Winter Park world traveler remembered

“This is not a story about me,” Mabel Wagner says, as she sits on a floral print couch in her Winter Park home. “This is about my husband.”

Only her mischievous white Scottish terrier lay curled up beside her as she speaks. No, she says, he’s not here, but with a glance around her living room, paired with the words she tells, the story of her late-husband, Wladek Wagner, begins to take life.

Three model ships float in descending size order above her windowsill, and another, the largest, is docked on the mantle. Hung beside them are an aged and yellowing drawn portrait, a sailor cap and plaques in both Polish and English commemorating a man’s journey around the world. On the other walls hang pictures and paintings of the sea.

“I was not there,” she says. “This is entirely his story. I’m just the one here now to tell it.”

In seven years, from 1932 to 1939, Wladek Wagner became the first Polish sailor to circumnavigate the globe. In 2012, 100 years since his birth, 80 years since his sailing voyage began, and 20 years since his death, the Polish and global sailing communities have joined together to celebrate and commemorate Wagner’s accomplishments.

From Friday, Jan. 20, through Monday, Jan. 23, more than 50 ships and 300 sailors descended upon Trellis Bay in the British Virgin Islands, where the Wagners called home for eight years before eventually landing in Winter Park, for the Wagner Sailing Rally 2012, held to honor the late captain.

In 1931, inspired by Poland’s relatively new access to the sea following World War I, Wagner purchased his first boat, a 29-foot motored sailboat he found half buried in sand on the coast of Gdynia, Poland, for the rough equivalent of $4. He spent months of labor and love making it sea-worthy.

Sentimental for the history and hardships endured by the Polish people, Wagner wrote in journals that it was his dream to sail the world, Polish flag at mast, exposing the colors to all parts and people of the world.

“In his pride for his country, he decided he was going to do something and show the Polish flag to places it had never been before,” his wife said.

A replica of this first boat, named the Zjawa I — pronounced “Zava” and meaning like a ghost or phantom — is the smallest of the three ships that hang above Mabel Wagner’s window. It is the boat, she says, that started her husband’s journey around the world, getting him through the first leg from Poland to South America.

There would be two more Zjawas before his mission was complete: Zjawa II to get him from South America to Australia, and the third, after sailing back to South America to build it, took him the rest of the way — or at least as close as he could get — to his homeland of Poland.

In 1939, with more than 50,000 miles sailed, Wagner was ready to return to Poland a world traveler, but was met just short of docking at the harbor with news that his country had been once again invaded by Germany under communist rule. It was news, his wife says, that saddened the man to his very core, and hung with him for the remainder of his life.

“When I met him (in Great Britain in 1945) he was very shy and humble, never boasting about anything though he had a lot to be proud of,” she said. “But there was a certain sadness behind it all that I learned to recognize as the collapse of all of his dreams for his country.”

Wladek Wagner would never return to Poland.

In 1987, the Wagners published a book, “By the Sun and Stars”, named for the sailing equipment Captain Wagner used in his journey, documenting his circumnavigation of the globe.

After Wladek suffered a debilitating stroke in 1982, Mabel got to work translating his Polish manuscripts into English, while coaching him to continue to type out his memoir using one finger of his still-able left hand.

“I used the book to stimulate his mind and give him a project to keep things alive,” she said. “…I wanted to see that book in his hands, to have him know his story was told.”

A hero’s welcome

A book was not enough to honor Captain Wagner, Andrzej Piotrowski, a Polish sailor living in America, decided. For the 20 years since Wagner’s death, Piotrowski said he sought to bring honor and conclusion to Wladek Wagner’s journey.

In September 2011, amid the realization of the significance of anniversaries related to Wagner coming up in 2012, he along with other Polish sailors from across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and of course, Poland, decided to hold a sailing rally in his honor.

“He is the first Pole to sail around the world; he is one of our heroes,” Piotrowski said. “He has the spirit and skills that all other Polish sailors should look to.”

Still on her couch in Winter Park, not able to travel to the celebration due to health concerns, Mabel Wagner makes a phone call to a friend of a friend who was in attendance to the rally in the British Virgin Islands.

“It was amazing!” Trish Bailey says on the other end of the phone. “It was really, truly wonderful. The harbor was filled with Polish flags!”

Mabel’s face instantly glows, a smile bigger than any seen that afternoon. Her hand reaches to cover her face, then to dab brimming tears from behind her glasses.

“I was so glad to hear the Polish people were doing this for him after all this time,” she said. “I feel we have finally sent him back to Poland.”