Throughout the months of April and May, 1949, two of the world’s last and largest windjammers lay to anchors a mile or so off the shelving foreshore of Port Victoria in South Australia, loading grain destined for British millers half the globe away. In itself, this was not unusual. In the confusion, hurry, and uncertainty of the Atomic Age, the arrivals of these Finnish four-masted barques in ballast—Pamir from Wellington, New Zealand, and Passat from Port Talbot, Wales—had elicited little comment in the press. Nonetheless, their presence there and their subsequent departures, on May 28 and June 1 respectively, may well mark the end of a great era of human endeavor. It was certain that unless the over-all economic picture underwent a drastic change between that date and the time when they reported for orders in Queenstown, Ireland, or Falmouth or Plymouth, England, the last commercial voyage of a large square-rigged sailing vessel had been completed; the last wind ship had rounded Cape Horn scupper deep with grain; Gustaf Erikson’s houseflag has flown for the last time on a deep-water sailing vessel; and the last grain race has been run.
The Australian Grain Trade
To the 20th Century owner of sail tonnage, the most important such area in the world has been the wheat country surrounding Spencer Gulf, that ever shallowing arm of the Southern Ocean which penetrates some 180 miles northeastward into the barren and inhospitable plains of South Australia. Representing an important part of the 160,000,000 acres under grain cultivation in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia, this region has materially contributed to the $140,000,000 total received from the annual export of wheat which places Australia ninth in the list of wheat producing nations. Until the turn of the century, the bulk of this commodity went to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Japan, and the major portion of the 450,000,000 tons of flour shipped to England, Egypt, South Africa, and the East Indies was carried in the long holds of sailing craft. As more effective land transportation was adopted and the finest modern cargo-handling facilities were installed, the employment of sail tonnage became limited to the Gulf whose out-ports possess only the most rudimentary facilities for loading and no import business to attract the in-bound steamer.
The rolling plains and highlands which stretch north and northwest from Adelaide and which form the barren, treeless shoreline of Spencer Gulf are dotted with these little ports which consist, in most cases, of a few straggling shacks, a general store, a bank, a post office, and a public house. Because of their easy accessibility to the open sea, it has been usual for the inward bound windjammer to call at Port Lincoln, chief port of the Eyre Peninsula, inside the west entrance to the Gulf, or Port Victoria, the port of entry for the Yorke Peninsula up from the east entrance, and to load at these ports or proceed to the ballast grounds at Wallaroo, Port Broughton, Port Pirie, Port Germein, Port Augusta, or other, lesser, communities on the west side. For over 75 years these towns have been host to full-rigged ships, barquentines, barques, and four-masted barques, manned by men of every nation, who have annually foregathered in the choppy waters of the Gulf to load the season’s grain.
The Grain Race
Having discharged their ballast overside and loaded a few hundred tons of grain for stiffening, they then proceeded in to anchorages and jetties to complete cargoes of thousands of 200 pound burlap sacks of wheat conveyed to their gaping hatches by auxiliary ketches and schooners which ferried them out to the anchored vessels or by horse-drawn railway trucks which delivered them to the ship’s side along the extensive jetties, at least one of which runs a full mile seaward. Often freighted into the ketches by the farmers themselves, hoisted on board by the ship’s own gear, and stowed by the Charterer’s stevedores, the process of loading 4,700 long tons of bagged wheat, consisting of some 56,000 individual sacks in such a vessel as Passat, frequently consumed more than a month.
Then, laden deep, with hatches well battened down, they hove short on their anchors, sheeted home thousands of square feet of canvas, and with the wind in this to give them way set out on the 16,000 mile road of raging gales and irksome calms bound for English Channel ports three or four months distant. Unheralded and virtually unnoticed scores of tall and powerful Cape Horners have so slipped quietly to sea with no tug to help and no pilot to guide the way past the barren shores guarded by submerged reefs. Making their last landfall at Cape Borda on Kangaroo Island, one by one they disappeared into the mists of the Southern Ocean.
Owing to subsequent casualty, diversion to other trades, or scrapping, each year saw some sail never to return. On February 8, 1938, the lovely black-painted schoolship Admiral Karpfanger, a four-masted barque of 2,738 gross tons, glided out of Port Germein bound for Falmouth for orders on her first wheat passage for the Hamburg-Amerika Line of Hamburg, Germany. On March 1 she reported by wireless as being some 400 miles south and east of New Zealand and on the 12th she acknowledged receipt of a message containing birthday greetings to one of the cadets from his parents in Germany and from there sailed into the unknown. Since then nothing positively identifiable from the barque has ever come to light, and no word has come out of the empty ocean from the 68 men on board.
Upon entering the Southern Ocean, the homeward bound windjammer has the option of two clear routes, the master’s choice being usually dictated by weather conditions. On leaving the Gulf she can go eastward through the Backstairs Passage north of Kangaroo Island, or south of it, and then between Victoria and Tasmania through the Bass Strait, or south of Tasmania and, passing well to the southward of New Zealand, take the long rolling road to Cape Horn. Upon rounding Tierra Del Fuego, the southern tip of South America, and the small island off its southern end, which is the Horn, the 20th Century wind ship usually proceeded up the western South Atlantic, crossed the Line in the region of 30° West Longitude, passed up the central North Atlantic, swinging north of the Azores Islands and so into the chops of the Channel. Alternatively, she can run westward, passing to the south of Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, then cross the southern Indian Ocean and into the South Atlantic by way of the Cape of Good Hope near the southern extremity of Africa. She then passes up the eastern and central South Atlantic and often crosses the Equator in the same area as the Cape Horners. From here her course parallels that of the ships that ran their easting down. It is the carriage of heavy grain in windjammer bottoms from South Australia to the United Kingdom and the Continent over either of these two routes that has earned the sobriquet, “Australian Grain Race.”
Cape Horn
From Spencer Gulf to Cape Horn is roughly 6,000 miles, and most masters in sail who wish to make quick passages homewards choose this way if they can. The number of vessels that round Cape Horn now is almost limited to the surviving grain carrying windjammers. Since World War II, only two such passages have been made. Captain Ivar Hagerstrand took the big Passat that way in 1948 on a 143 day run from Port Victoria to Falmouth and, in the same year, Captain Karl Broman, sailing the ex-Danish schoolship four-masted barque Viking, took 146 days between the same ports. With them, however, inexperienced personnel and other unusual factors operated to make their runs unduly long.
In steam, there is no need to go that way, for in most trades, Good Hope, Panama, and Suez are shorter and kinder routes. For the surviving wind ships, though, Cape Horn is the shorter road. The long beat to windward and the quieter conditions which prevail in rounding the Cape of Good Hope to the westward consumes too much time, though the track is some 1,200 miles the shorter. The calms which beset the approaches to the canals, together with the fees, make that way unprofitable. Yet, unlike their prototypes of the 19th Century, the clippers, the massive sailing-cargo ships of this century seldom had occasion to sail outwards by way of the Horn, for if they came in ballast it was quicker by Good Hope and should they have an outward cargo, it was usually Baltic timber to East Africa, guano from Indian Ocean Islands to New Zealand, or some other freight whose port of destination was nearer South Australia.
From the time ships were stout enough to keep the seas to the present time, ships have fought around the end of South America. The cost in men, ships, and cargoes is incalculable and that gale-swept ice-chocked path of 55° or 60° South is a veritable graveyard. It includes, among its hundreds of victims, the grain laden Norwegian full-rigged ship Janna which sailed from Sydney, New South Wales, for Falmouth for orders in 1921 and was never heard of again, together with the Admiral Karpfanger, which as the Belgian schoolship L’Avenir and under the Erikson flag, had accomplished seven successful roundings.
In the 334 years since Schouten’s Unity, the first known vessel to sight Cape Horn, established the fact of the conjunction of the Atlantic and Pacific at this point, a surge of vessels in increasing numbers crisscrossed Drake’s Strait, but after 1870 as quickly died away. Now it is almost as denuded of shipping as it was in those far off days of its discovery. In 1949 only Pamir and Passat passed that way, and it is somehow fitting that the last of the world’s great windjammers should use that lonely road.
The Firm of Gustaf Erikson
For 30 of the 36 years of its existence as a firm, the square-rigged sailing vessels of Gustaf Erikson, Shipowners, have played an important part in World trade and, in particular, in the Australian grain trade.
Since the close of World War I, more than 112 sailing vessels, representing among them 11 nations, have, from time to time, carried grain from Australia to the United Kingdom and the Continent. Of these, one vessel flew the flag of Belgium, two the flag of Denmark, one the flag of Danzig, 22 the flag of Finland, 28 the flag of France, 12 the flag of Germany, 16 the flag of Great Britain, 19 the flag of Norway, one the flag of Poland, eight the flag of Sweden, and two the flag of the United States of America. By means of the acquisition of some of the aforementioned at a later date, the blue and white of Finland has flown on a total of 30 grain ships; the black, white, and red of Germany on 13; and the blue cross on red field of Norway on 20. By 1929, this great armada had been reduced through casualty, scrapping, and transfer to other trades to 27 homeward-bounders including one Britisher, 20 Finns, three Germans, and three Swedes. Ten years later, at the advent of World War II, there were only 11 survivors in the run. One of these was Swedish and the rest were Finns. In the years between 1919 and 1929, the Erikson houseflag flew over 11 large barques and four-masted barques hailing from the port of Mariehamn in this run alone, between 1929 and 1939 it waved from the main trucks of 18, but since World War II, only three deepwatermen have carried it to sea.
From 1919 to 1939 there have been approximately 320 homeward sail passages in the Australian grain run, most of these having been accomplished by way of Cape Horn. Up to and including 1939, the homeward average passage was 131 days. This compares with an Erikson average of only 116. Of the total participating vessels, 18, or approximately 16%, have been owned by Gustaf Erikson. These vessels have made 148 of the recorded passages and represent about 46% of the sail-carried grain business in the past 30 years. After 1929, the bulk of the trade was done in these vessels.
While the performance of Erikson-owned vessels averages 15 days better than the rest of the participants over the same period, their runs cannot be fairly compared with those of the much smaller out-and-out clippers and the medium clippers of the renowned Australian wool fleet and other trades of days gone by. These were small vessels constructed entirely for speed and they were manned by experienced seaman triple in number to the boys before the mast and the young men abaft of it who man and command the big latter day carriers.
In the 17 years between 1873 and 1890, 450 individual homeward passages were mentioned for the entire Australian wool fleet. The over-all average works out to 96.4 days from equivalent Australian ports to equivalent English Channel ports by way of Cape Horn. It must, also, be remembered that while these occupied a full month less, the latter day sailers were hampered by having to sail into and out of the confines of Spencer Gulf. The two fastest passages in this period were both made by the 972 gross ton full-rigged ship Cutty Sark from Sydney to London in 72 days in 1886 and 1887. The worst passage was made by the 1,226 gross ton full-rigged ship Romanoff from Melbourne to London in 130 days in 1888.
The three best passages in the grain run since 1919 were made by Captain Ruben DeCloux in the 3,084 gross ton four-masted barque Parma, Captain Sven Eriksson in the 3,111 gross ton four-masted barque Herzogin Cecilie, and Captain Karl Gerhard Sjögren in the 3,183 gross ton four-masted barque Passat. These passages were 83 days in 1933, 86 days in 1936, and 87 days in 1936. Herzogin Cecilie and Passat were Erikson vessels and Parma was owned by a syndicate composed of Captain DeCloux and Alan Villiers.
The longest passage, outside of the 286 day grind of the American E. R. Sterling, an iron 2,518 gross ton six-masted barquentine, which was dismasted in the South Atlantic while on passage from Adelaide to the United Kingdom in 1927, seems to have been the Finnish 1,334 gross ton barque Favell, Geelong for Queenstown via the Cape of Good Hope, which occupied 205 days in 1928. Many passages are on record in excess of 130 days, although only a dozen or so of these are chalked up against Erikson vessels. These facts stand as a sterling compliment to the ability of the men to whom Captain Erikson entrusted the safety of his vessels.
The Steel Four-Masted Barques Pamir and Passat
Because they are the last large commerical wind ships trading deep-water and because they may never again participate in this trade, some mention of both Pamir and Passat seems worthwhile. Both are steel four-masted barques, crossing royals above double topgallants and topsails, which have their lower and topmasts in one piece, possess pole jigger masts, and carry double standing spanker gaffs. Both are typical three-superstructure square-riggers, housing their entire personnel amidships, steer from amidships, and are outfitted with brace and halyard winches. Their yards are steel as is most of their standing and running rigging, and they are well outfitted with other winches and capstans in addition to their windlasses. They are, also, alike in that they were built by Blohm & Voss at Hamburg, Germany, to the specifications of Reederei F. Laeisz G. M. B. H. of that port for the carriage of nitrates from German mines in Chile to German factories on the Elbe. Powerful, clean-lined, speedy, and economical, they combine all the features which have made them the outstanding examples of their class.
Pamir was built in 1905 as a two decker to gross 3,020 tons on a net of 2,522. She measures 330.9 feet in length between perpendiculars, has a maximum beam of 45.5 feet, and a depth of 25.7 feet. Her topgallant forecastle-head is 36.0 feet long, her bridge 66.0, and her poop, under which are the emergency wheels and accommodation for five, 16.0. Rated at 4,350 deadweight tons she can lift 1,100 standards of timber.
Named for Pamir, Italy, the barque became Italian Government property, after she had lain some six years in neutral Canary Islands waters laden with 4,500 tons of nitrates. In 1920 she was allowed to proceed to Hamburg to discharge her cargo and in June, 1921, she was towed to Rotterdam under the Italian flag where she loaded for Naples. She then sailed from Naples to Castellamare and thence to Genoa where she arrived at the end of the year. In 1922, she came back to Laeisz and promptly made the best outward passage accomplished around Cape Horn since the War. In December of that year, when outward bound from Hamburg, Pamir met bad weather in the English Channel and was forced into Carrick Roads, Cornwall, having lost three men overboard, considerable canvas, both bower anchors, and the starboard chain.
She became a unit of the Erikson fleet in 1931. True to the best of the Laeisz traditions in her build and equipment, lucky in the winds met with, and fortunate in having to command such driving masters as Karl G. Sjögren, J. M. Mattsson, Uno Morn, and Verner Björkfelt, she has averaged only 85 days outwards and 103 homewards in her seven voyages in the Australian grain trade. Her casualties have been slight. In April, 1932, while running for Cape Horn in the South Pacific Pamir’s spanker-boom broke adrift, considerably damaging the poop, her helmsman was injured, and the Master’s saloon was flooded. In February, 1934, she had a collision with a tug in Sydney, escaping without serious damage. Again, in 1934, she grounded near København without damage. Just previously she had collided with the French trawler Hiver off the Longships while on her way to Mariehamn.
Having been acquired by New Zealand as a prize of war as she lay in Wellington, she flew that country’s flag from 1942 to 1949. Under Captains Stanich, Champion, and Collier she made four voyages between New Zealand ports and San Francisco and two between Wellington and Vancouver, B. C. This was followed by a number of intermediate voyages and then a long voyage to London and return. At the completion of the latter she was returned to Erikson interests, being re-acquired at Wellington.
Passat (German for “Trade Wind”) was built in 1911 and is similar in nearly all respects to Pamir, the differences being in a bigger vessel with a longer poop. She is an exact sister to Peking, now the British stationary training ship Arethusa, and measures 343.8X46.9X24.5. With a forecastle-head of 36.0 feet, a bridge of 69.0, and a poop of 53.0, she is able to carry a considerable number of passengers. Unlike Pamir, her emergency wheels are located on the poop deck just forward of the taff-rail.
Along with the giant five-mast barque Potosi and the full-rigged ship Pinnas, France had received Passat, under the Reparations Settlement, Laeisz regaining her possession in 1922. Six years later, on August 15, 1928, when outward bound from Hamburg in clear weather some 20 miles southeast of Dungeness, England, she ran down and sank the French S. S. Daphne. The Daphne went under in ten minutes, but her crew were saved and landed at Dungeness. The sailer went back to Rotterdam with damage to bows. Again, when outward bound for Chile on June 25, 1929, Passat was in collision with a steamer off the Royal Sovereign Light, England, necessitating a second Rotterdam distress call.
Under Captains G. Lundeberg, Karl G. Sjögren, Ferd. Gronlund, Nils Erikson, L. Lindvall, and Ivar Hagerstrand Passat had made five outward grain passages averaging 91 days and eight homeward averaging 109 days. While under Captain Sjögren Passat, in 1936, tied with Captain Matthias Sven Eriksson in Herzogin Cecilie in making the run from South Australia to the United Kingdom by way of Cape “Stiff” in 86 days, anchorage to anchorage, or 87 port to port. These were the second best passages to be made since the First World War.
Passat was fortunate to be in her home port at the outbreak of hostilities and lay idle there, except for a brief period as a grain store ship in Stockholm, Sweden.
The Participation of Pamir and Passat in the Australian Trade |
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Pamir |
||||
Year |
Master |
From |
To |
Days |
1932 |
Karl. G. Sjögren |
Wallaroo |
Queenstown |
103 |
1933 |
Karl. G. Sjögren |
Port Victoria |
Falmouth |
94 |
1934 |
J.M. Mattsson |
Sydney |
Queenstown |
119 |
1935 |
J.M. Mattsson |
Port Lincoln |
Queenstown |
110 |
1936 |
J.M. Mattsson |
Port Victoria |
Queenstown |
98 |
1937 |
Uno Mörn |
Port Lincoln |
Falmouth |
98 |
1939 |
Verner Björkfelt |
Port Victoria |
Falmouth |
96 |
Passat |
||||
Year |
Master |
From |
To |
Days |
1933 |
G. Lundeberg |
Wallaroo |
Falmouth |
110 |
1934 |
Karl. G. Sjögren |
Port Victoria |
Queenstown |
106 |
1935 |
Karl. G. Sjögren |
Port Victoria |
Queenstown |
100 |
1936 |
Karl. G. Sjögren |
Port Victoria |
Queenstown |
87 |
1937 |
Ferd. Grönlund |
Port Lincoln |
Falmouth |
94 |
1938 |
Nils Erikson |
Port Victoria |
Falmouth |
98 |
1939 |
L. Lindvall |
Port Lincoln |
Lizard |
98 |
1948 |
Ivar Hagerstrand |
Port Victoria |
Falmouth |
143 |
Personnel
For over a third of a century, the white flag with its black G. E. initialed on it, flying at the main truck of some of the largest square-rigged ships the world has ever known, has been a familiar sight in every port to which sailing ships go; yet, since 1913, not once has an Erikson master had the good fortune to put to sea with a full well- trained crew. Time after time, year after year, they have gone to sea bound on a 30,000 or 40,000 mile globe-encircling voyage in their expensive charges with crews composed of young officers holding down their respective positions for the first time; youngsters, averaging 20 years of age, just out of school, who never saw a ship before; men who couldn’t understand the language in which the orders were given; and boys just going along for the ride, the whole leavened by lads fresh from steam and possibly a few who have had a year or two in sail before. Making it possible for the big ships to carry on under these conditions, now that the real square-rig man has gone forever, are the vitality, the endurance, the powers of recuperation, and the sense of adventure of youth which does much to fill the gap. Lacking in training as they are, only their great willingness to learn, their ambition to succeed, and their desire to acquit themselves well in the eyes of their superiors and their fellows takes partial place of experience. It says much for the masters of the Erikson ships that even under the terrific handicap of these conditions, their big, heavy steel windjammers made as good time, and sometimes better, than was made with the well- trained crews of better times.
The story of the men who serve before the mast on board the Finnish sailing ships is not a story of Finnish sailors. For years the proportion of Finnish merchant sailors manning the Finnish windjammers has been relatively small, for no Finnish deep-water sail merchantman was manned by native born Finns in the proportion that are American, British, French, German, or Netherlands vessels by their nationals. Usually, there were only from four to six Finns in the forecastle of a ship’s company of, perhaps, 30 odd. Of the rest the crews were made up of Ålanders, Swedes, Danes, Russians, men from the smaller Baltic countries, Americans, Australians, and British in decreasing numbers in order named.
The last crews of Pamir and Passat were similar in make up to those of recent years except that there was a greater preponderance of Australians and New Zealanders than ever before. Pamir was on New Zealand Articles with a strongly union crew drawing in the neighborhood of $160.00 per man, most of whom were New Zealanders. Passat, on Finnish Articles, was carrying a large number of Australians before the mast, many of whom were earning as little as $15.00 per month. Some apprentices on both barques are paying their way along.
Swedish is the language in which all orders are given on ships of the Erikson fleet and was the predominating language on board. English, however, is in most cases the common tongue of all language groups.
The employment of these youthful crews has proved to be a fortunate solution to the post-World War I maritime labor problem and therein lies one of the primary secrets of the success of the Erikson fleet.
The Future
For the past 30 years the handwriting on the wall has become ever clearer as regards the future of this class of vessel. Of the Australian grain fleet only Kommodore Johnsen and Padua were built after 1919, and there have been no large commercial square-rigged sailing vessels constructed after Padua in 1926. Of the presently available vessels, the oldest is the iron four-masted barque Omega, ex Drumcliff, 2,471 gross tons, built in 1887, and now 63 years of age and the youngest is the Passat, built in 1911, and now 39 years old. All have outlived the usual span allotted to metal vessels. It would seem, therefore in truth, that the arrivals of Pamir and Passat in the United Kingdom last summer spelled the end of an era, indeed.
The Herzogin Cecilie, Hougomont, Killoran, Admiral Karpfanger, Melbourne, Olivebank, and Penang had come to violent ends. The rest had gone by scrap and sale. The peerless Herzogin Cecilie was wrecked in Sewer Mill Cove, Devon, England, on April 25, 1936; Hougomont was dismasted about 530 miles southeast of Cape Borda, South Australia on April 20, 1932; Killoran and Penang were submarined in the South Atlantic in 1940; Admiral Karpfanger went missing in 1938; Melbourne was sunk in collision with the tanker Seminole on the rainy night of June 30, 1932, off the Fastnet; and the faithful Olivebank was mined and sunk on September 12, 1939 off the coast of Denmark, taking her Captain and 13 hands with her.
Captain Gustaf Erikson once said, “When I go, they go; but while I stay, they stay. . . .I will never be a steamship owner. I may be forced to sell or to give up some of my ships, but I shall keep all those I can while I live.” By 1948, he had gone, too. In his place, in the little office in Mariehamn, is his son Edgar, who faces the changing age with high courage; who, like his father before him, never takes a holiday; who looks after all his ships personally; and who never lets others do anything he can do himself. The age of sail is done. It matters not how few are left; it is enough that square-sails were still spread in 1949 above the decks of two vessels whose survival is derived from the faith and the planning of him who kept sail going to the last.