Voyages Against All Odds

In the September 8 issue, VES #34, Mrs Kristi Allpere wrote of her escape from Estonia to Sweden, and from there, after a residency of five years, emigrated to Canada on the MV PÄRNU.

Our journey to the USA was similar, but also different. Similarly, we, my brother and I, were taunted in Swedish school by comments like jävla flyktingare (damned refugees) and ska vi slåss? (You want to fight?), so we did some “slossing” and soon the bullies left us alone, as there was no point in fighting if you lose.
The enclosed illustrations are among many in Jüri Vendla’s book UNUSTATUD MEREREISID (Forgotten sea voyages) where the story of MV PÄRNU’S journey is well documented and illustrated. The enclosed pictures are from that book. On the cover is a picture of the 72 foot PROLIFIC, our means of travel to the US with 69 people. A journey lasting 59 days.

According to the book, 50 boats departed from Sweden: 11 went to Canada, 17 to America, as well as to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and one even to the West Indies. Four boats are known to have left Sweden, but there is no record of their arrival anywhere. One foundered in the Bay of Biscay, (that nearly became our fate during a storm), and one is suspected to have been apprehended by a Russian patrol boat, as it is known that they cruised in waters off Sweden for the purpose of intercepting departing refugee boats What is known of the fate of these boats is written in the chapter “Interrupted voyages”, (Katkenud merereisid).

Details of emigration to Canada, including PÄRNU’s arrival, can be found in the book “Eestlased Canadas” (Estonians in Canada). For anyone interested, a Google search will most likely give more details on how to acquire either book.

There are not many of us extant who were part of the 1944 exodus of refugees, and the number is declining. I am 86, and I will tell my story until I cross the horizon that I have been chasing, and not reaching, during my years at sea.

It is imperative that the progeny of the escapees, be they children, grandchildren or even great grandchildren, learn how it came to be that they live in a free country, and the risks that their forebears took to reach their dream of freedom. As is written on the base of the Statue of Liberty “…give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It is up to them to pass the torch.

Fortunate are those whose parents are Estonian and can instill in them the Estonian language and the knowledge of their heritage and pride of their Estonian roots and culture. As are those who have experienced the pleasure of the sauna, of sitting in a room where the temperature is hotter than boiling water, and flagellating oneself with birch branches, a ritual that can’t be adequately described, but that has to be experienced, and the customs and ethnic foods (e.g. kama) that have endured through centuries of foreign domination.

I have written the story of my escape, from the years of war to our arrival in America on September 20, 1948, titled “Against all odds”, that has also been translated into Estonian, “Trotsides kõiki raskusi”. If anyone wishes to read it, in English, I will forward it as an e-mail.

I will be glad to lend the book to Mrs. Allpere as there is much in it on the voyage of the PÄRNU, and of the other boats that reached Canada.

Indrek Lepson,
[email protected]