Volume Eight - Pre-Victorian to the present day - more aspects - Passat & Pamir at Penarth Dock - A Photo Album - 1948 - 1951

	The starboard jigger rigging and the flying bridge from the fo'c'sle head. Fine photographs of the sailing vessel 'Passat' at Avonmouth Docks during October 1948 and open to visitors.

Why was the 'Passat' at Avonmouth Docks? The following newspaper article from a Bristol paper published on the 12th October 1948 explains:-

The Story of the Passat - Lady Artist's Memories - 'The largest sailing ship still in commission, the four-masted Finnish barque Passat, will be towed into Avonmouth docks on this-afternoon's tide by the 1,000 horse-power Bristol tug, Queen Garth, which has brought her from Falmouth, and tomorrow work will begin on unloading the 3,500 tons of Australian wheat which she has brought on her 149-days voyage from Port Victoria.

This morning the Passat will lie in King Rd., while another tug goes out to help bring her into dock. Among her crew of 35 is an eight-months-old baby born at sea.

These following details of the ship's last trip round the world were given exclusively to the 'Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror' by Mrs Hilda Luetken Bengtsson, a young Danish artist, wife of Swedish journalist, both of whom are now in Bristol. Mrs Bengstsson spent an adventurous 83 days on the Passat last year during her 14,000-mile voyage from Sweden to Cape Town, the first lap of her outward voyage to Australia.

"Passat" means trade winds and the ship, a four-masted barque, with her 4,700 tons d.w., is the biggest of her kind left in the world. She belongs to the famous Finnish Aaland barques of the Gustaf Ericson Company. Before the war Gustaf Ericson owned 26 sailing ships, now there are only a few of these real windjammers left. The Pamir, the Viking, which were in England not long ago, the Lawhill, the Archibald Russell and Passat - those are the only ones remaining. Passat has the reputation of being one of the fastest of the ships, and once won the great race between Australia and England.

The Passat left Europe two years ago, bound for South africa with lumber as cargo.