The sinking of Latvian merchant ships during the evacuation of Tallinn at the beginning of World War II

Once upon a time, the entire border area of the Gulf of Finland in Estonia was a closed zone, which was vigilantly monitored by Soviet border guards. The remains of border guard buildings are still clearly visible in the forest, and a metal missile replica about 3-4 m long has been installed as a sightseeing object on Juminda Cape. Apparently, with such visual fake copies of missiles, the USSR tried to deceive enemy spy planes, which during the Cold War were equipped with cameras and tried to learn the secrets of coastal defense. Every 20 km along the coast there were border guard posts, where about 30 border guards lived in each. At night, they had to patrol along the coast in full armor, and not everyone was able to walk the mandatory 15-20 km to the neighboring post area and back. For many, such service and night patrolling was too hard and they could not stand it, so the physically weaker ones were exempted from such service... This is what a man who once served here and guarded the border tells us.

A substantial granite memorial stone has been erected at the very northern tip of the Juminda Peninsula, marking the tragic events that took place here at the beginning of World War II. When retreating, the Soviet army had to carry out a major naval operation – from the already besieged Tallinn, 190 ships had to evacuate people and equipment that could not be left to the rapidly attacking German army. The Germans anticipated this retreat and, together with the Finns, laid large minefields along the shipping route, prepared bombers for flights in the already occupied part of Estonia, and deployed a 150mm coastal artillery battery on the Juminda Peninsula for firing at ships from the shore. German speedboats and Finnish torpedo boats on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland were also prepared for the attack.

The evacuation of the ships began on August 27, 1941, in very bad weather conditions. The Soviet ships, which were heading from Tallinn towards Kronstadt, were attacked by the combined German and Finnish forces from the air and sea, and were fired upon from the shore with artillery. Having suffered heavy losses, the convoy of ships stopped moving at night due to the danger of minefields. The next morning, the ships resumed their movement and the attacks on them resumed. Those warships with more powerful engines tried to get under the cover of the Kronstadt coastal batteries as quickly as possible, and in fact, only a small number of patrol ships remained to guard the relatively slow convoy of merchant ships. Some maritime experts believe that a large part of the warships simply fled to save their own skins, leaving the slower merchant ships to their fate.

In two days, 34 ships, both merchant and war, were sunk and disappeared into the depths off the Juminda Peninsula. Among them, many that had recently sailed under the flag of independent Estonia or Latvia. The former Latvian merchant fleet ships Everita, Kalpaks, Ausma, Atis Kronvaldis, Kalpaks, Skrunda have found their eternal resting place here. The mighty icebreaker Krišjānis Valdemārs also still rests here at a depth of 100m, in darkness and silence. The location of the wreck is now precisely determined and known. During the two days of this sea evacuation of Tallinn, around 12,400 people died in the waters of the Gulf of Finland. There are historians who believe that this is one of the greatest tragedies that occurred at sea during World War II. It is now known that around 60,000 naval mines were placed in the waters of the Gulf of Finland during World War II.

On a separate stone plaque, among other ship names, the name of the pre-war Latvian Navy flagship Virsaitis flashes. It sank off the coast of Finland while participating in the Hanko evacuation operation, which took place in late November and early December 1941. The ship apparently hit a mine and sank. The exact location of its sinking is now known, more than a year after the Juminda tragedy.