Flying P-Liner

Their ships were built for speed, and they soon acquired an excellent reputation for timeliness and reliability, which gave rise to the nickname "the Flying P-Line".

The five-masted barque Potosi made the voyage from Chile to England around Cape Horn in 1904 in just 57 days, a record at the time.

However, these ships turned out to be too big: their crews did not like them, and it became increasingly difficult to achieve a satisfactory utilization on the outbound leg from Europe to Chile.

Towards the end of the 1920s, the company began pulling out of the nitrate trade and increasingly started transporting other goods, e.g. bananas.

They also sold some of their older ships, for instance Pamir to Gustav Erikson in Finland who already had acquired the former Norddeutscher Lloyd-ship Herzogin Cecilie.

Kruzenshtern (ex- Padua ) under sail
Peking , at South Street Seaport , New York
Mozart (left) and Penang (right), formerly Albert Rickmers , photo by Alan Villiers