Podgornik Baldomir

Baldomir Podgornik (*Gorenja Trebuša, 6 March 1913, – † Portorož, 29 April 1989, ) 

Captain, so of Filip Podgornik, a teacher, and Marija Lapanja, attended a secondary school in Tolmin and after two years moved, together with his family, from the occupied Primorska region to Limbuš near Maribor in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where his father got a job. Baldomir continued his schooling in a public school in Maribor and in 1930 enrolled at the Naval Trade Academy in Kotor, Montenegro, concluding his studies in 1934 with honours. After completing his one-year military service in Sarajevo and Varaždin, he began to sail on Yugoslav merchant ships. In October 1936 he boarded, as cadet, the cargo steamer Trsat, on which he stayed till June 1939. In November 1939, he passed the examination for the rank of Merchant Navy Lieutenant. In March 1940, he boarded the same ship, although as Third Mate, and off the French coast found himself in the midst of World War II. In August 1940 he boarded, as Third Mate, the cargo steamer  Supetar and served on it till 12 June 1942, when  suffering a torpedo attack off the African eastern coast. Part of the crew, commanded by him, managed to reach South Africa, from where the survivors were taken by an American passenger ship, serving for the Navy, to New York. In January 1943, he boarded the cargo steamer Gloria, which sailed as the Allied supply ship, and stayed on it till June 1943, when he reported at the American War Shipping Administration. As Second Mate he then served till October 1945 in the Allied convoys on board four armed cargo supply steamers: John Sargent, George Poindexter, Carrillo, Samuel Moody and William L. McLean. Eventually he reported at the Maritime Office of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia in New York. From there, he was sent to the Maritime Authorities in London, where he carried out  officer's duties till August 1946, when he boarded, as First Mate, the cargo steamer Kozara, and in September 1946 landed in Rijeka. On 23 December 1946 he passed the  exams for the rank of Captain at the Naval Academy in Dubrovnik. Throughout the War he financially aided the national liberation movement in his homeland, and after the war in its post-war reconstruction.

In May 1947 he accepted the position of  an Officer of the Merchant Navy Directorate General in Rijeka and stayed there till August 1949, when transferred to the Adriatic Maritime Directorate of the Merchant Navy in the same town. He worked there till June 1953.
In July 1953 he began to work for Splošna plovba (also known as Slovenija linije), for which he travelled to Rotterdam to contract the firm's first cargo motor ship Sirob / Martin Krpan. He commanded the first Slovenian crew, which in April 1954 began to sail for the first Slovenian shipping company – Splošna plovba Piran. In the same year, Captain Baldomir Podgornik contracted in London the first Slovenian transoceanic cargo steamer Rog (I) and commanded her for full four years. In February 1956, he rescued the ship from a deadly typhoon  off Japan and subsequently landed her for the first time in China. In the Pula Uljanik Shipyard he took over, in 1959, the brand new motorship Goranka, built by order of Splošna plovba Portorož. Until 1963 he also commanded the other two ships of the so-called GTK Group, built by order of Splošna plovba in Pula: the cargo motorships Korotan and Trbovlje. From 1963 to 1970 he led the Representative Office of Splošna plovba for the Far East in Tokyo, and was, after returning home, Director of the Port of Koper Authority until retiring. After the numerous dramatic events, especially during the war, he concluded the several decades of difficult life and working experiences at sea and around the world in the idyll and peace of his domestic Portorož.

Duška Žitko

(Personal archive kept by Baldomir's nephew Marko Podgornik and niece Duška Žitko; Žitko, Duška, ROG prva slovenska čezoceanska ladja in kapitan Baldomir Podgornik).