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 ten near sister ships. She was commissioned on 18 October 1905 and used by the Laeisz company in the South American nitrate trade. By 1914 she had 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 did not return to Hamburg until March 17, 1920.

In the same year she was handed over to Italy as war reparation. 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 wheat trade.

During 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 Francisco, 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 (thus often erroneously referred as 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 as freighters, they were to be decommissioned after their last voyage in 1957. Sadly, 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 come 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.

Another member of the original crew who was aboard on the outward journey to Argentina, cadet Eckart Roch, survived because a severe fall forced him to stay behind in a Buenos Aires hospital.

[edit] Press coverage and false accounts of the facts

The shipwreck was perceived as a tragedy around the world and received extensive, but 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 and established by the Seeamt Lübeck, a German authority that investigated the case, look quite different: Haselbach was not one of the five survivors found together as the article suggests, but the only survivor rescued from a second life boat. Pamir did not have a wheat, but a barley cargo. It is not certain when the grain cargo shifted; the official opinion of the subsequent investigation indicated it was early in the storm, others have suggested it only shifted at the very end. The sea cadets had already gone from Hamburg to Buenos Aires before they started the return trip.

The survivors reported that crew and cadets stayed very calm until close to the loss of the ship because the ship was not believed to be in difficulties at all—in fact, cadets were still taking photographs, and supposedly some complained when ordered to put on life jackets. Even at the very end, there was no panic. Pamir was not going head into the wind at any time; her engine was not even used at all.

The ship was mounted more and more to the wind, with waves (which were coming somewhat more from abaft ["behind"]) hitting roughly from the side. Radio contact was maintained until the very end. The ship sent her last audible SOS call at 12:54, and another indecipherable call at 13:03; the ship was capsizing around this time. The lifeboats could not be launched at all because of the severe list. At least one boat broke free before the capsize; others detached briefly before or during the capsizing and sinking. Nobody mounted a lifeboat before Pamir capsized, and nobody jumped over board before; in other words, when Pamir capsized, all 86 men were still on board.

Pamir's masts did not break nor did any yards or anything else fall down; consequently, nothing was dragging to the side. Some sails were left until they were blown out, but others were shortened or cut off by the crew; the headsail had to be cut with knives before it would blow out. The boat that Haselbach reached was badly damaged (as were the other two that were salvaged) and almost entirely submerged under water when he was rescued. In the end, Pamir had still set about a third of the mizzen sail and some tarpaulin in the shrouds of the mizzen mast.

Nothing indicates that four boats were manned, in fact, even the existence of a third manned boat is only assumed, mostly on grounds of survivors' reports to have seen flares one night. Of the 20 or 22 men who were originally on Haselbach's boat, ten had still been on board 24 hours before he was rescued—that is, after the hurricane dissipated. The rescue aircraft could only be deployed after the storm had calmed down. At least the official documents (including a report by Haselbach during the first hours after he was found) say nothing about people screaming when they left the lifeboats.[1]

In addition, Pamir was not last of the ‘P’ Line as the subtitle suggests. Passat was still in service at this time. Other ‘P’ Liners still existed albeit not under sail; those include the Kruzenshtern (ex Padua), today the only ‘P’ Liner under sail again, the Peking and the Pommern.

Some accounts of the loss of the Pamir—mostly, but not exclusively[2] online documents—are to this date based on earlier false coverage.

[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

(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. (not entirely accurate; for the loss of the Pamir, the author relies solely on secondary sources, not the documents of the official investigation)
  1. ^ Bericht des Seeamtes Lübeck: Der Untergang des Segelschulschiffes „Pamir“. Hamecher Verlag, Kassel, Germany, 1973.
    article in the newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger (24 September 1977). Warum ging die Pamir unter? (German; retrieved 15 November 2006)
  2. ^ for example: Parrott, Daniel. (2003). Tall Ships Down - the last voyages of the Pamir, Albatross, Marques, Pride of Baltimore and the Maria Asumpta.

Coordinates: 35°57′N, 40°20′W