MV Kuna (Icebreaker)

The Oldest Floating Icebreaker in the World. The vessel was built in 1884 at the Danziger Schiffswerft & Kesselschmiede Feliks Devrient & Co. shipyard in Gdańsk for the Königlich Preußische Weichsel-Strombauverwaltung (Royal Prussian Vistula River Waterway Construction Authority) as the fourth in a series of steam-powered icebreakers. All vessels in this series were named after rivers that flow into the lower Vistula. Accordingly, this ship was named Ferse — the German name for the Wierzyca River, which flows through the Kashubia and Kociewie regions and joins the Vistula at the town of Gniew.

The vessel was decommissioned in 1965 and, a year later, stripped of its equipment and superstructures. Left as an empty hull, it awaited scrapping. In the 1970s, it was towed to Gorzów Wielkopolski, where it was intended to serve as a mooring pontoon. However, in 1981, it sank in the shipyard basin and remained underwater for nearly 20 years.

In 2000, a group of maritime and history enthusiasts undertook the vessel’s restoration. Now renamed Kuna, the ship sails on the Warta River as a museum and training vessel. Its home port is Gorzów Wielkopolski. The first captain after its reconstruction was Captain Jerzy Hopfer, the originator of the icebreaker’s restoration project.