The seabed in the Gulf of Finland between Kallbådagrund and Cape Juminda is one enormous graveyard
Pekka Hakala, Helsingin Sanomat
Officer Cadet Fyodor Paramonovich Yeryomenko stood on the deck of the Soviet Baltic Fleet destroyer Volodarski and peered out to sea.
It was largely a vain exercise, since the Gulf of Finland was pitch-black in the dark August night.
The sun had gone down two hours earlier. The sea was choppy with new and old waves - a swell left over from the morning's storm that had blown from the north-east and new waves kicked up by a gradually strengthening breeze from the south-west.
It was Thursday August 28th, 1941. The time was approaching 23.00, and Yeryomenko was counting down the minutes until the end of his watch.
The Orfey-class destroyer Volodarski, launched in 1914 in St. Petersburg as the Pobiditel, had left the Estonian capital Tallinn just after sunset, at the tail end of a long flotilla of Soviet troopships, merchantmen, and naval escorts heading towards Leningrad and safety.
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Juminda, 28.8.1941: To the memory of the drowned - all 12,000 of them
Arvamus
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