The Morskie Oko, or ‘Eye of the Sea,’ is a lake surrounded by rising mountain peaks in Poland that is renowned for its pristine air and magnificent landscape.
It had already been a popular resort location by the 1850s. A tourist guide issued by Maria Steczkowska in 1858 mentions pleasure craft and fancy rafts among other attractions.
Dr. Tytus Chaubiski, a local doctor from Zakopane, was also credited with popularizing the lake’s positive features, and by 1908, the sheer number of tourists required the launch of two sea-going lifeboats on the lake to provide pleasure trips for guests.
Valery Eljasz persuaded the local Tatra Society to acquire two vessels supplied by a Bremen boat-maker who previously supplied identical ships to the Baltic Prussian sea rescue service, according to thenewsfirst.com.
It is said that they were used not only to carry guests around the stunning panoramas of the Morskie Oko, but also as rescue boats if visitors became entangled in the invigorating, health-giving, freezing waters.
The boats were popular but difficult to maintain, and Mariusz Zaruski launched an appeal to rebuild both vessels barely four years later. Zaruski was a founding member of the Tatra Volunteer Search & Rescue Group (TOPR), which just published images of the freshly discovered Syrena wreck.
The discovery was made during a routine training exercise by the search and rescue team five years ago, but the photographs, taken by photographer Sawomir Pako, were not released until recently, causing a frenzy of interest on the internet in Poland and around the world and giving rise to the moniker “Polish Titanic.”
The boats, called wistak and Syrena, vanished from regular service as time passed and conflict raged across the country in the middle of the twentieth century, but survived the turmoil of WWII.
What happened to the boats in the subsequent years remained unknown because little records were kept, and the lake’s jetty was demolished in the 1980s, destroying a historic vestige of the mountain lake’s maritime heritage.
The Morskie Oko has been considered one of Poland’s natural marvels, and tens of thousands of people visit each year to marvel at the lake’s magnificent surroundings.
Such a location has spawned several myths and stories, one of which claims that an underground tunnel connects it to the Adriatic Sea, and another that a wealth in money is entrenched in the mud on the lakebed, where generations of tourists have flung pennies for good luck.
Today, the lake is inaccessible by car and requires a two-hour climb from the nearest paved road. The only other way to get there is by horse and cart.
The path is more perilous in the winter and runs through an avalanche danger zone. Swimming is prohibited unless you are a member of a specialized group.
On May 29th, 1865, the Baltic Prussian marine rescue service was created in Kiel, supplied by boat builders from Bremen, and operated almost comparable ships for inshore rescue duties. It has subsequently established fifty-four lifeboat stations, with 185 hired staff and over 800 volunteers. The program was estimated to have saved 72,000 lives in 2005.
The Luftwaffe Seenotdienst, the Nazi Air, Sea Rescue Service, took over in 1935 and implemented new creative coordinated rescue methods, including rescue buoys moored far from the coast. Other coastal nations, notably the United Kingdom and the United States, followed the approach after witnessing the success of air-sea operations in saving lives.