Passat, Museum ship in Travemünde, Germany
The Passat is a four-masted steel barque moored in the sailing ship harbour at the mouth of the Trave in Travemünde. Its black hull carries a white stripe and a red lower stripe, with the name PASSAT in white letters on the bow. Four light-brown masts with horizontal yards and rigging rise above the deck, where a white superstructure and dark rails sit.
Passat was launched at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg on 20 September 1911 and left on her maiden voyage on Christmas Eve 1911 for Cape Horn and the Chilean nitrate ports. During World War I she was interned at Iquique in Chile, sailing to Marseille only in May 1921, where she was handed to France as war reparation. Laeisz bought her back for £13,000 in December 1921 and used her as a nitrate carrier until selling her to Gustaf Erikson in 1932.
The name honors the southeast trade winds that pushed sailing ships across the Atlantic toward South America. Today the ship sits as a floating museum where visitors walk through the same cabins and deck spaces once used by crews on long ocean crossings.
Guided visits lead across the main deck and through interior spaces where exhibits about ship operations and seafaring are set up. Access is by gangway from the quay, with steep stairs and low doorways on board typical of historic sailing vessels.
In 1951 Belgian shipbreakers paid £40,000 for Passat and Pamir together. German shipowner Heinz Schliewen then bought both for conversion into freight-carrying school ships, modernized at Kiel with an auxiliary diesel engine and refrigeration. Passat's true sister ship is Peking, not Pamir.
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