Merilaid & Co.

Capt. Roos was known to have a weak heart (angina pectoris). After returning to Estonia, Roos stayed ashore for some time because of his heart condition. However, he was keen to return to the sea one more time and promised his family that he would retire after one final voyage.

During October 1934 Merisaar delivered a cargo of cellulose from Tallinn to the port of St. Louis du Rhone, not far from Marseille, France. On November 2, 1934, Merisaar was on her return journey to Tallinn, having picked up a cargo of salt from Torrevieja, Spain, when one of the ship's officers, Karl V. Küll, discovered Capt. Roos' body while coming off his watch about 25 miles east of Gibraltar. Roos had died from a heart attack. At the same time, Naissaar under the command of Capt. Kalmar was on her way to Lisbon with a cargo of British coal. Merisaar went to Lisbon to meet them. In Lisbon, Roos' body was placed in a metal-lined casket that was then soldered shut, as was customary to contain decay in unrefrigerated conditions, and Capt. Kalmar took command of Merisaar to bring his friend back home. The ship arrived in Tallinn in mid November and Roos was laid to rest in Tallinn's Rahumäe cemetery on November 18, 1934.

Roos's widow and two daughters were able to flee Estonia during WWII and both daughters settled in the U.S. One daughter, Aino Roos Tammerk (1920–2005) later immigrated to Canada to be closer to her daughter and three grandchildren. Capt. Roos's other daughter, Heljo Roos Võsari (1922–2008), wrote a book about her childhood in China, subsequent life in Estonia, and flight to Sweden as a war refugee before immigrating to settle in the U.S.

Capt. Roos' five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren live in the U.S. and Canada.

Capt. Johannes Mänder (1896–1976)

Johannes Mänder, as far as is known, remained in Estonia and never worked in Vladivostok. Toward the end of WWII he and his wife Ksenia (1912–1999) fled Estonia for Sweden, where they remained. They had twin daughters.

Capt. Mänder is believed to have two grandchildren living in Sweden.

Capt. Johann Kalmar (1884–1966)

Kalmar's surname at birth was Koschemjäkin, which was often misspelled as Koshemäkin or Koshemakin by leaving out the silent letters. He changed the name to Kalmar in 1940 when the Estonian government encouraged people to change their surnames from those given to them by Baltic-German Barons during the nation's feudal history.

Estonia was part of the Russian Empire during the early 20th century. After Kalmar returned to Estonia from captaining fishing ships for C.J. Spahde & Co. in the Kara Sea, WWI had just begun. Kalmar was conscripted into the Russian Navy in 1914 and trained as a submarine navigator, but served as captain on several surface vessels supporting Russia's Baltic submarine fleet. After the start of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kalmar was able to escape to the east, avoiding the Bolsheviks. He and his fiancé, Helmi Sild Kalmar (1894–1982), were married in Tomsk, Siberia in 1918 and continued to Vladivostok. In 1919, Kalmar sailed to Shanghai on the same ship as Peter Mender. In Shanghai, Kalmar and his wife and three children shared a home with the Roos family. Kalmar captained cargo ships, primarily for Moller & Co., until returning to Estonia in 1932.

In September 1944, Kalmar and some relatives left one of Estonia's westernmost islands on a fishing boat arranged for them by Peter Mender, who had reached Sweden earlier, and crossed the Baltic Sea without being stopped by Russian or German ships. Kalmar and his wife and daughter settled in Sweden. His two sons had left Estonia in 1942 to attend school in Germany under the auspices of an uncle. After the war they worked in American Red Cross camps and in 1948 were reunited with their parents and sister in Sweden. In 1950 both sons went to Australia to work for another uncle in construction jobs. After a few years, one son decided to stay there and the other immigrated to Canada.

Capt. Kalmar has two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren living in Canada and one grandchild living in Australia.

Capt. Karl P. Küll (1875–1937)

Karl Peter Küll was the husband of Peter Mender's older sister Rosalie Mänder (1881–1947). He was a ship captain and ended up in a senior position with one of Tallinn's major enterprises, called ETK, the central co operative connecting most of Estonia's consumer co-operatives. The business dealt with a multitude of products such as foods, spices, coffee, fuels, fish, and bicycles, including owning some metal works and a factory that made nails.

Küll and his wife had four children. One son died in the battle of Velikiye Luki during WWII. His other son, Karl Voldemar Küll (1915–1995), was an officer aboard the Merisaar and survived the 1940 German attack on the ship. After this incident, Karl V. Küll managed to flee Estonia with his wife and two children, first becoming a war refugee in Sweden and then immigrating to Canada. After having survived the North Atlantic during WWII and then having a comparatively good life in Canada, Küll drowned at age 80 in Lake Ontario while saving his dog from a similar fate.

One of Karl P. Küll's daughters, Selma Küll Tuimaa (1903–1962), emigrated from Estonia to Canada in 1936 and later moved to the U.S. His other daughter, Ellen Küll Sepp (1912–2004), immigrated to Canada via Sweden after WWII.

Karl P. Küll had five grandchildren and has five great-grandchildren living in Canada.

Capt. Herman Soone (1875–1942)

Soone was born in Rakvere, Estonia in 1875. The year he went to the Russian Far East to work is unknown but at the outbreak of the Russo Japanese War (1904–05) he was employed as captain of the SS Sungari, a steamship operated by the South Manchuria Railway, between the ports of Port Arthur (now Lushun, China), Chemulpo (now Incheon, South Korea) and Shanghai. The War began on February 8, 1904 and on February 9, the captains of several Russian vessels, including Sungari and the naval vessels Varyag and Korietz, decided to scuttle their ships to prevent them from falling into Japanese hands during what's known as the Battle of Chemulpo Bay. At the time, Sungari was carrying cargo of tea and French wine. On August 14, 1904 Sungari was raised by the Japanese and towed to Nagasaki.

Documents in Estonia's national archives, retrieved from Vladivostok, show that Soone held permits for 12 years, beginning in 1910, to catch and process fish in specific regions of the Far East. These regions bordered on the Kanchelan River and the eastern side of the Kamchatka Peninsula. These locations are more than 1,500 km apart. Many Estonian seaman sought work in the Far East prior to WWI as the Tsar wanted to settle the area and offered economic incentives to do so. The years Soone spent operating fishing vessels and fish processing camps in the Far East, including sailing across the Bering Sea as far as Nome, Alaska, are described in pp. 17–61 of a book by Evald Past (1900–1991) titled Mereteedelt, Vikerlane, Tallinn, 1940. Other records show that Soone owned a home in Tallinn at Koidula 12, near Kadriorg Palace, that he rented out, and that he was active with both community organizations and the Estonian Maritime Museum.

Soone is believed to have returned to Estonia during the 1930s. In 1941, Soone, along with his wife Johanna (1889–1941), daughter Lydia (b. 1914) and son Ilmar (b. 1923) were arrested and deported to Siberia. Deportation took place in railcars previously used to transport livestock. Males and females were segregated before deportation and were sent to different camps. Soone and his wife were thus sent to different camps, where each of them perished, his wife in 1941 and Soone in 1942. According to records, Soone's children survived the camps and were released in 1958 but only Lydia's return to Estonia is documented.

Paul Tever (1870–1939)

Not much is known about Tever other than he was from Tartu and was an entrepreneur or merchant/businessman and not a seaman. In 1909 he married Luise Mitt (b. 1890). The previous year Tever had adopted his older sister's son, Aksel Teever (1898–1950), who had become orphaned at age 10.

In Vladivostok, Tever had a factory that made soap. When Tever wanted to leave and return home to Estonia, the authorities were reluctant to let him take his furniture and possessions with him. When Capt. Roos learned of this he convinced the Russians that under the 1920 Treaty of Tartu between Estonia and Russia, Tever was entitled to return home with all of his personal possessions.

Back in Estonia, Tever apparently owned various properties and businesses. He died of natural causes in 1939. His wife, Luise Tever was arrested and deported to a Siberian camp in 1941, essentially for being bourgeois, for owning property and being a shareholder of a shipping business. Records show she was released in 1947 but no subsequent information about her has been found. Apparently, Soviet records often showed those who had died in camps as having been released from their sentence.