Prepared by John Nash, grandson of Jan Antonin Bata
The excerpts below were written by Antonin Cekota. He describes the detailed plan of Jan Antonin Bata, crediting him with the inspiration of a plan for buying a rusty old steamship to be used to transport shoes, shoe machinery, retail store equipment, and a group of young Batamen to India to accelerate the development of the new factory complex.
"Some accounts of what was done during that critical year of 1933 and other years, are to be found in the pages of the weekly newspaper ‘Zlin’. There are accounts of individual men and how they did it. However, perhaps the most unusual was the idea of buying an ocean-going steamship, loading it with shoes, equipment for retail stores, shoe machinery and a group of young men, and sending it to India to accelerate the original plan of providing shoes for millions of that country's (then) barefoot people."
"This was Jan Bata's idea. It was implemented with a degree of speed and economy which became the pattern for all such expeditions.”
“The traffic manager, Josef Zelinka, was given the task of finding a cargo vessel and buying it. The price which he was authorized to pay shocked him -- but he found one. It had been rusting for several years in the harbor of Marseilles. The French acquired it cheaply as part of Germany's reparations payments. It was only later that they learned why the Germans had not shed any tears on handing the vessel over. In her port of registry, she was known among the sea-men as the ‘Schaukel Pferd’ (‘Rocking Horse’), as she would pitch and toss joyfully in the slightest of winds or swell."
"The 'Kourousa', her French name, had served as a collier in the Channel and Mediterranean ports, but with her 6,000 tons and low speed -- at most, 11 knots, with a cruising speed of six knots -- she could not compete with bigger and faster ships. Of course she burned coal and coal-burning ships were out of fashion even in that year. Dirty, rusty, but otherwise sound, the ‘Kourousa’ sailed from Marseilles to the Polish port of Gdynia on the Baltic Sea, where she was re-Christened the ‘Morava.’ For the first time in its eleven-hundred-year history, Moravia, in Czechoslovakia, that beautiful but land-locked land, had its first sea-going vessel. When the news that this ship would carry the Bata expedition to India burst into the open, it started a fever of excitement."
"Jaromir Hradil, principal of the Bata School for Young Men, was asked to select graduates from the school for this expedition. His only worry was how to explain to the crowds of applicants that he could take only about forty and that every one of them would have to be outstanding in either production or sales and approved by the managers in whose departments they worked."
"In the end, forty-three were selected and given the necessary inoculations and vaccinations for working in the tropics. Their ages ranged from about 22 to 34 and they were imbued with an enormous amount of enthusiasm, energy, eagerness and inexperience. None of them had ever seen the sea before, or a boat larger than a row boat."
"The impact upon the population of Czechoslovakia of the news of the Bata sea-borne expedition to India surpassed anything that was happening anywhere else at that time.”
“I was swamped with requests from newspapers and freelance reporters to arrange for their participation in the expedition. I doubt that Columbus' first voyage created such an upheaval in Spain as Bata's shoe ship, the S.S. Morava, created in Masaryk's land-locked Republic of Czechoslovakia in 1933."
"From the many applications for newspaper coverage of the adventure, I selected a serious daily newspaper in Prague called the ‘Prager Tagblatt’. Its reporter could write exclusive stories in the German language for his paper, while giving exclusive rights to newspapers published under my own responsibility in the Czech language. The man who took the assignment was an old professional, Max Heller. He was in his early fifties, worldly-wise, a famous columnist with a dry sense of humor and a kindly attitude toward people and affairs. When he disembarked from the 'Morava' at Port Said, Egypt, on May 1, 1933, he reported that 'Our average speed during the voyage was slightly higher than that of Magellan's ships when he undertook his first voyage around the globe in the sixteenth century'. During the 125-day voyage of the 'Morava' he sent me about twenty reports. Quoting his own words, I will try to piece together a story which has remained vividly in the memories of a whole generation of Batamen."
Source: The Stormy Years of an extraordinary enterprise: Bata 1932 - 1945 by Antonin Cekota, 1985.
Supplemental Information:
When Bata took to the Seas
http://world.bata.com/news/2015/flashback-when-bata-took-seas/
Czechoslovak shipping in the inter-war period: The maritime transport operations of the Bata Shoe Company, 1932–1935 by Jan Herman
http://ijh.sagepub.com/content/27/1/79.full.pdf+html
Photo of the S.S. Morava, Bata's 6,000 Ton Cargo Ship
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/400187116862987463/
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P.S.
Jan Herman did a great job writing about the story, but he forgot to write that the whole concept was developed and detailed by Jan Antonin Bata. The proof of this in in the writing of Antonin Cekota from many years earlier where he credits J.A. Bata with coming up with the idea. Apparently Mr. Herman missed this crucial point.
Jan Šinágl, 31.8.2016
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