IMMIGRATION: In the Mayflower's Wake

The sailing koster was hardly bigger than a lifeboat; she seemed even smaller when she left the Swedish coast and beat out into the foul weather and seam-starting seas of the Skagerrak. The 16 Estonian refugees—seven men, five women, four little children—who had wedged themselves into the Erma's tiny cabin had no visas, no charts of the Atlantic, no food but potatoes, cereal, bread and canned fish. But they did not complain. After years of war and wandering, they were going to America.

They had fled from their Baltic homeland after it was...

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