Exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Kotor: Slovenian ships - memory of the "Sploshna plovidba"

The multimedia exhibition entitled "Slovenian ships 6 & 11" prepared by the Maritime Museum "Sergej Masera" from Piran, was opened last night in the Maritime Museum of Montenegro in Kotor. In this way, September 10 was commemorated - the day when it was founded 72 years ago. The Maritime Museum in Kotor, i.e. the 70th anniversary of the Maritime Museum in Piran, which will end in October.

Since 2018, these two museum institutions have had a fruitful cooperation in the framework of which they exchange various exhibitions on the maritime and cultural heritage of these two countries that lived for decades in the common state of Yugoslavia, and therefore have a number of mutual points of contact in the maritime domain. The theme of the exhibition "Slovenian ships" is mainly related to the SFRY period, which is dedicated to some of the most significant of the total of 86 larger and smaller merchant ships that were part of the fleet of the largest Slovenian shipping company - "Sploshna plovba" from Portorož.

The theme of the exhibition is the six most historically significant ships of the "Sploshna plovba" which have since been immortalized in special thematic philatelic editions of the Post of Slovenia, and another 11 ships of this distinguished company which were built for it in one of the most famous Yugoslav shipyards - "Uljanik" in Pula.

Through photos, info boards, documentation, philatelic and other bibliophile editions, video materials, documentaries, ship models and archival footage, the exhibition, whose author is the museum advisor of the Maritime Museum in Pitran, Duška Žitka, tells the story of vessels, their rise, but also their sad end. "Sploshne plovbe" - a company founded in 1954, whose ships sailed around the world and maintained many regular freight and passenger lines from the former Yugoslavia to various faraway places, including the famous round-the-world line.

This line departed from Rijeka every 25 days. It took the ships seven and a half months to circumnavigate the globe, docking in around 53 ports around the world - from the eastern Mediterranean, eastern Africa, western, southern and eastern Asia, the western coast of North America to the western Mediterranean and the Adriatic back to Rijeka. In addition to Splošna plovba, the ships "Atlantska plovidba" Dubrovnik and "Jugooceanija" Kotor also sailed on this line. "Splošna plovba" practically ceased to exist as a shipping company a few years ago because its majority owner, the German company Peter Dohle Schiffahrt, sold off its last ships.

The exhibition that was opened in Kotor, and before that the audience in Slovenia and Croatia had the opportunity to see it, shed light on the history of one of the biggest, most important and most successful Slovenian maritime stories after the Second World War, the story of the only Slovenian international shipping company that established itself on the merciless world maritime market, with the symbol of Triglav on the chimneys of all ships in its fleet. Many sailors from Crna Glora also sailed for this company, and several Bokeljes were commanders on the "Sploshna plovba" ships.

The exhibition also contains a particularly interesting aspect dedicated to valuable works of art - numerous artistic paintings, reliefs and sculptures that were used to decorate the passenger spaces on some of the "Sploshna plovba" ships, for which the company once specially engaged the academic sculptor Stojan Batič (1925-2015. ) and the academic painter and graphic artist Zvest Apollonius (1935-2009). Welcoming those present at the opening of the exhibition, among whom was the deputy ambassador of Slovenia in Montenegro Borut Valenčić, the director of the Maritime Museum of Kotor, MA Maja Uskoković, emphasized the connection between Piran and Kotor as two once strong maritime center.

"Our museum in the First and Second World War section preserves the memory of the national hero, the lieutenant of the battleship Sergej Mashera, after whom your museum in Piran is named. In April 1941, together with his colleague Milan Spasić, disobeying the order to abandon the warship and surrender to the enemy, he detonated a planted explosive in the Tivat Bay and blew up the destroyer 'Zagreb', part of whose bow is also exhibited in the mentioned department", stated Uskoković.

As she emphasized, the sea, the Adriatic, seafaring, research and preservation of maritime heritage, raising public awareness and promotion of the maritime past are the joint missions of both Kotor and the museum in Piran, and reminded of the successful cooperation between the two institutions.

Director Franko Jurij greeted the attendees on behalf of the Piran Maritime Museum.

"The cooperation between our museums has a long tradition, we cooperate both bilaterally and multilaterally, because we are members of the Forum of Mediterranean Maritime Museums, so this year we will meet again at the meeting of that Forum in Portugal," Jurij pointed out with regret, adding that after 30 year of independence, Slovenia today lost its large ocean-going ships and its maritime identity, "so that today it lives in the museum, on postage stamps and exhibitions".

"Little Slovenia, which has only 46 kilometers of coastline, despite this, has a strong maritime spirit, which is reflected above all in our large port of Koper, and in one large company - 'Sploshna plovba' that we had. It is a pity that we lost our ships today, while on the other hand, Montenegro set a good precedent and bought four ships for its companies," Jurij pointed out.