Jagodnik Anton

Anton Jagodnik, diver (Podgrad, 28 May 1920 - Pula, 7 August 1960)

Anton Jagodnik (Toni) was the diver who died of an embolia he suffered during his diving duties of cutting up the sunken ship Rex. He was born at Podgrad near Ilirska Bistrica. During the war he was mobilized, as a Primorska Slovenian, into the Italian army. Shortly after the liberation, he passed the exam for a heavy diver in Rijeka. As such, he was invited to join the firm Brodospas in 1947 and participated in numerous diving works along the entire Yugoslav coast.

 

During the years of systematic cutting up and diving works on the destroyed ship Rex (1947–1956), he was a member of the Koper diving team. In the 1st five-year plan (1947–1951), which also included raising sunken ships to the surface, sealing damaged parts, pumping out water, towing parts to the dock or to the cutting yard, Anton Jagodnik demonstrated his great abilities, diligence and loyalty to the system. For these merits, the company’s management as well as trade union rewarded him financially. The work and operations of raising ships from the sea as the core of the country's economic development were of exceptional significance for the development of shipping, and were therefore financed with funds from the budget.

 

The Rex, which was sunk in the shallow waters between Izola and Koper, was systematically cut up in the 1948–1955/56 period. Diving work of cutting up the underwater remains of the Rex continued for quite some time, even until the early 1960s. This work was carried out by workers from various metalworking professions. Welders first made holes in the metal plates, divers then continued the job by cutting and sawing the Rex’s iron hull at a depth of 18 m and preparing the parts for being lifted out of the water, where the Veli Jože crane also took part. Eventually, they were transported by boats of the maona type to Pula, cut into smaller pieces in the local iron cutting yard and finally transported by rail to Jesenice.

 

Divers were taken to the offshore spot where the Rex was sunk by ships. In 1949, a team of divers was transported there by the ship Labin, with the Koper Diving Team on board her. Anton Jagodnik was one of the members of the team.

 

Each diver had to be acquainted with the anatomy of the sunken ship in detail in order to find his ways there. They were liable to strictly follow the agreed signals and other instructions. Each diving job was prepared by the whole team, headed by the leader of the entire salvage, most often a multiskilled shipbuilding engineer, technician, experienced diver or some other expert. In 1959, for example, the Brodospas’ divers spent and worked more than 10,000 hours underwater. They performed difficult underwater work at sea and had to be highly skilled and well prepared.

 

The maritime legacy of Anton Jagodnik, which is today held by his daughter-in-law Sonja Jagodnik, also included a Seafarer Card issued in 1958. From it one can learn that Jagodnik received it in 1958 in Piran and that in two years he worked on board two motor ships (Verudica and Tajan) as a sailor-diver. On the first page, the day of his death is also inscribed. While cutting up the remains of the Rex ship, he contracted caisson (decompression) disease - an embolia. Since the Izola Hospital had no hyperbaric diving chamber at that time, Jagodnik was taken to the Pula Hospital for treatment, but died there on 7 August 1960.
 

In Izola, the place of his last permanent residence, he left behind his young family: wife Angela and children Anica and Vladimir.

 

 

Prepared by Nadja Terčon

 

 

Source:

 

Museum photo documentation

 

Personal communication: Sonja Jagodnik, Izola – Podgrad, 2022

 

Žitnik, Edvard: Rex - kraljevsko ime, ladje usodno znamenje, RTV Slovenija, 2005/2006

 

Terčon, Nadja, Juri, Franco, Marinac, Bogdana, Karinja, Snježana: REX, mit iz plitvine, 2022