WOW! Did you know that Hungary built sea cruisers? – photos

The Hungarian sea cruiser industry had its heyday when the country did not even have access to the sea.

But how is that possible? – asks szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu. Before the peace treaty of Trianon – because of which 2/3rd of the country’s territory was given to the neighbouring states, with more than 3 million Hungarians – Hungary had access to the sea at the Croatian shores. The steamboats of the Adria Tengerhajózás Rt. regularly crossed the oceans and reached even Australia or the Far East. This is what changed the moment Hungary lost WWI, since

all commercial, transport, and military ships had to be given to  Yugoslavia.

However, Hungarians did not give up and started to make Duna-type sea cruisers which were not only built but also designed in Hungary.

They were transport ships circulating between the Csepel free port and the different havens of the Black and the Mediterranean Seas. Too low or too high water levels caused no problem for those ships, and one could easily navigate them upstream.

The first such boat (Budapest) was built in 1934, and since it was very successful, more followed (Tisza, Kassa, Ungvár, Kolozsvár, Szolnok, and Komárom). During WWII, the

Germans rented 6 of them

and transported supplies to the Eastern Front for the armies fighting in Ukraine. Of course, some of them were destroyed; for example, the Ungvár exploded after running on a mine. The Kolozsvár was bombed, the Szolnok sank, and the Komárom got injured, as well.