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Pamir (ship)

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Pamir (ship)

Pamir was a four-masted barque built for the German shipping company F. Laeisz. One of their famous Flying P-Liners, named after the Pamir Mountains, she was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. By 1957, she had been outmoded by modern bulk carriers and could not operate at a profit. Her shipping consortium's inability to finance much-needed repairs or to recruit sufficient sail-trained officers caused severe technical difficulties. On 21 September 1957, she was caught in Hurricane Carrie and sank off the Azores, with only six survivors rescued after an extensive search.

She was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg, 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 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.

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. From October 1914, she stayed in Santa Cruz de la Palma port in La Palma Island, Canary Islands. Due to post war conditions, she did not return from Santa Cruz de la Palma 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 her 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 Australian 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 made under the New Zealand flag: five to San Francisco, three to Vancouver, one to Sydney and her last voyage across the Tasman from Sydney to Wellington carrying 2,700 tons of cement and 400 tons of nail wire. Weathering a storm during the last Tasman voyage is described in detail by one of the mates, Andrew Keyworth, in a letter never posted.

She escaped the war unscathed despite a close call in 1943 when a Japanese submarine was spotted. Evidently as a fast-moving barque under a strong and fair wind, she did not interest the submarine's commander. After the war, she made one voyage from Wellington via Cape Horn to London, then Antwerp to Auckland and Wellington in 1948.

She 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.

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