themis

Harald Mang, the captain of the Themis, had no seagoing experience and taught himself to sail with a textbook. He had been a glider pilot before World War II and served as a Soomepoiss in the Finnish army fighting the Soviets. In 1944, he was discharged and fled to Sweden but then decided to take his family to South America. Because the region was unknown to him, he ventured there first alone.

The Themis was a 47-foot-long (14.3 m) by 15-foot-beam (4.6 m), fishing boat with a 60-HP diesel motor that Mang purchased for 10,000 Swedish kronor. The boat left Lysekil harbor on July 19, 1949, bound for Argentina with about 9 Estonians on board, including a baby, who pitched in to pay for the boat and provisions. The Themis stopped in Dover, Cabo Verdes, Madeira, probably Recife, and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, finally reaching Buenos Aires, Argentina, in February 1950. According to newspaper records, the trip went fairly smoothly, and the ship held up during storms. 

Mang, however, did not like Argentina, and when he learned that his family had been granted residency in Canada, he decided to sail there instead. In December 1950 he departed with two Estonians living in Argentina: Alfred Sillandi, who had arrived in 1946 on the Snygg, and Väino Hoolmaa, 22, who in 1949 had sailed on the Ilmaris. 

The Themis sailed for 50 days under wind power alone from Pernambuco, Brazil, to Norfolk, Virginia, because diesel fuel was impossible to buy without a license, which involved a hefty $100 bribe. In Norfolk, Hoolmaa asked immigration authorities for permission to stay, and left the boat. Sillandi parted ways in New York, leaving Mang to sail alone for eight days through the North American inland waterways, arriving in Toronto in July 1951. He was hailed as the “last Viking” by the émigré press. Mang sold the Themis for 2,000 Canadian dollars. It changed hands once more and eventually sank in Toronto harbor in 1955. 

Known crew and passengers: 

• Captain Harald Mang
• Alfred Sillandi
• Vaino Hoolmaa