The Pamir running against the tide in the Channel off the Wolf Rock lighthouse

The four-masted barque Pamir was built at Hamburg by Blohm & Voss in 1905. Registered at 3,103 tons and measuring 316 feet in length with a 46 foot beam, she was designed for the South American nitrate trade and proved a remarkable survivor. Escaping the perils of both World Wars, she traded commercially for over fifty years until converted into a sail training ship for merchant cadets in the mid-1950s. In September 1957, she left Buenos Aires bound for Hamburg with a cargo of barley. Caught in a hurricane about 600 miles west of the Azores on the 21st, she eventually capsized and sank with the loss of most of her 35-man crew and the 51 cadets aboard; there were only 6 survivors from what became one of the worst post-War tragedies at sea.