The ultimate sailing ship, the Passat loafs splendidly before the wind in 195 7, sailing as training ship and cargo carrier under the West German flag. With the loss of Pamir thefollowingyear, in a recurving North Atlantic storm which also damaged Passat and sent her into port for repairs, the sailing of these great ships ended, except for the Padua, which continues in sail training today as the Russian Kruzenshtern. Passat survives as a museum ship in Travemunde, Germany. Photo courtesy F. Laeisz.
did care of these ships and they do not rust because they do everything to keep them strong with a minimum of men. What we had aboard was really only a skeleton crew; no power, no weather predicting instruments. When the glass fell, the mates would send us aloft to furl sails, long before any storm was around. We wondered why we were up there. Why aren't we sailing this hooker? But a storm was coming, in eight to ten hours, and it took us almost that long to take in her canvas. Being shorthanded, we took great precautions. The return voyage brought us home from Australia by way of Cape Horn - an uneventful rounding as noted in my log for April 17, 1939: "Cold, overcast, wind about a number five out of the southwest. Word has it that we are somewhere below the Horn, from the Atlas in the foe' sle, and that the only chart we ever see.'' But the next day, Easter Sunday, brought some excitement. It was aclear day, beautiful cumulus clouds and sunlight when I came on deck from the watch below. I went aloft with my movie camera, to take colored pictures on a big four-masted bark down below the Horn. And then somebody spotted ice! The Old Man got a glass on it and found that it was another square rigger, off to the southeast. She was too small to find on my camera. We thought she was Pamir, which sailed out the same day we did, 31 days before. Seventy days later, when moored in Falmouth Harbor, we found it was Moshulu, which made the fastest passage, 91 days, of that year. The Old Man suddenly realized we were in a Grain Race. The Mate blew three whistles, all hands came out, we unfurled her upper top-gallants and her royals and we set her cro'jack. Moshulu, I know, did the same.* We soon lost sight of her in a rainsquall to the south. *The reaction aboard Moshulu, which had left Australia three days later than Passat, is described by Eric Newby in The Last Grain Race: "The Captain was delighted. His glass had already told him that she was carrying topgallants, but the cro'jack was furled. 'We'll set the royals,' I heard him say to the Second Mate, who at once sent threejungman aloft to cast off the gaskets.. .. " The Moshulu, Scots built seven years before Passat, is a little finer-lined, and on this voyage, sailed harder. ED.
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As you remember, we always got her sail shortened down, being in no hurry and not wanting to wear any rigging. After losing eleven sails in that hurricane the year before off the coast of Ireland, the Old Man did not want to lose any more canvas. His whole profit for that year was already lost. He was bringing home a cargo of grain for no real profit for Gustav Erikson. Easter Sunday dinner was celebrated by slaughtering the first of the eight pigs we had in the styes. The Old Man probably had pork chops. We had pig's blood pancakes and we got the fatty flesh off its back. Actually those ships were good feeders. There was quantity. You had to have quantity, you needed the energy. This is the fuel that runs the ship. Feed the men and they do the work. So we had barrels of salt meat and lots of potatoes and those dried vegetables, and fruit, soup, and lots of groats and bread and margarine. Nothing fancy, but energy producing. So after sailing on a course east by south from Australia for over a month, the vessel begins to swing up north. Soon we will be heading again into the tropics, where we can take off our shirts, bask in the sun, wash in rain water and begin to enjoy living again . So goes the life of men at sea in sail. Men like Strandvik, Lindqvist and Saionmaa, and many others who live in my mind forever.
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I paid off from Passat in Belfast, Ireland, in July 1939. War clouds were beginning to cover Europe. After a quick visit to London to see the National Art Gallery again, I came back by the liner Statendam, and re-enrolled in Yale. I finished out my last year, after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the US into war. Having only an art degree I could not become a naval officer, but enlisted upon graduation and was given the rating Quartermaster 2nd Class. After serving with Admiral Ingram, Cominch 4th Fleet, South Atlantic, I was made an Ensign and went to the Western Sea Frontier as communications officer in USS Vega, a 155-foot steel schooner which held station between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor. It was great to be in sail again, but this did not last long. I was transferred to salvage school in New York, and was then assigned as salvage officer to the USS Sarsi in the Aleutians, SEA HISTORY, FALL 1980