The Flying-P Liner Pommern will soon be open to the public again at a new dock with new exhibits in Mariehamn, on the Åland Islands of Finland. The 1903 built, steel, four-masted bark has been closed to the public since September 2016. Now, after extensive refurbishment and repair, she will be reopening in May 2019.
The Åland Maritime Museum Trust has made a major investment in a new visitor experience on board the windjammer. The exhibition ‘Pommern – 100 days under sail” intends to make the ship come alive with the crew’s own stories. It is designed to be an exciting experience based on real events on actual voyages, where the visitors get to explore the ship and to sense the presence of her elusive crew.
Pommern has the reputation of being a “lucky ship”. She lost only four crew members at sea on her journeys, and won the Great Grain Races twice, in 1930 and 1937. Until her recent closure, the ship was one of the most popular landmarks of Åland.
William Faulkner wrote “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” That certainly applies to the Pommern and the other surviving Flying P-Liners of the German shipping company F. Laeisz of Hamburg. The last of the great sailing windjammers, four of these great sailing ships, built in the early 20th century, endured the rigors of repeated voyages around Cape Horn, as well as two world wars to survive well into the 21st century.
In addition to the Pommern, the other surviving Flying P liners are the Kruzenshtern, ex Padua, still in service as a Russian Navy sail training ship; the Peking, a museum ship, now being restored in Hamburg, and the Passat, a museum ship in Lübeck’s sea resort of Travemünde, Germany.