City of Gdańsk". In the Kashubian language the city is called Gduńsk. Kashubians use the name "Our Capital City Gduńsk" or "The Kashubian Capital City Gduńsk"; the first written record thought to refer to Gdańsk is the vita of Saint Adalbert. Written in 999, it describes how in 997 Saint Adalbert of Prague baptised the inhabitants of urbs Gyddannyzc, "which separated the great realm of the duke from the sea." No further written sources exist for the 11th centuries. Based on the date in Adalbert's vita, the city celebrated its millennial anniversary in 1997. Archaeological evidence for the origins of the town was retrieved after World War II had laid 90 percent of the city center in ruins, enabling excavations; the oldest seventeen settlement levels were dated to between 980 and 1308. It is thought that Mieszko I of Poland erected a stronghold on the site in the 980s, thereby connecting the Polish state ruled by the Piast dynasty with the trade routes of the Baltic Sea.
Traces of buildings and housing from 10th century have been found in archaeological excavations of the city. The site was ruled as a duchy of Poland by the Samborides, it consisted of a settlement at the modern Long Market, settlements of craftsmen along the Old Ditch, German merchant settlements around St Nicholas's church and the old Piast stronghold. In 1186, a Cistercian monastery was set up in nearby Oliwa, now within the city limits. In 1215, the ducal stronghold became the centre of a Pomerelian splinter duchy. At that time the area of the city included various villages. From at least 1224/25 a German market settlement with merchants from Lübeck existed in the area of today's Long Market. In 1224/25, merchants from Lübeck were invited as "hospites" but were soon forced to leave by Swantopolk II of the Samborides during a war between Swantopolk and the Teutonic Knights, during which Lübeck supported the latter. Migrat
