Pamir (ship)
Encyclopedia
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. Outmoded by modern bulk-carriers, and having severe technical difficulties after her shipping consortium was unable to finance much-needed repairs and recruit sufficient capable officers, 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.
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). 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). 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 (31.4 km/h). Her regular cruise speed was around 8-9 knots.
She 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 voyages 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 at the time. During World War I
she stayed in port in the Canary Islands
. Due to after-war conditions, she did not return to Hamburg until 17 March 1920.
In the same year she was handed over to Italy
as war reparation. On 15 July 1920, she left Hamburg via Rotterdam
to Naples
towed by tugs. The Italian government was unable to find a deep-water sailing ship crew, so she was laid up near Castellamare
in the Gulf of Naples.
In 1924 the F. Laeisz Company bought Pamir back for £ 7,000 and put her into service in the nitrate trade again. Laeisz sold her in 1931 to the Finnish
shipping company of Gustaf Erikson
, which used her in the Australia
n wheat trade
.
During World War II
Pamir was seized as a prize of war
by the New Zealand
government on 3 August 1941 while in port at Wellington. Ten commercial voyages were subsequently made under the New Zealand flag: five to San Francisco, three to Vancouver, and one to Sydney. She escaped the war unscathed despite a close call in 1943 when a Japanese submarine was spotted. Evidently the fast-moving barque, under a strong and fair wind, did not interest the submarine's commander. After the war the ship made one voyage from Wellington via Cape Horn to London, then Antwerp to Auckland and Wellington in 1948.
Pamir was returned to the Erikson Line on 12 November 1948 at Wellington and sailed to Port Victoria on Spencer Gulf to load Australian grain. On her 128-day journey to Falmouth she was the last windjammer
carrying a commercial load around Cape Horn, on 11 July 1949.
Gustaf Erikson had died in 1947. His son Edgar found he could no longer operate either Pamir (or Passat
) at a profit, primarily due to changing regulations and union contracts governing employment aboard ships; the traditional 2-watch system on sailing ships was replaced by the 3-watch system in use on motor-ships, requiring more crew.
In March 1951, Belgian shipbreakers paid £ 40,000 for both Pamir and Passat. Just as Pamir was towed to the port of Antwerp, German shipowner Heinz Schliewen, who had sailed on Pamir in the late 1920s, bought her and Passat (thus often erroneously referred to as a sister ship). The two ships were modernized with refurbished quarters to accommodate merchant marine trainees, fitted with an auxiliary engine, a refrigeration system for the galleys (precluding the need to carry live animals for fresh meat), modern communications equipment and water ballast tanks. Pamirs first trip was to Brazil in 1952 with a load of cement, to return to Germany with iron ore. Early in the outbound voyage the engine propeller dropped off, "much to the satisfaction of the sail-favoring crew if not the owner." The enterprise went briefly bankrupt but was bought up by a newly organized consortium of forty German shipowners. For the next five years Pamir (and Passat) continued to sail between Europe and the east coast of South America, but not around Cape Horn. Both ships were used as cargo-carrying school ships on a route primarily to Argentina
. Although the German public supported the concept as maritime symbols and sources of national pride, the economic realities of the post-war years placed restraints on the operation. The ships were no longer profitable as freight haulers, and Pamir had increasing technical problems such as leaking decks and serious corrosion. The consortium management was unable to get sufficient increased funding from German governments or contributions from shipping companies or public donations, and thus let both vessels deteriorate.
Due to ill health, her regular captain, Hermann Eggers, had been replaced for the ill-fated last voyage by Captain Johannes Diebitsch, who had sailed on Pamir as a young seaman, had commanded sail-training ships, but had little experience as master of cargo carrying sailing ships. His first officer, Rolf Köhler, was only 29 at the time, and wrote that he was "getting thin with anger" over the state of the ship and that he was intending to quit the ship's company after arriving home from the next voyage. Captain Diebitsch was criticized for being a harsh and inflexible officer.
On 10 August 1957 the Pamir left Buenos Aires
for Hamburg with a crew of 86, including 52 cadets. Her cargo of 3,780 ton
s of barley
was stored loose in the holds and ballast tanks, secured by 255 tons in sacks stacked on top of the loose grain. Records indicate that this was one of the major mistakes implicated in the sinking of the ship – she had been held up by a dockworkers' strike, and Captain Diebitsch, under severe pressure to sail, decided to let the trimming (the correct storage of loose cargo so that it does not shift in the hold) be done by his own untrained crew. It was later found that he also had the ballast tank filled with barley. Even though testing of the roll period (the time the ship took to right itself after load transfers) showed that the ship was dangerously unsafe, Diebitsch decided to sail.
On the morning of 21 September 1957 the ship was caught in Hurricane Carrie before shortening sails. It was later considered that because the radio officer had also been given substantial administrative tasks (to save the money required for another officer's position), he had likely not received any of the radio storm warnings. Pamir had also not responded to radio hails by ships that had sighted her earlier in the voyage. She soon listed severely to port in the sudden storm. As hatchways and other openings were not closed at once, they probably allowed considerable amounts of water to enter, as found by the commission who examined the probable causes of the sinking. The shipping company's lawyer at the investigation claimed that the water entered the ship due to a leak. According to the commission, the water caused her to list further and the grain cargo to shift, which aggravated the list.
The captain did not order the flooding of her grain-filled ballast tanks, which would have helped her to right herself again. Once she listed severely, the lifeboats could not be deployed anymore because her port side was under water and her starboard side was raised to an angle that did not allow use of the boats.
Pamir was able to send distress signals before capsizing at 13:03 local time, and sinking after drifting keel-up for 30 minutes in the middle of the Atlantic 600 nautical miles (1,111.2 km) west-southwest of the Azores
at position 35°57′N 40°20′W. Three damaged lifeboats that 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
USCGC Absecon (WAVP-374)
, but only four crewmen and two cadets were rescued alive, from two of the lifeboats. It was reported that many of the 86 men aboard had managed to reach the boats, but most died in the next three days. As none of the officers nor the captain survived, the reasons for the capsizing remained uncertain.
The news of the sinking of Pamir made headlines around the world; it was a national tragedy in Germany.
reported the following fabrication mixing the real event with imagined details, supposedly directly based on the survivor "Gunter Hasselback" (his real name was Günther Haselbach):
The facts as reported by the survivors and established by the Seeamt Lübeck, the German authority that investigated the sinking, are that Haselbach was the only survivor rescued from the second lifeboat, not one of the five survivors found together as the article suggests; Pamir had a barley, not wheat, cargo. It is not certain when the grain cargo shifted; the official opinion of the investigation indicated it was early in the storm, but others have suggested it shifted only at the very end; the 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 - 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, and her engine was not used.
She 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 end. She sent her last audible SOS call at 12:54 and an indecipherable one at 13:03; she was capsizing around this time. At least one lifeboat broke free before the capsize; others detached briefly before or during the capsizing and sinking. Nobody boarded a lifeboat before she capsized, and nobody jumped overboard: when Pamir capsized, all 86 men were still on board.
Pamirs masts did not break nor did any yards or anything else fall down, so 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 when he was rescued. When she sank Pamir still had 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 - the existence of a third manned boat is only assumed, mostly on grounds of survivors' reports of seeing flares one night. Of the 20 or 22 men who were originally on Haselbach's boat, ten were still on board 24 hours before he was rescued, after the hurricane dissipated. The rescue aircraft could be deployed only after the storm had calmed down. The official documents, including a report by Haselbach during the hours after he was found, say nothing about people screaming when they left the lifeboats.article in the newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger (24 September 1977). Warum ging die Pamir unter? (German; retrieved 15 November 2006)
In addition, Pamir was not last of the ‘P’ Line, as the subtitle suggests. Passat was still in service, and other ‘P’ Liners still existed but not under sail, including the Kruzenshtern
(ex Padua) (the only ‘P’ Liner still under sail (again) as of today), the Peking
and the Pommern
.
Some accounts of the loss of the Pamir, mostly online, are based on earlier false coverage.
Flying P-Liner
The Flying P-Liners were the sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz of Hamburg.The company was founded in 1824 by Ferdinand Laeisz as a hat manufacturing company. He was quite successful and distributed his hats even in South America...
sailing ships of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
shipping company F. Laeisz. She was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn
Cape Horn
Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...
, in 1949. Outmoded by modern bulk-carriers, and having severe technical difficulties after her shipping consortium was unable to finance much-needed repairs and recruit sufficient capable officers, on 21 September 1957 she was caught in Hurricane Carrie and sank off the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
, with only six survivors recovered after an extensive rescue effort.
Early days and World War I
The four-masted barqueBarque
A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing vessel with three or more masts.- History of the term :The word barque appears to have come from the Greek word baris, a term for an Egyptian boat. This entered Latin as barca, which gave rise to the Italian barca, Spanish barco, and the French barge and...
was built at the Blohm & Voss
Blohm + Voss
Blohm + Voss , is a German shipbuilding and engineering works. It is a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems; there were plans to sell 80% of Blohm + Voss to Abu Dhabi Mar Group, but talks collapsed in July 2011.-History:It was founded on April 5, 1877, by Hermann Blohm and Ernst Voss as a...
shipyards in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, where she was launched on 29 July 1905. She had a steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
hull and tonnage of 3,020 GRT (2,777 net). 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). Three masts stood 51.2 m (168 ft) above deck and the main yard
Yard (sailing)
A yard is a spar on a mast from which sails are set. It may be constructed of timber, steel, or from more modern materials, like aluminium or carbon fibre. Although some types of fore and aft rigs have yards , the term is usually used to describe the horizontal spars used with square sails...
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 (31.4 km/h). Her regular cruise speed was around 8-9 knots.
She 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 voyages to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, taking between 64 and about 70 days for a one-way trip from Hamburg to Valparaíso
Valparaíso
Valparaíso is a city and commune of Chile, center of its third largest conurbation and one of the country's most important seaports and an increasing cultural center in the Southwest Pacific hemisphere. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Province and the Valparaíso Region...
or Iquique
Iquique
Iquique is a port city and commune in northern Chile, capital of both the Iquique Province and Tarapacá Region. It lies on the Pacific coast, west of the Atacama Desert and the Pampa del Tamarugal. It had a population of 216,419 as of the 2002 census...
, the foremost Chilean nitrate ports at the time. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
she stayed in port in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
. Due to after-war conditions, she did not return to Hamburg until 17 March 1920.
In the same year she was handed over to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
as war reparation. On 15 July 1920, she left Hamburg via Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
to Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
towed by tugs. The Italian government was unable to find a deep-water sailing ship crew, so she was laid up near Castellamare
Castellammare di Stabia
Castellammare di Stabia is a comune in the province of Naples, Campania region, southern Italy. It is situated on the Bay of Naples about 30 kilometers southeast of Naples, on the route to Sorrento.-History:...
in the Gulf of Naples.
In 1924 the F. Laeisz Company bought Pamir back for £ 7,000 and put her into service in the nitrate trade again. Laeisz sold her in 1931 to the Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
shipping company of Gustaf Erikson
Gustaf Erikson
Gustaf Adolf Mauritz Erikson was a ship-owner from Mariehamn, in the Åland islands, famous for the fleet of windjammers he operated to the end of his life, mainly on the grain trade from Australia to Europe....
, which used her in the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n wheat trade
Grain race
Grain Race or The Great Grain Race was the informal name for the annual windjammer sailing season generally from South Australia's grain ports on Spencer Gulf to Lizard Point, Cornwall on the southwesternmost coast of the United Kingdom, or to specific ports...
.
World War II and beyond
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Pamir was seized as a prize of war
Prize of war
A prize of war is a piece of military property seized by the victorious party after a war or battle, typically at sea. This term was used nearly exclusively in terms of a captured ship during the 18th and 19th centuries....
by the New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
government on 3 August 1941 while in port at Wellington. Ten commercial voyages were subsequently made under the New Zealand flag: five to San Francisco, three to Vancouver, and one to Sydney. She escaped the war unscathed despite a close call in 1943 when a Japanese submarine was spotted. Evidently the fast-moving barque, under a strong and fair wind, did not interest the submarine's commander. After the war the ship made one voyage from Wellington via Cape Horn to London, then Antwerp to Auckland and Wellington in 1948.
Pamir was returned to the Erikson Line on 12 November 1948 at Wellington and sailed to Port Victoria on Spencer Gulf to load Australian grain. On her 128-day journey to Falmouth she was the last windjammer
Windjammer
A windjammer is the ultimate type of large sailing ship with an iron or for the most part steel hull, built to carry cargo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century...
carrying a commercial load around Cape Horn, on 11 July 1949.
Gustaf Erikson had died in 1947. His son Edgar found he could no longer operate either Pamir (or Passat
Passat (ship)
Passat is a German four-masted steel barque and one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. The name "Passat" means trade wind in German. She is one of the last surviving windjammers.-History:...
) at a profit, primarily due to changing regulations and union contracts governing employment aboard ships; the traditional 2-watch system on sailing ships was replaced by the 3-watch system in use on motor-ships, requiring more crew.
In March 1951, Belgian shipbreakers paid £ 40,000 for both Pamir and Passat. Just as Pamir was towed to the port of Antwerp, German shipowner Heinz Schliewen, who had sailed on Pamir in the late 1920s, bought her and Passat (thus often erroneously referred to as a sister ship). The two ships were modernized with refurbished quarters to accommodate merchant marine trainees, fitted with an auxiliary engine, a refrigeration system for the galleys (precluding the need to carry live animals for fresh meat), modern communications equipment and water ballast tanks. Pamirs first trip was to Brazil in 1952 with a load of cement, to return to Germany with iron ore. Early in the outbound voyage the engine propeller dropped off, "much to the satisfaction of the sail-favoring crew if not the owner." The enterprise went briefly bankrupt but was bought up by a newly organized consortium of forty German shipowners. For the next five years Pamir (and Passat) continued to sail between Europe and the east coast of South America, but not around Cape Horn. Both ships were used as cargo-carrying school ships on a route primarily to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. Although the German public supported the concept as maritime symbols and sources of national pride, the economic realities of the post-war years placed restraints on the operation. The ships were no longer profitable as freight haulers, and Pamir had increasing technical problems such as leaking decks and serious corrosion. The consortium management was unable to get sufficient increased funding from German governments or contributions from shipping companies or public donations, and thus let both vessels deteriorate.
Last voyage
On 10 August 1957 the Pamir left Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
for Hamburg with a crew of 86, including 52 cadets. Her cargo of 3,780 ton
Ton
The ton is a unit of measure. It has a long history and has acquired a number of meanings and uses over the years. It is used principally as a unit of weight, and as a unit of volume. It can also be used as a measure of energy, for truck classification, or as a colloquial term.It is derived from...
s of barley
Barley
Barley is a major cereal grain, a member of the grass family. It serves as a major animal fodder, as a base malt for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various health foods...
was stored loose in the holds and ballast tanks, secured by 255 tons in sacks stacked on top of the loose grain. Records indicate that this was one of the major mistakes implicated in the sinking of the ship – she had been held up by a dockworkers' strike, and Captain Diebitsch, under severe pressure to sail, decided to let the trimming (the correct storage of loose cargo so that it does not shift in the hold) be done by his own untrained crew. It was later found that he also had the ballast tank filled with barley. Even though testing of the roll period (the time the ship took to right itself after load transfers) showed that the ship was dangerously unsafe, Diebitsch decided to sail.
On the morning of 21 September 1957 the ship was caught in Hurricane Carrie before shortening sails. It was later considered that because the radio officer had also been given substantial administrative tasks (to save the money required for another officer's position), he had likely not received any of the radio storm warnings. Pamir had also not responded to radio hails by ships that had sighted her earlier in the voyage. She soon listed severely to port in the sudden storm. As hatchways and other openings were not closed at once, they probably allowed considerable amounts of water to enter, as found by the commission who examined the probable causes of the sinking. The shipping company's lawyer at the investigation claimed that the water entered the ship due to a leak. According to the commission, the water caused her to list further and the grain cargo to shift, which aggravated the list.
The captain did not order the flooding of her grain-filled ballast tanks, which would have helped her to right herself again. Once she listed severely, the lifeboats could not be deployed anymore because her port side was under water and her starboard side was raised to an angle that did not allow use of the boats.
Pamir was able to send distress signals before capsizing at 13:03 local time, and sinking after drifting keel-up for 30 minutes in the middle of the Atlantic 600 nautical miles (1,111.2 km) west-southwest of the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
at position 35°57′N 40°20′W. Three damaged lifeboats that 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
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
cutter
United States Coast Guard Cutter
Cutter is the term used by the United States Coast Guard for its commissioned vessels. A Cutter is or greater in length, has a permanently assigned crew, and has accommodations for the crew to live aboard...
USCGC Absecon (WAVP-374)
USCGC Absecon (WAVP-374)
USCGC Absecon , later WHEC-374, was a Casco-class United States Coast Guard Cutter in service from 1949 to 1972.-Construction and U.S. Navy service:...
, but only four crewmen and two cadets were rescued alive, from two of the lifeboats. It was reported that many of the 86 men aboard had managed to reach the boats, but most died in the next three days. As none of the officers nor the captain survived, the reasons for the capsizing remained uncertain.
The news of the sinking of Pamir made headlines around the world; it was a national tragedy in Germany.
Aftermath
False coverage
The shipwreck received extensive but not always accurate press coverage. For example, The New Zealand HeraldThe New Zealand Herald
- External links :* * *...
reported the following fabrication mixing the real event with imagined details, 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, the German authority that investigated the sinking, are that Haselbach was the only survivor rescued from the second lifeboat, not one of the five survivors found together as the article suggests; Pamir had a barley, not wheat, cargo. It is not certain when the grain cargo shifted; the official opinion of the investigation indicated it was early in the storm, but others have suggested it shifted only at the very end; the 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 - 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, and her engine was not used.
She 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 end. She sent her last audible SOS call at 12:54 and an indecipherable one at 13:03; she was capsizing around this time. At least one lifeboat broke free before the capsize; others detached briefly before or during the capsizing and sinking. Nobody boarded a lifeboat before she capsized, and nobody jumped overboard: when Pamir capsized, all 86 men were still on board.
Pamirs masts did not break nor did any yards or anything else fall down, so 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 when he was rescued. When she sank Pamir still had 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 - the existence of a third manned boat is only assumed, mostly on grounds of survivors' reports of seeing flares one night. Of the 20 or 22 men who were originally on Haselbach's boat, ten were still on board 24 hours before he was rescued, after the hurricane dissipated. The rescue aircraft could be deployed only after the storm had calmed down. The official documents, including a report by Haselbach during the hours after he was found, say nothing about people screaming when they left the lifeboats.article in the newspaper Kölner Stadtanzeiger (24 September 1977). Warum ging die Pamir unter? (German; retrieved 15 November 2006)
In addition, Pamir was not last of the ‘P’ Line, as the subtitle suggests. Passat was still in service, and other ‘P’ Liners still existed but not under sail, including the Kruzenshtern
Kruzenshtern (ship)
The Kruzenshtern or Krusenstern is a four masted barque and tall ship that was built in 1926 at Geestemünde in Bremerhaven, Germany as the Padua . She was surrendered to the USSR in 1946 as war reparation and renamed after the early 19th century Baltic German explorer in Russian service, Adam...
(ex Padua) (the only ‘P’ Liner still under sail (again) as of today), the Peking
Peking (ship)
The Peking is a steel-hulled four-masted barque — the sister ship to the Passat. A so-called Flying P-Liner of the German company F...
and the Pommern
Pommern (ship)
The Pommern, formerly the Mneme , is a windjammer. She is a four-masted barque that was built in 1903 in Glasgow at the J. Reid & Co shipyard....
.
Some accounts of the loss of the Pamir, mostly online, are based on earlier false coverage.
Insurance
In a tragically ironic twist of fate, the last voyage of the Pamir was the only one in her school ship career during which she made a profit, as the insurance sum of about 2.2 million Deutsche Mark was sufficient to cover the company losses for that year. While there was no indication that this was the intention of the consortium, which was never legally blamed for the sinking, it was considered much later by researchers that through its neglect it was at least strongly implicated in the loss.Captains
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In media
- Die letzten Segelschiffe ("The Last Sailing Ships", 1930, directed by Heinrich Hauser).
- Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich (1958, directed by Bill Colleran and Louis De Rochemont III. Includes the last existing footage of the Pamir.)
- Die Pamir ("The Pamir", 1959, directed by Heinrich Klemme. Using footage from the W.P. Bloch (1952) and Heinrich Hauser (1930) films.)] - click on the pictures on the right.)
- Der Untergang der Pamir ("The Loss of the Pamir", 2006, directed by Kaspar Heidelbach).
- Pamir Memorial
External links
- German Navigation Museum (in German) has 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)
- Rescue report, pictures of the survivors
- Chronology
- The Pamir in New Zealand
- Characteristics of the Pamir
- A Chilean report on the shipwreck (in English).
- Pamir Memorial (in French, English, Deutsch).
- Foundation Netherlands' Cape Horners (Dutch)
- 1948 film of Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) visit to the Pamir at Shadwell Basin in London