Max Dupain was one of Australia’s most talented photographers in the golden era of the art form. Somehow, he managed to be on Sydney Harbour in 1947 when the well-known steam tug Hero was towing the great ex-Flying ‘P’ Line four-masted barque, Pamir, into or out of the port. The fact that Pamir has almost all of its sails hoisted suggests that she is on her way to the Heads and out to sea. (The image is in the ANMM Collection, National Library of Australia)
In 1947 Pamir brought 750,000 super feet of timber (most likely kauri) into Sydney from New Zealand. She was detained in Sydney for about three months due to an industrial dispute. Pamir had been to Sydney before, in 1934, when she had to lower her topmast to pass under the Sydney Harbour Bridge!
Pamir was built by Blohm & Voss in Germany in 1905 for the Laeisz shipping company to bring nitrate from Chile to Europe. She was awarded to Italy as reparations after WWI, but was bought back by Laeiz in 1924 and subsequently sold to the Erikson Line. She was berthed in New Zealand in 1941 and seized as a war prize, although she was returned to Erikson in 1948. During her New Zealand ownership she made several voyages to Australia carrying timber.
In 1948 she was operating in the grain trade loading wheat in South Australia and delivering it to Falmouth in the UK via Cape Horn. In 1949, Pamir was the last sailing ship to carry a commercial cargo around Cape Horn in July of 1949. BY 1957 Pamir was obsolete and, in 1957, whilst operating as a training ship, tragedy struck her when, on a voyage from Beunos Aires to Hamburg, she was stuck by a hurricane off the Azores and over-whelmed. Of the 86 men on board only 6 survived to be rescued.
