Penarth Dock, South Wales - the heritage and legacy

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

It was thus that a ship on the Atlantic run was fortunate enough to find Dümmer’s boat with its five shipwrecked survivors. Later, another ship under an American flag shared the good fortune of the former and sighted another Pamir boat, which by this time only had Günther Haselbach on board, the only witness of what had happened to his group. For ten days North American planes continued to fly over the indicated area, but found nothing, not even bodies.

Reflections - From a psychological point of view, faced with cases of survival under such extreme conditions, it is worthwhile remembering certain valid opinions.

Dr. Alain Bombard in an interview given to the press, regarding the Pamir accident, stated that it was inadmissible that healthy, strong and trained young men should succumb to such an extent under that type of circumstances, and that, instead of dying of hunger and cold, they had given up their lives from fear.

Moreover, Captain Héctor E. Bonzo, Commander of the ARA General Belgrano, torpedoed in the war of the Falklands, commented that the survivors of this cruiser drank practically no water and consumed no rations on the life rafts during the two or three days they awaited rescue. In Comandante Bonzo’s opinion this was due to the fact that the crewmen involved were well fed at the time of the attack, and therefore their concern as shipwrecked survivors was centered more on the problem of the cold, which caused more deaths, as they were on rafts with no more than three occupants. There were problems also with burnt crewmen incapable of feeding themselves, and others affected by seasickness due to the roughness of the sea.

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