Mamert Stankiewicz
| Admiral Mamert Stankiewicz |
|
|---|---|
Mamert Stankiewicz on board M/S Piłsudski
|
|
| Nickname(s) | Znaczy Kapitan |
| Born |
January 22, 1889 Mitau |
| Died | November 26, 1939 (aged 50) North Sea |
| Allegiance |
 Poland
|
| Service/branch |
Imperial Russian Navy Polish Navy |
| Years of service | 1900-1939 |
| Rank | Rear Admiral |
| Battles/wars |
World War I World War II |
| Awards |
Virtuti Militari Distinguished Service Cross (United Kingdom) |
| Other work | writer of maritime history |
Mamert Stankiewicz (January 22, 1889 – November 26, 1939) was a Polish naval officer of the merchant marine, the commander of Lwów, SS Polonia and finally the ocean liner MS Piłsudski. During the opening months of World War II he was salvaged from one of the latter ship's boats and died of hypothermia. Stankiewicz's life was immortalized by Karol Olgierd Borchardt, whose series of books on Stankiewicz became a best-seller among Polish maritime books.
Stankiewicz was born in Mitau in Courland, then part of the Russian Empire (now Jelgava in Latvia) to a Polish aristocratic family that was exiled to Russia after their involvement in the January Uprising against the Czar. He graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg and joined the Russian Imperial Navy. During World War I he was initially a navigation officer on board the Russian armoured cruiser Riurik, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet. A successful officer, he was made Chief of Staff of the Baltic Fleet during the first battles in the Gulf of Riga, after which he also briefly served as a commanding officer of one of the obsolete battleships.
Dispatched by the Imperial court to the United States, in 1918 he became a naval attache in the Russian consulate in Pittsburgh. However, the following year he returned to Russia and joined the riverine flotilla in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Arrested by the Cheka, he was imprisoned in Irkutsk and then in a prison camp in Krasnoyarsk. Following the Peace of Riga ending the Polish-Bolshevik War Stankiewicz was a subject of a prisoner of war exchange and was allowed to settle in Poland. Verified in the rank of lieutenant-commander (komandor podporucznik), Stankiewicz joined the newly formed Polish Navy and became a commander of the Navigation Department of the Naval School of Tczew, the first maritime school in Polish history. Soon afterwards he also started his career as a lecturer of navigation and astronomy at the Maritime Officers' School in Toruń.
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