Museum Ship Pommern

The Pommern is a four-masted barque built in Glasgow in 1903 that sailed the grain trade between Australia and Europe until 1939. She is said to be the world's last intact four-masted sailing ship in original condition and represents the final era of commercial square-rigged sail. The ship is moored permanently in Mariehamn's western harbour and is open for guided tours.

Going aboard reveals the extraordinary physical demands of life on a working sailing ship of this era — the cramped crew quarters, the massive rigging, the ship's wheel, and the hold where the grain cargo was carried. The guides are excellent and can explain the ship's history in detail. Allow one to two hours. Combined entry with the Maritime Museum next door is recommended.

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A story
The Pommern's last voyage was in 1939, when she completed a grain race from Port Victoria in South Australia to the UK. When World War II broke out, she was laid up in Mariehamn and never sailed again. The grain races — where square-riggers competed to carry the Australian wheat harvest to European mills — were the last commercial context in which sailing ships competed economically with steam. By the time the Pommern made her final voyage, she was already an anachronism; the war simply formalized what the shipping economics had already decided.

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