Polish Navy

The Polish Navy is the naval branch of the Polish Armed Forces. The Polish Navy has 46 ships and about 12,000 people.

In the fifteenth century there was a small force of ships that primarily operated on rivers and lakes. In 1454, the city of Gdańsk was back in Poland after being previously occupied by the Teutonic Knights since 1308. Gdańsk is a seaport so Poland could have a large fleet on the Baltic. In 1561, following a victory over a Russian fleet in the Baltic, the Polish Navy got a second port at Riga, in modern-day Latvia. The Polish navy won the Battle of Oliwa in 1627 against the Swedish Empire, during the Polish–Swedish War. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth never really had a strong navy.

Józef Piłsudski, commander of the Armed Forces of Poland, founded the modern Polish Navy in 1918.

In World War II three ships sailed to the British naval base at Leith in Scotland in 1939 to escape from the German navy. The British lent them more ships.

During the Communist period, Poland's navy got much stronger. A separate force of Polish Marines started. The Navy also got Soviet-made ships, including 2 destroyers, 2 missile destroyers, 13 submarines and 17 missile boats to control the Baltic Sea.

Poland joined NATO in 1999 and this changed the work of the navy.