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

Once in the Atlantic, the white cloth filled with the wind like the wishful hearts of her young crewmen, her bow plowed the sea, breaking the silence of the crimson evening fading away in the west. The Pamir, one of the last exponents of that magic life under sail, was to submerge forever in the immensities of the sea and time. Her cargo holds carried grain; and on board were 51 German merchant navy cadets, apart from the 35 crew members.

The breeze blew moderately. Suddenly its intensity increased, without the men giving it much importance, thinking that it was only gusts of wind. However the master, Captain Johannes Diebitsch, an old mariner who had spent almost fifty years at sea, raced on deck and voiced: "Shorten the sails". No one on board imagined how this episode would end; the Pamir, like a bird in a gale, had always come proudly through any storm. The wind continued to fill the sails with such force that the sailing ship appeared to fly. Great waves beat violently against her hull, making her list heavily to port; her sails began to split with loud sounds of ripping, and at the same time her top rigging parted like clumsily tightened guitar strings.

Shorten faster!", shouted Diebitsch, while attempting to turn the ship’s bow into the wind; but she was already dismantled with her hull leaning heavily on the sea attempting, like a wounded bird, to rest her tired planking and sails. The officer on watch with a monochord voice, announced the list: "30º - 38º - 40º..."; giving the impression that the once majestic Pamir would never right herself again; the men looked at each other without saying a word, until finally the moment came when Captain Diebitsch ordered a distress call, that life vests be served and to abandon ship.

Cigarettes and some bottles of liquor were distributed. When they tried to lower the boats, however, they found that the portside ones lay below the surface and it was impossible to lower the ones on the opposite side because of the sharp angle of the ship’s list. There were also three inflatable life rafts, but two of them could not be found. The third was launched in the water and about twenty men raced to it immediately. The Pamir capsized; five men climbed onto her hull confident that it would not sink, but the heavy steel ship sank into the waters of the Atlantic at 11:15 on 21st September 1957.

The Survivors - The group of survivors who remained in the inflatable raft suddenly saw one of the sailing ship’s boats, and swam until they reached it and they all helped to right it, only to find it completely dismantled and lacking its oars. If its compartments had not been watertight, it would also have gone under.