Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - Pamir and Passat - the end of an era . . .

They were a well matched pair. Passat, which Erickson had bought from Laiesz in 1932, was at 2,870 tons, 150 tons lighter and six years younger and said to be slightly faster in ballast. Fully laden and skillfully sailed, there was little to choose between them.

As the barques loaded a total of 120,000 sacks of barley in Port Victoria before what would be the last voyage around Cape Horn by freight-carrying sailing ships, the resulting publicity was beyond Edgar Erickson's wildest dreams. When he asked for volunteers to make up crew numbers he received over 500 applications in less than a week.

One came from my cousin, 22 year-old Gerry Rodger, recently demobbed from the Australian navy. 'I was in an Adelaide bar when I heard it on the radio. I'd had a few beers and I thought 'Let's go for it'. I was bored with civilian life and hadn't really settled to anything. When I heard I had been accepted for Pamir I was stone-cold sober and wondered what the hell I had let myself in for.'

He soon found out. He was in a ship with no auxiliary power, no electricity or heat and no electronic navigation equipment. He slept in a dank fo'c'sle lit by a single paraffin lamp and ate an unvarying diet of salted meat, beans and oatmeal.

Nothing in Gerry Rodger's four years of active service in the Pacific had prepared him for what he described as 'six thousand miles of hell' - a 33-day slog through the southern ocean to Cape Horn.

'We hated the days and nights of climbing 180 feet into the screaming rigging hanging on to the ice-coated shrouds as the sails literally tore the skin from our hands. We were cold, wet and tired . . . always tired. For 12 days I didn't take off my clothes. One night a 40 ft sea stove in the skylights and we bailed and pumped for hours.'

The Great Adventure Ends - After 16,000 miles and over four months at sea, Pamir dropped anchor in Falmouth Roads and the great adventure was over. 'It didn't matter that Passat had beaten us by two days. Despite the danger and discomfort, that voyage was the greatest experience of my life.'

Sadly, the epic race did little to change the financial tide for Erickson and the decision was made to scrap the sailing fleet and concentrate on refrigerated motor ships.