The Stankiewicz Family lived there, after the return from imprisonment in Syberia for the involvement in the January Uprising of 1863 against the occupying Poland the Czar's Russia.

During World War I he was initially a navigation officer on board the Russian armoured cruiser Riurik, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet.

In 1923 he returned to the high seas as one of the officers on board Lwów, a barque serving as a school ship during her voyage to Brazil.

One of the most experienced captains in the Polish Merchant Marine, in 1931 he became the commanding officer of the prestigious, yet obsolete ocean liners Pułaski and Polonia.

M/S Piłsudski commenced her last voyage as an ocean liner on a Gdynia – Copenhagen – Halifax – New York City route on 11 August 1939.

She was then commandeered by the Polish Navy, renamed ORP Piłsudski and moved to a shipyard in northern England, where she was turned into a troopship.

However, on 26 November 1939, during her maiden voyage in the new role, the Australia-bound ORP Piłsudski was struck by two explosions from German torpedoes and sank not far from Newcastle and Kingston-upon-Hull.