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Multi-word code
The new table on the dock says very little: “Maratas 1932–1989, DŽTŠ” Vytautas Putna “.
Obviously, Marat is the name, along with the dates of his birth and death.
The appearance of said table on a dock raises the suspicion that a person died not by his own death, probably in tragic circumstances at sea.
The entry “Vytautas Putna” is nothing more than the name of the refrigerator of a large fishing vessel.
After verifying the data of this ship, a story emerged 30 years ago, when in December 1989 it was hit by a terrible disaster in the Bay of Biscay.
Two people, one of them, Marat Vitas, born in 1932, died in a fire that spread through the ship, and a plaque on the dock appeared in his memory.
A rather unusual name next to a Lithuanian surname, but especially at the beginning.
History: in this 1969. The photograph shows six unknown men standing at the bottom of the bow of the “Putna” trawler, three of them in USSR naval uniforms. (Photo by Bernardo Aleknavičius (Collection of the Lithuanian Maritime Museum))
The baptism of the first trip.
Sandrius Kretingiškis (the surname of the man who asked not to be published – A.D.) was a student at the School of Maritime Studies in 1989, when in April of that year A.Čeponis sailed for his first practice at sea in trawling.
The trip lasted eight months, the men were fishing in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Central America, and they were almost ready to travel home to Klaipeda when they suddenly received a radiogram that they had to hurry up and sail to the aid of another fisherman. drag, V.Putna.
A. Ceponis crossed the Panama Strait and ran to the west coast of France, where Klaipeda fishermen called for help in the Atlantic.
Sandrius remembered that he had been swimming all night, and in the morning he saw a photo that stuck to him, then an 18-year-old apprentice, for a long time.
“When we arrived, that ship was still on fire. The automatic fire fighting equipment was on. There was no crew on board, it had been picked up by another ship. V. Putna was full of water and bowed. I saw a woman trapped through the lower porthole, her hair almost reaching the water. ” “The picture was terrible. We knew another person was dead. The captain of the dead sent” Putna “to send more experienced crew members, none of us apprentices allowed us, we saw everything from our own ship,” Sandrius said. first trip to the sea.
A. Čeponis’ crew then collected the items from their colleagues left on V. Putna’s deck, took the documents from the ship, turned off the engines, and sailed home, temporarily leaving a lone burner in the Atlantic.
A.Čeponis returned to Klaipėda on December 20, transporting the bodies of the dead.
Hero: J.Vitas-Valūnas, the father of the assistant captain of M. Vito, who died during the war, is photographed in this photo. (Photo from “Communist” magazine)
A nightmare in the Cantabrian Sea
The first assistant captain of the tracking ship “V.Putna” M.Vitas was then transported to Klaipeda, who died in a fire on board on December 8.
When he jumped into the lifeboat, the sailor’s heart stopped.
The ship’s chef Galina Misniakova also died during that disaster. She burned alive.
When there was a fire on the ship while sailing in the Bay of Biscay, the fire began to spread at high speed and the crew was no longer able to cope with the flames on their own.
An order was given to abandon ship.
Later it was said that the chef, rushing things to the cabin, was soon jailed for a widespread fire in the ship’s corridors.
From the cabin on the lower deck, the woman was still trying to escape through the porthole, but was trapped in it.
Reminiscent of the nightmarish moments, the sailors claimed that many of the crew members had dreamed of asking for help from a woman who swallowed llamas for many decades.
“I remember that tragedy very well. The Klaipėda community of sailors talked a lot about it then. I was working on the floating base at the time, but I had to see photos of the scene, they were terrible: a woman half hugged from a porthole he died of a horrible death. “Said ship captain Juozas Liepuonius.
I had to see the photos from the scene, they were terrible.
J.Liepuonius recalled another case when the ship “Archimedes” was burning in the Pacific Ocean in the early 1980s, as well as in Klaipeda, where a person was also killed.
“Then the fire broke out in the engine room, the second mechanic was unable to leave the room and died. There was still a fire in the floating base” Soviet Lithuania “, in the engine room it came from rags, but there was more smoke than flames. We quickly killed it, the fire did not spread. Then I worked as a second co-pilot on that ship, “recalled J. Liepuonius.
Boiled scrap metal
The large “V.Putna” fishing trawler cooler was built at the Klaipeda “Baltic” shipyard in 1965.
He belonged to the General Board of the Fishing Industry “Zapryba”, whose subdivision was the Lithuanian SSR Fishing Industry Production Board.
The ship is named after V. Putna (1893-1937), a Lithuanian-born military diplomat of Soviet origin, a military diplomat who, along with M. Tuchachevsky, J. Jakir and J. Uborevičius, was sentenced to death and shot during the Stalinist repressions of June 12, 1937. After 20 years he was reinstated as innocent.
At that time, many ships in Lithuania are named after Soviet characters and heroes.
Named after V. Putna, the ship served only 22 years, and its fate was determined after the December 8, 1989 fire.
“After all, an investigation was conducted and conclusions were written, which are probably still somewhere. We have discussed this case more than once among ourselves, because it is very painful, because people died in the fire,” he said. Captain Vytautas Saulėnas.
The investigation into the fire on the V.Putna trawler was carried out by the then fire safety specialist at the Česlovas Gečas oceanic fishing base.
“For as long as I can remember, the fire broke out in the engine room and spread enormously. But it was a long time ago, I can’t say much more,” said Gecch.
According to the newspaper, V.Putna was towed to Klaipeda, and attempts were made to repair it.
There is no evidence that you have ever sailed on a trip.
With the collapse of the Jūra fishing fleet company, the ship was scrapped.
Son of a famous father
The members of the crew of this trawler, G.Misniakova and M.Vitas, also lost their eternal rest, but none of them is buried in Klaipeda.
According to the newspaper, the fact of M. Vito’s death was recorded in Vilnius, and where G. Misniakova was buried, it was not possible to find out.
It is possible that perhaps not even in Lithuania, because at that time more than half of the crew on board were from other Soviet republics.
However, M.Vita in Klaipėda is now remembered for a metal sign on the pier.
His unusual name next to his Lithuanian surname sparked interest, because we would hardly have found at least one marat in interwar Lithuania.
Speaking to Klaipeda residents about M. Vita, a ship captain said that he was the son of the famous Soviet and anti-Nazi revolutionary hero Juozas Vito-Valūnas (1899–1943).
Then the origin of the name Marath became clearer.
A life worthy of a novel.
The father of the deceased sailor M. Vito J. participated in the First World War, as well as in the Civil War in Russia.
Returning to Lithuania in 1920. He was recruited into the Lithuanian army, but devoted himself to communist propaganda, was arrested and sentenced to death, but with the help of soldiers he managed to escape and leave for Russia.
In Moscow he studied at the Communist University of Western National Minorities and the Leningrad Institute of Electrical Engineering.
He worked as an electrical engineer and directed the Leningrad School of Electrical Engineering.
There is more than one testimony that he, unlike most Lithuanian communists living in Russia, did not resign from Lithuania.
To the Soviets in 1940 After the occupation of Lithuania, Albina, Maratu and Veronika returned from Russia with their families, a wife and three children, where she became the chair of the Vilnius Executive Committee and worked at the People’s Commissariat of Services Publics of the LSSR.
And at that time, from 1939. November to 1940 Vytautas Landsbergis Žemkalnis (1893–1993), father of Vytautas Landsbergis (1893–1993), worked for the head of the Vilnius Construction Board and the chief engineer for the city of Vilnius in November 2003.
With the beginning of the Nazi occupation, J. Vitas, unlike other Lithuanian communists, did not retreat to the depths of the Soviet Union, which soon cost him his life.
The hero’s name is late
J. Vitas and his family remained in Vilnius, occupied by the Germans, where they formed the “Lithuanian Liberation Union”.
This organization, created without the support of the USSR party or security organs, was one of the largest anti-communist organizations in the post-communist resistance.
Small of this, namely J.Vitas-Valūnas in 1943. In May, he joined the Lithuanian Liberation Union, the Joint Party Organization (FPO) of the Vilnius Ghetto, the Union of Polish Patriots and the Party Vilnian Communist from the Lithuanian Communist Party (Bolshevik) for common anti-national resistance.
1943 In the summer of 2006, J.Vitas was extradited to the Gestapo, where after cruel torture on June 29. delicate.
A version is raised that the Russian NKVD helped German intelligence capture him.
The reason could have been that the fighter did not coordinate his actions with Moscow and this could become too dangerous.
There is a version that J.Vitas had submitted a written position to the communist summit on the withdrawal of Lithuania from the USSR and the creation of a separate Lithuanian state.
This version would be confirmed by the circumstances of the name of the hero of J. Vito.
It turns out they gave it to him not immediately, like others, but only 20 years after the war.
However, after 1964 Poland awarded J. Vita the Grunwald Cross after his death for his sacrifice fighting against Nazism. gave him the name of a hero.
Until then, the Soviet government had not remembered Vito’s activities during the years of German occupation for almost two decades.
“With a family engineer”
Despite the fact that J.Vitas was killed, his wife and three children, including his son, assistant captain Maratas, who died on the “V.Putna” trawler, survived the entire war in Lithuania.
“When the Great Patriotic War broke out, our family was in Vilnius. Before reaching the depths of the country, we arrived in Turniškės on foot on the night of June 22, 1941. My father left us with an engineer he knew and entered a illegal situation, “the magazine said. Communist “, the sons of J. Vito – daughter Albina and his son Maratas – wrote in the 12th issue of 1973.
The engineer mentioned here was Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis. His family took refuge in J. Vito’s wife and children during that dangerous period.
When asked about this episode, Professor Vytautas Landsbergis confirmed that J. Vito’s family had lived with them for some time.
“During the war, they hid in our house. My father also wrote about it in the book” From the memory screen. “Sisters Albina and Veronika also testified about life in our house in my book” Mamutė “. Ona Jablonskytė -Lansbergienė “. Later Veronika became my colleague, she was a pianist. I know your brother Marat died at sea, “Landsbergis recalled.
Will the tables have to be removed?
Here is such an intertwined story, the beginning of which became the recent commemorative plaque for the dead sailor on the north pier of the sea, as it turned out, for the son of the famous hero M. Vit.
According to the newspaper, it is possible that this monument should be removed, since no one has officially requested the Port Authority to place the plaque.
It is stated that such matters should be coordinated with the Port State Authority. The breakwaters are the property of the Port Authority.
“If a person who wishes to place one or another commemorative plaque contacts us, we should pass this information on to the Klaipėda City Municipality. Then a specially formed commission would decide whether such plaque can be hung in a public place or not. By the way, we I would like to remind you that in the near future the docks will be rebuilt, so table owners will have to remove the tables there, “said port representative Dovilė Ringis.
The drama is reminiscent of an anchor.
One of the most dramatic disasters, reminiscent of the symbolic anchor on the north pier, is the Budys sailing ship tragedy 86 years ago. 1933 July 15 A storm hit the Baltic countries. Budys was preparing for Liepaja. Approximately 50 m at the end of the north pier, a large wave caused the ship to rush into the wind, and suddenly the yacht, which was no longer under the yacht’s control, was carried by waves and winds towards the north pier. Captain B. Krištopaitis ordered to put on life jackets and drop an anchor. The anchor was not installed at the bottom and was dragged to the bottom. V. Amulevičius, E.Jasiukevičius and V.Šidlauskas did not resist the tension and, disobeying the captain’s order, they fell into the water and disappeared in battle. Immediately afterwards, a large wave lifted the boat onto the rocks of the dock, and broke with a famous strawberry. The death of Buddy and three crew members was very painful for the entire sailing community. An anchor and commemorative plaque were placed on the wreck.
Modest memorial table
A commemorative plaque appeared five years ago on the north pier near the symbolic anchor commemorating the death of the Budys sailboat crew. It is intended for fishermen Gintaras and Igoris, who did not return from the sea in late fall 2014. The disaster occurred on the night of October 24. A 7m long fishing boat sailed to fish. He had a captain and another fisherman. One of them is 45 years old, the other is 48 years old. They received a signal that a storm was approaching, so they turned towards the port of Klaipeda. While sailing, the men even greeted the crews of the other ships. With approximately two nautical miles (almost 4 km) to the port gate, the ship and the men on board disappeared enigmatically. The search yielded no results, the men were recognized as missing, in other words, dead. More than a year later, a table commemorating them appeared on the dock.
“Alvydas, May 16, 2015”
Five years ago, pilots Adolfas Mačiulis and Alvydas Selmistraitis, who flew in a small AN-2 plane, died in the Baltic. The plane that flew from Sweden to Klaipeda crashed in the Baltic under previously unknown circumstances. AN-2 was found on the seafloor, and A.Mačiulis’s body was found inside it, which was raised and buried. A.Selmistraitis has not been found so far. Although his fate is unknown, the international search for this pilot stopped after a while and he was pronounced dead. A year after the tragedy, a small metal plaque appeared on the north pier to commemorate pilot A. Selmistraitis. It presents the silhouette of the AN-2 aircraft, the inscription “Alvydas” and the date “05/16/2015”.
Official memorial at Smiltyne
In the past hundred years, almost 30 Lithuanian ships have sunk and the waves of the sea have killed almost 400 people. 2001 The book “Sailed so that it does not return”, published by Romas Tijūnėlis de Klaipėda, published in 1928, presents the statistics of those who died at sea since April 1928. It is observed there that in 1928-1929. The storm killed about 120 fishermen from Šventoji, Palanga, Giruliai, Karklė, Melnragė. All were observed to be without life jackets. One of the most tragic years for fishermen was 1958, when February 13. a small fishing boat (MŽT-62) sank and 10 sailors died, and two weeks later, on February 30, another similarly sized boat, MŽT-174, sank with a crew of 9. Such tragedies occur almost every years, which is why commemorative crowns are thrown into the waves of the Baltic during each Festival of the Sea. This is how Klaipeda residents remember those whose graves were turned into the sea. The 12-meter-tall albatross monument, built eight years ago near the Maritime Museum, is also dedicated to honoring dead Lithuanian sailors and sunken ships. The names and names of the country’s sailors, fishermen, and sailors who sailed but did not return from the sea were etched on the granite slabs.
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