Tallinn Trip – Fat Margaret Museum (Life Buoy from Cargo Steamer Regulus)

The next few posts will be some things that I thought were interested from the Fat Margaret museum (that’s the name of the tower that the maritime museum is located in).

This is the life buoy from the cargo steamer Regulus, found on the shore of the Kopu Peninsula before the Second World War. The ship was made in Rotterdam for a Finnish company, being completed on 28 April 1921. It was surrendered to the USSR as war reparations in January 1945 and then renamed Parnu. And this is what particularly interested me, I hadn’t realised that Finland had to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union, but they did and it was worth around $6.5 billion in today’s money (although around a third wasn’t paid as the matter was later renegotiated). Finland had fought alongside Germany against the Soviet Union during the Second World War, something of an extension of the Winter War fought between Finland and the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1940. The Regulus wasn’t a one-off either, Finland had to give the Soviet Union 500 new sea vessels and an additional 119 used ones. I’m not sure quite why this life buoy was lost from the ship, I can only imagine that this story has been lost to history.