Pamir (ship)

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The barque Pamir
The barque Pamir
Model of the Pamir
Model of the Pamir

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.

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[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

Pamir memorial in St Jakob's Church, Lübeck, showing one of the lifeboats
Pamir memorial in St Jakob's Church, Lübeck, showing one of the lifeboats

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 the morning of September 21, 1957, the ship was caught in Hurricane Carrie before having shortened sails. Pamir soon listed severely to port. As hatchways and other openings were not closed at once, they probably allowed considerable amounts of water to enter the ship, as found by the commission who later examined the causes of the following wreckage. Another view has been suggested by the shipping company's lawyer in the subsequent investigation, who claims that the water entered the ship instead due to a leak. According to the commission, the water caused both Pamir to list further and the grain cargo to shift, which in turn aggravated the list.

For some reason the captain did not order to flood Pamir's grain-filled ballast tanks, which would have helped the ship to right herself again. Once Pamir listed severely, no lifeboats could be deployed because her port was already under water, and her starboard side was raised in an angle that did not allow to deploy boats.

Pamir 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, 40°20′W. Three damaged lifeboats, which had gotten loose before or during the capsizing, and the only liferaft that had been deployed, did not contain any provisions or working distress signal rockets, were drifting nearby. Many sharks were later seen near the position.

A nine-day search for survivors was organized by the United States Coast Guard cutter Absecon, but only four crewmen and two cadets were rescued alive from two of the lifeboats. 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, but originally not always accurate, press coverage. For example, the newspaper The New Zealand Herald reported shortly after the disaster, supposedly directly based on the survivor "Gunter Hasselback" (his real name was Günther Haselbach):

‘The Loss of the Pamir’
Last of the ‘P’ Line
“Overwhelmed in a hurricane off the Azores on September 21 1957, - complement of about 80 crew and training cadets – 5 survivors picked up on Tuesday, 24th. Survivors tell of how terror struck into the hearts of the naval cadets in the Pamir when huge waves tossed her around like a shuttle cock. Her cargo of wheat shifted and she took on a 45 degree list. Her crew fought to right her and to calm the cadets who were making their first sea voyage, but hysteria gripped them. The captain (Diebitsch) led the cadets in prayer but it was impossible to calm them. He ordered them away in three boats with three experienced hands in each. As the boats were launched they were caught by the mountainous waves and sent hurtling hundreds of feet away from the ship. The boats had hardly been launched when the masts snapped and her sails were blown away. The pounding of the seas and the drag of the masts and rigging over the side, heeled the ship over further and further. It was now impossible to keep the Pamir’s bows head into the wind – she was lying broadside on. There was no time to send another SOS (aerials were down) – the end was here. In the trough of a giant wave she rolled right over and we last saw her was her bottom up and going down by the bow like a submarine slowly diving. The few men who were still on board when she capsized were struggling in the water. I don’t know how we got away but it seemed to me that our lifeboat was the only one successfully launched. We had no flares or smoke signals that worked. I could see nothing of the three boats in which the cadets had been put out from the ship. Seventeen of the men in my boat were washed overboard in the hurricane while rescue aircraft were flying overhead above the storm. Three others, screaming like demons, jumped overboard into the sea on Monday afternoon. I was too weak to stop them. If you had not found me on Tuesday, I would have done the same thing myself.”
Gunter Hasselback

The facts, as reported by the survivors, look quite different: It is not certain when the grain cargo shifted; the sea cadets had already gone from Hamburg to Buenos Aires before they started the return trip; survivors reported that the crew stayed very calm until close to the loss of the ship because the ship was believed to be save—in fact, cadets were even reported to have complained when ordered to put on life jackets; the lifeboats were reported to have detached unplanned instead of having been deployed; Pamir's masts did not break; some sails may have "blown away", but others were shortened or cut off by the crew; the ship sent her last understandable SOS call at 11:54, and another call at 12:03, which could not be understood anymore, before she capsized around 12:00 pm; the crew remained on board until the ship capsized; the survivor Haselbach actually reported that ten people had still been in his lifeboat 24 hours before he was rescued (i.e. after the hurricane calmed down and could have "washed" them overboard).[1]

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

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

(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.)

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[edit] References

  • Churchouse, Jack (1978) The Pamir under the New Zealand Ensign Millwood Press. ISBN 0908582048.
  • 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.
  1. ^ article in the newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger (24 September 1977). Warum ging die Pamir unter? (German; retrieved 15 November 2006)

Coordinates: 35°57′N, 40°20′W

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