I went to Eesti Meremuuseum a few days back, which I think translates to Estonian Maritime Museum. It is in Tallinn, a few km from the city centre, easily accessible by bus. (Tallinn itself is readily accessible by ferry from Helsinki - easily doable in a day trip for only approx 40 euros).The Museum is in a huge seaplane hangar, which is an important artefact in its own right - built in 1916 (I can't help but think the Russians should have had other priorities at that time), it is an incredibly impressive building - and would still be pretty impressive if built today!Anyway, pride of place at the museum is the submarine Lembit - built by Vickers-Armstrong in the 1930s. Being out of the water in an enclosed building, it is in very good condition. There is an elevated walking platform around the boat, you have access to pretty much the entire casing and then access the interior of the submarine through the forward torpedo loading hatch. You must exit through the same hatch, so there is two-way traffic through the boat - and there is quite a bit of potential for congestion there. One of the diesels is missing, but the rest of the machinery is intact.Elsewhere in the hangar, they have a large collection of mines - including quite a lot of post-war mines of Soviet origin that I hadn't seen before.They have a few ships in the water outside, including an ex-USN buoy-tender built in 1943, which was transferred to Estonia in the 90s, and has since made its way into the collection.There is also a line of 5 small warships on the hard between the hangar and the sea:Kalev - an ex-West German Fraenlob class minesweeper.Grif - an ex-Russian (KGB) Zhuk class patrol craftSuurop - an ex-Finnish Rihtniemi class patrol craft. The thing wrapped in blue next to it was a towed magnetic mine sweep, which would have been interesting if it had been unwrapped!Torm - an ex-Norwegian Storm class Fast Attack CraftMaru – ex-Finnish Border Guard.And finally this small vessel, which is literally a prop for an outside 'summer bar'. It is believed to be an ex-Swedish coastguard boat.You were able to get onboard Torm and Maru, but the other boats had to be viewed from the ground. Torm was looking a little weathered, but the others were all in pretty good condition.The museum had a well-stocked gift shop, including some books published by the museum itself. I picked up this one of theirs - which I wasn't even aware of before now. It is an edited chapter-book containing 13 international academic papers presented at a Conference run by the museum a couple of years ago. It contains a lot of good information on Baltic navies which I haven't seen published in English before now.It's not often you will get to see eight preserved warships, built in at least six different countries, in a single location! Tallinn itself is also worth a visit - one of the nicest cities I have been to in Europe. There is also, apparently, an old abandoned Soviet Submarine base about 20km or so out of town, but I didn't get the chance to see that this time.This was a bucket-list item for me - as far as I can tell Lembit is the only surviving British-built submarine from the interwar period. Another recommended visit.
Links and References:
Boniface, P 2003. Estonia's Kalev class Submarine. Warship World, 8 (7), 19.
Stoker, DJ 1996. The Estonian Submarines Lembit and Kalev. Warship International, 33 (4), 397-400.
George, A, 2012, Lembit: The Last Survivor of the pre-War Merevagi, Warship World, 12 (9), pp25-26.