Marshall Tito’s was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, who served in various roles from 1943 until his death in 1980, his yacht called ‛Galeb’ was used by him from 1952 till his time of death, and now it’s going to be turned into a museum after a long time.
After Tito's death, it became the property of the Montenegrin government following the nation's breakup in 1991; it was sold to John Paul Papanicolaou, the same Greek yachtsman who owned the yacht Christina O.
Ten years ago, Galeb was auctioned by the state, her starting price was £85,000 pretty cheap, but her cultural heritage status meant she would have fetched at least £155,000.
10 years later, she was bought by the city of Rijeka, which recently announced plans to turn her into a floating museum with a cost over £8M.
The ship (Galeb) was built in Genoa, Italy in 1938 by Ansaldo Company and it started life as an auxiliary cruiser, destined for service in the banana trade between Africa and Italy, it was called `Ramb III´. After the armistice in 1943, it was taken over by the Germans and turned it into a minelayer under the name `Kiebitz´, but just one year later in 1944, Galeb was sunk in Rijeka on November 25th, 1944 by Allied aircraft.
After that, it was taken to the Pula ship building company Uljanik, where in 1952 it was reconstructed as a school ship of the Yugoslav Navy under her current name. Tito embarked on it for the first time in 1952 in Podgora, and during the next 27 years, Galeb was in Tito’s service for a total of 549 days, of which, for 318 days it was sailing 86,062 nautical miles (159,387 km) over the Adriatic and other seas on political missions on board.