Pamir (ship)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Image:Viermastbark Pamir.jpg Image:Pamir Modell.jpg
Pamir was one of the famous Flying P-Liner sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. She was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. On 21 September 1957 she was caught in Hurricane Carrie and sank off the Azores, with only six survivors recovered after an extensive rescue effort. The disaster received international media attention.
Contents |
[edit] History
The four-masted barque was built at the Blohm + Voss shipyards in Hamburg where she was launched on 29 July 1905. She had a steel hull and tonnage of 3,020 GRT (2,777 net). With an overall length of 114.5 m (375 ft), she had 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 28 m (92 ft) wide. She carried a total of 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 8-9 knots.
Pamir was the fifth of 10 near sister ships. She was commissioned on 18 October 1905 and used by the Laeisz company in the South American nitrate trade. Until 1914 she made eight 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. Due to war conditions the ship returned to Hamburg not until 1920 where she arrived on March 17, 1920. Than she had to be handed over to Italy as war reparation in the same year. On July 15, 1920, the proud barque left Hamburg via Rotterdam to Naples towed by tugs. But the Italian government was unable to find a deep-water sailing ship crew, so she was laid up near Castellamare, Gulf of Naples.
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 Gustaf Erikson which used her in the Australian grain trade.
In World War II, Pamir was seized as a war prize by New Zealand on 3 August 1941, while in port in Wellington. Subsequently, she made 10 commercial voyages under the New Zealand ensign. Five voyages were made to San Fransisco, three to Vancouver, one to Sydney and one from Wellington to London via Cape Horn and thence from Antwerp to Auckland in 1948 and subsequently back to Wellington.
In 1948, she was returned to Erikson and made one last voyage from New Zealand to South Australia. On her journey back to Finland, she became the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949.
In 1950, she was saved from the scrapyard 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, both 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. For the Pamir, this never happened.
[edit] The last voyage
Image:Pamir memorial in St Jakob's Church, Lübeck.jpg
On August 10, 1957 the Pamir left Buenos Aires for Hamburg with a crew of 86, including 52 cadets. Her cargo of 3,780 tons of barley was stored loose in the holds and ballast tanks, secured by 255 tons in sacks stacked on top of the loose grain. On September 21, 1957, the ship was caught in Hurricane Carrie and soon listed severely to port, causing the grain cargo to shift. It is still being debated whether a leak may have contributed to the ship's listing, a claim first made by the shipping company's lawyer in the subsequent investigation.
She was able to send distress signals before capsizing at 13:03 local time and sinking within 30 minutes in the middle of the Atlantic 600 sea miles west-southwest of the Azores at position 35°57' N and 40°20' W. No life boats were deployed. Three damaged life boats which did not contain provisions or working distress signal rockets, and a life raft, were drifting nearby. Many sharks were later seen near the position.
A nine-day search for survivors was organized by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Absecon, but only four crewmen and two cadets were rescued alive from two of the life boats. As none of the officers nor the captain survived, the reasons for the capsizing remained uncertain. The shipwreck was perceived as a tragedy around the world and received extensive press coverage.
Another member of the original crew, cadet Eckart Roch who was aboard on the outward journey to Argentina, survived due to a severe fall that forced him to stay in a Buenos Aires hospital.
[edit] Captains of the Pamir
- 1905-1908 Carl Martin Prützmann (DE)
- 1908-1911 Heinrich Horn (DE)
- 1911-1912 Robert Miethe (DE)
- 1912-1913 Gustav A. H. H. Becker (DE)
- 1913-1914 Wilhem Johann Ehlert (DE)
- 1914-1920 Jürgen Jürs (DE)
- 1920-1921 C. Ambrogi (IT)
- 1924-1925 Jochim Hans Hinrich Nissen (DE)
- 1925-1926 Heinrich Oellrich (DE)
- 1926-1929 Carl Martin Brockhöft (DE)
- 1929-1930 Robert Clauß (DE)
- 1930-1931 Walter Schaer (DE)
- 1931-1932 Karl Gerhard Sjögren (FI)
- 1933-1936 Mauritz Mattson (FI)
- 1936-1937 Uno Mörn (FI)
- 1937-1937 Linus Lindvall (FI)
- 1937-1941 Verner Björkfelt (FI)
- 1942-1943 Christopher Stanick (NZ)
- 1943-1944 David McLeish (NZ)
- 1944-1945 Roy Champion (NZ)
- 1946-1946 Desmond Champion (NZ)
- 1946-1948 Horace Stanley Collier (NZ)
- 1948-1949 Verner Björkfelt (FI)
- 1951-1952 Paul Greiff (DE)
- 1955-1957 Hermann Eggers (DE)
- 1957 Johannes Diebitsch (DE)
[edit] Films
- Heinrich Hauser: Die letzten Segelschiffe [The Last Sailing Ships] (1930).
- Bill Colleran, Louis De Rochemont III: Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich (1958). Includes the last footage that exists of the Pamir.
- Heinrich Klemme: Die Pamir [The Pamir] (1959). Using footage from the W.P. Bloch (1952) and Heinrich Hauser (1930) films.
- (A clip from the film can be seen on the website of the German Navigation Museum (in German) - click on the pictures on the right.)
- Kaspar Heidelbach: Der Untergang der Pamir [The Loss of the Pamir] (2006).
[edit] External links
- German Navigation Museum (in German) offers a clip from the Heinrich Klemme film Die Pamir (1959), which uses original footage of the Pamir from the Hauser (1930) and Colleran (1958) films (click on the pictures to the right)
- Pamir Memorial, an excellent web site in German, French, and English, with lots of images.
- Rescue report, pictures of the survivors
- Chronology
- The Pamir in New Zealand
- Characteristics of the Pamir on www.bruzelius.info/nautica
- A Chilean report on the shipwreck on www.caphorniers.cl (in English).
- Pamir (in Finnish).
[edit] 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.
