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Pamir (ship)

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The Pamir on a 5p stamp of the Falkland Islands
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The Pamir on a 5p stamp of the Falkland Islands

Pamir was one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz.

Contents

History

The four-masted barque had a steel hull and was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg, where she was launched on July 29, 1905. She had an overall length of 114.5 m (375 ft), a beam of about 14 m (46 ft) and a draught of 7.25 m (23.5 ft). Her three masts stood 51.2 m (168 ft) above deck and the main yard was some 28 m (92 ft) wide. She had a tonnage of 3,020 GRT (2,777 net). She carried a total of some 3,800 m² (40,900 ft²) of sails and could reach a top speed of 16 knots (30 km/h). Her regular cruise speed was around 13 knots.

Pamir was the third of eight sister ships. She was commissioned on October 18, 1905 and used by the Laeisz company in the South American nitrate trade. Until 1914 she made 8 cruises to Chile, taking between 64 and about 70 days for a one-way trip from Hamburg to Valparaíso or Iquique, the foremost Chilean nitrate ports of the time. During World War I, she stayed in port in the Canary Islands, and was handed over to Italy as war reparation in 1920. In 1924, the F. Laeisz company bought her back for a price of £ 7,000 and put her into service in the nitrate trade again.

In 1931, Laeisz sold her to the Finnish shipping company of Gustav Erikson which used her in the Australian wheat trade.

In World War II, Pamir was seized as a war prize by New Zealand on August 3, 1941, while the ship was in port in Wellington. Subsequently, she made 10 commercial trips between New Zealand and San Francisco and embarked 1947 - 1948 on a trip around the world.

In 1948, she was returned to Erikson and made one last voyage to Australia. On her journey to Finland, she was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn in 1949.

In 1950, the ship was about to be scrapped, but was saved from that fate by a German shipowner who bought her and the Passat (often erroneously believed to be a sister of Pamir). She was modernized, retrofitted with an auxiliary engine and used as a cargo and sail-training ship on the route to Argentina.

In 1954, the ships were bought by a German consortium. They made five more voyages, but since they were no longer profitable, they were to be decommissioned after their last voyage in 1957.

The last voyage

On August 10, 1957, Pamir set sail from Buenos Aires bound for Hamburg. She carried a crew of 86, including 52 cadets. Due to a docker strike, most of the cargo of 3,780 tons of barley was stored loose in the holds and ballast tanks. Only 255 tons were stored in sacks, placed on top of the loose grain to hold it in place. On September 21, 1957, the ship got caught in Hurricane Carrie and soon was listing severely to port because the loose grain in her cargo had shifted. She was able to send distress signals before she capsized at 13:03 local time and sank within thirty minutes in the middle of the Atlantic.

The search for survivors lasted nine days and was organized by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Absecon. However, only 4 crewmen and two cadets were rescued alive. The shipwreck was perceived as a tragedy around the world and received extensive press coverage.

Captains of the Pamir

External links

References

Parrott, Daniel. (2003). Tall Ships Down - the last voyages of the Pamir, Albatross, Marques, Pride of Baltimore and the Maria Asumpta. McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-07-139092-8.

 

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