Estonian Maritime Museum, Tallinn, Estonia

There are two sites for this museum, which chronicals the history of the relationship that Estonia has with the sea. The avowed mission of the Estonian Maritime Museum is to be the institution for collecting, preserving, studying and presenting Estonian maritime culture and history, and to promote knowledge about, respect for and love of the sea. I really liked this site, which has both models of boats going back to the time of the Hanseatic League, and one actual relic. The Museum was founded in Tallinn on the initiative of former captains and sailors in 1935. During its long history, the museum has moved on a number of occasions and since 1981, its main exhibition is located in the 500-year-old Fat Margaret tower in Tallinn Old Town. Don't miss the roof terrace, which offers food and drinks as well as a splendid view of the passenger harbour, the city centre and rooftops of the Old Town.

The Seaplane Harbour, including the Seaplane Hangar, was built to become part of Peter the Great’s naval fortress 100 years ago on orders from the Russian emperor Nicholas II. The architecture of the Hangar is remarkable, featuring the world’s first columnless thin-shell concrete domes of such volume. The building was used for seaplanes until the Second World War It is a hanger-sized museum where you can walk around the floor on on a catwalk abovce looking down. It accommodates the Lembit submarine, built in 1937 by the British Vickers–Armstrongs shipyard; a Short 184 seaplane; the Maasilinn ship (i.e. the oldest sunken ship discovered in Estonia’s waters); and numerous other genuine items, like sail ships, boats and naval mines.

There are also an exhibit about the German invasion of Estonia in August of 1941, which was an unmitigated disaster on a far larger scale than Dunkirk. The Soviets held Estonia as part of their secret pact with the Germans until then, and were forced into a hasty evacuation of Tallinn. They did succeed in evacuating 165 ships, 28,000 passengers and 66,000 tons of equipment, but at least 12,400 are thought to have drowned in circumstances little known outside the former Soviet Union. The event was long downplayed by the Stalinist regime after the war and as with many things we experienced in the Batic countries, there is an effort to expose Russian atrocities that occurred there. The evacuation wasn the bloodiest naval disaster of the war.