An Estonian Mariner in East Asia, Standard Oil, and the Panay Incident of 1937

With the rapid development of shipping and maritime industries in Estonia in the latter half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, the Estonians developed a large pool of merchant mariners who first plied the Baltic Sea and then took to the oceans of the world. With increasing numbers Estonians attending maritime schools and qualifying in maritime trades, not all could find lucrative employment in the Baltic region. A number of Estonians would venture to East Asia eventually finding employment with the Standard Oil tanker fleet. Notable among these mariners was Captain Peeter Mender who was an involuntary center figure in an incident between the United States and Japan leading to escalation of tensions between the two powers. His story provides an interesting slice of history in East Asia as well as for Estonians engaged in seafaring. His employer, Standard, by the early 20th century was the largest petroleum company in world maintaining a huge tanker fleet to refine and distribute its products. Standard it had its beginnings with first major oil boom in Western Pennsylvania in the United States.

The modern petroleum era began with Edwin L. Drake successfully drilling an oil well near Oil Creek, Pennsylvania in 1859. The distilling process for kerosene had recently been developed and kerosene supplanted whale oil as a clean burning lamp fuel for illumination. After Drake’s initial efforts, an oil boom started in western Pennsylvania.  In 1870 the Standard Oil Company, was organized by John D. Rockefeller, his brother William, Henry Flagler and several other associates. Through rebating agreements with railroads and pooling agreements with smaller refiners, Standard moved refining of Western Pennsylvania petroleum from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cleveland, Ohio, Rockefeller’s hometown.  By 1878 Rockefeller had control of 90 percent of the oil refineries in the US and soon afterward had a virtual monopoly of the marketing facilities. Rockefeller sought to control the nation’s fleet of railroad tank cars which carried the petroleum from fields to refiners. By 1890, Standard controlled petroleum from oil fields to refining to retail sales.[1]

Photo: Mei Foo Lamp

In 1892, Standard Oil opened a sales office in Shanghai soon in other locations including Hong Kong, Yantai, Zhenjiang, Wuhan, Chongqing and Tianjin. Kerosene found a ready market in home illumination, replacing vegetable oils. Standard Oil developed small tin kerosene lamps known as Mei Foo.  Millions of Mei Foo lamps were supplied throughout the country. They were either sold inexpensively at a few cents each or given away with the first case of kerosene. Kerosene sales boomed, making China the company’s largest foreign market in the early 20th Century. Due to fiscal problems and overexpansion of territory in the 18th century, Chinese central government had grown increasingly weak during the 19th century. While modern industry was slow to develop, China did produce attractive trade items such as silk and tea and because of its large population, it was an attractive market for industries of various great powers. With the attractive trade and weakness of the Chinese central government great powers such as Great Britain, France, Germany and the Russian Empire sought to develop spheres of influence in different regions of China in which special trading rights were accorded to the firms of their nations.[2] 

With British support, the US Secretary of State John Hay, sent the so-called Open Door Note to the powers with spheres of influence in China on 6 September 1899.  The note asked them to accord equal trade and investment opportunities to all nationals in their spheres of influence and leased territories. The British supported this because it had the most to gain from open trade. All powers agreed to this, however, Russia declined to give any pledges.  At the time this announcement had little effect, because the United States was not a position to support the Open Door Policy with force.[3] However, it would remain a cornerstone of American foreign policy into the 1940s.

In 1898 a Chinese secret society, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists (so-called boxers) launched an uprising against foreign influence in China. Foreign Christian missionaries and suspected Chinese Christians were attacked and sometimes killed. The terrorist activities of the Boxer society gradually increased during 1899 with Boxer bands attacking Christians on sight.

In January 1900, with a majority of conservatives in the imperial court, Empress Dowager changed her long policy of suppressing Boxers, and issued edicts in their defense, causing protests from foreign powers. In spring 1900, the Boxer movement spread rapidly north from Shandong into the countryside near Beijing. Boxers burned Christian churches, killed Chinese Christians and intimidated Chinese officials who stood in their way.

The walled compound of foreign embassies in Beijing was put under siege. The German Ambassador was murdered. Thus, an international relief expedition of American, British, French, Japanese, Austro-Hungarian, Russian troops was organized.  On 13 June 1900, the Empress Dowager ordered imperial troops to turn back this force. The relief force made its way inland and on 14 August 1900, the force entered Beijing.  Many members of the Chinese government fled. Finally, the government was reorganized and after extensive discussions an agreement was reached between the Chinese government and the various foreign powers in September 1901. In the settlement between the Chinese court and the foreign powers, the Boxer Protocol of 1901, the Chinese government agreed to pay out 450 million silver dollars to the foreign allies, to destroy several Chinese forts, and to allow foreign troops to control the railway stretching from Tientsin to Beijing.  The terms of the Boxer Protocol deepened fear among the Chinese that foreigners would carve up China.  As a result of the Boxer Rebellion, Secretary of State Hay circulated the Second Open Door Note on 3 July 1900, announcing that it was American policy to preserve Chinese territorial and political integrity.[4]

While China was in a weakened state, Japan was rising power after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Seeing that Japan would fall under control of European powers, ambitious nobles overthrew and shogunate government replaced it with a centralized constitutional monarchy under the Emperor Meiji. The Japanese began quickly to develop a modern navy and army and textile industries, railways and maritime shipping. The power of Japan and the Russian Empire were growing in Northeast Asia. Russia completed the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903 and a branch of railway (the South Manchurian) came southward through Manchuria and connected with large warm water Russian naval base on the Yellow Sea at Port Arthur which Russian received as a concession from the Chinese government. Russia desired to increase its influence in the Kingdom of Korea which also had warm water ports and potentially lumber and minerals.[5]   

On 8 February 1904 war broke out between Japan and Russia because Russia reneged on its agreement with Japan to withdraw Russian forces from northern Korea. Japan considered these forces a threat.  The Russians suffered a series of defeats in Manchuria culminating with the fall of Port Arthur and Mukden in early 1905.  Much of the Russian navy was destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. With defeats and internal disorders, Russia was ready to negotiate in summer 1905.  Japan, with all of its resources stretched thin was also ready to make peace.  Japan was a relatively poor country at the time. In August 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate peace in the Russo-Japanese War resulting the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905.  Roosevelt’s mediation was in part to protect the Open Door Policy and in part to maintain the balance of power in Asia.[6]

The Boxer Rebellion had also changed the balance of power in Asia as it weakened of the Qing or Machu dynasty in China and its national defense capabilities. It further deepened internal ideological differences between northern-Chinese anti-foreign royalists and southern-Chinese anti-Qing revolutionists. This division in the last years of the Qing dynasty gradually escalated into a chaotic warlord era in which the most powerful northern warlords were hostile towards the revolutionaries in the south who overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and formed a Chinese nationalist republic.

With China in internal disorders, Japan had become the most powerful non-European power in Asia, had an alliance with Great Britain which signed in 1902. The Japanese entered World War I on the Allied side and at the end of war, the US attempted to undercut the Anglo-Japanese alliance which they saw as counter to American interests in the Pacific. At the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference of 1922, the US State Department sought to shift British orientation away from Japan and form an informal naval coalition with the British.[7]

Petroleum was rapidly becoming the sinews of naval and military power. The petroleum was a superior fuel over coal for warships, aviation and motorized land forces were dependent on it. Japan had no considerable domestic petroleum supply and had to import almost entirely its national needs. A large percentage of the Japanese strategic petroleum reserve had been destroyed when they caught fire during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. High taxes in Japan during the 1920s to support military spending made the Japanese military unpopular with much of the Japanese public however, a number of ultra-patriotic secret societies rose to counter act the decline of the prestige of the military and to increase Japanese patriotism. The Black Dragon Society would undertake encouraging liberating Asia from western colonialism, fighting Russian Bolshevism (which oppressed native people in Eurasia) and liberating oppressed races elsewhere such as African – Americans. In 1919, presidential administration of Woodrow Wilson who practiced racial segregation domestically was angered that the Japanese proposed that racial equality be enshrined in the Covenant of the League of Nations.[8]  With American discriminatory immigration policies towards the Japanese and US intriguing at the Washington Conference of 1922, ultra-patriotic activists increasingly blamed moderates in government for these humiliations.

With increasing tensions between the United States and Japan – middle level Japanese military officers and ultra-patriotic societies blamed liberal politicians for Japan’s weak position.  When the Chinese began making demands on Manchuria, a number of army officers stationed in Southern Manchuria took matters into their own hands. The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905) allowed the Japanese to station an army in Manchuria and operate the South Manchurian Railway (SMR).  In 1931 Japanese troops took control of all of Manchuria in retaliation for an incident of alleged sabotage to a bridge on the SMR on 18 September 1931. Ignoring orders from the central government in Tokyo, the Japanese Army took control of all of Manchuria. This was the so-called Manchurian Incident. This violated America’s Open Door Policy, furthermore Standard and other foreign petroleum companies were restricted from direct marketing in Manchuria.[9]    

Early in 1934 the Japanese Diet passed legislation designed to promote the domestic oil industry and to secure an adequate supply of petroleum at all times.  The legislation compelled refiners and importers to obtain licenses to operate in Japan; permitted the government to regulate the spheres of activity of oil companies and to supervise the operation of refiners and importers; and required refiners and importers to sell the government at any time at current prices. The legislation authorized the government to set prices at any time deemed in the public interest and to require refiners and importers to increase or improve equipment and maintain minimum stocks of oil.

As Walter C. Teagle, president of Standard Oil of New Jersey immediately reacted to these restrictions by organizing threatened producers’ embargo of sales to Japan.  The US State Department supported the action but did not want to take the lead in activities.

Fearing a break with the oil suppliers the Japanese government entered into secret negotiations (secret out fear of the reaction of radical nationalists) with Standard and other oil companies in spring 1935 -the Japanese agree to nearly all of the oil producers’ demands:

-         Storage requirements reduced from 6 to 3 month supply available in Japan

-         A guaranteed market of same size as 1935 in gallons

-         No pressure to refine in Japan

-         No company obligated to sell at a loss[10]

Nevertheless, the Japan continued efforts to attempt to become self-sufficient petroleum trying to find alternative supplies in Mexico and elsewhere.  In summer 1937 tensions escalated further in Asia as a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops took place on the Tientsin – Beijing Railway treaty corridor. The so -called Marco Polo Bridge incident on 7 July 1937 near Beijing led to full scale war between Japan and China.  

China weakened by internal chaos and civil war between the nationalists, communists and warlord armies did not fare well against the Japanese. Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang or Chinese nationalist forces resisted the best they could but were forced to retreat inland. Consistent with the Open Door Policy, established 1900, in which the US pledged to protect the territorial integrity of China, the US pressured the Japanese to withdraw.  As the part of the Open Door Policy the US demanded the right to trade freely in China and maintain distribution chains directly to the Chinese consumer. The Japanese had denied such demands for petroleum distribution in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria forcing Standard sell in bulk to Japanese distributors. Through treaty concessions from the Chinese government, US Navy gunboats were able to patrol major Chinese rivers to protect American commercial traffic, of which Standard Oil tankers were large part, and protect US citizens who consisted mainly businessmen and Christian missionaries. As according to Captain Mender, “The [Standard Oil] Company brought oil to China’s coast with their oceangoing tankers and then transferred the petroleum products to firm’s smaller tankers for the journey inland. In addition to having large offices in the cities, our company had representatives throughout China, even in the distant inland villages.”[11]

Photo: Standard facilities Along the Yangtze

Standard used small tankers to distribute petroleum products to regional distribution points and retail outlets as rivers as Mender notes had, “a great importance in China because they provide the only major means of transportation. This enormous country has no modern roads or railways.”[12] The Yangtze River was the most important as it was navigable for 1,550 miles (2,494 km) through southern China with its mouth in the East China Sea. Foreign interests primarily British, Japanese, Norwegian and American owned most of the vessels operating on China’s inland waters. According to Captain Mender, “I preferred the American vessels because they allowed Estonians to sail as captains, while the ships of other nationalities usually insisted the captains be of their own nationality.”[13] The Standard fleet employed Estonians as captains, helmsmen, and engineers. Estonians had a good reputation as mariners – the problem with American nationals as mariners in East Asia were that they were probably there for a reason, alcohol problems or running a vessel like a petty tyrant. At the time, in American waters there were lucrative opportunities for seafarers, Standard and other petroleum companies operated coastal tanker fleets, most major railroads had their own “navies” of numerous ferries and transfer vessels, and there was considerable traffic on the Great Lakes. By the early 20th century Estonia was producing an abundance of professional mariners. 

Photo: Standard Tanker Mei Hsia

The Estonians had been great mariners in ancient times, but it was the Crimean War 1853 – 1856 reestablished them as modern mariners. Estonia had been part of the Swedish Empire but fell under Russian control in the 18th century. After the Great Northern War 1700 – 1721, because of their loyalty to the Swedes, Russian authorities had restricted Estonians in maritime trades. However, the destruction of the Russian Merchant Marine by British and French blockading fleets made the Estonians a seafaring nation again. The coastal fishermen became experienced blockade runners and became used to making long ocean voyages. Replacing the destroyed Russian merchant fleet with now the consent of Tsarist authorities, Estonians became involved in commercial enterprise and gained greater contact with the outside world.[14] It led to the development of what American naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan described as a “great population following callings related to the sea is, [which] now as formerly, a great element of sea power.”[15] As Estonia declared independence and was attacked by Bolshevik Russia, the Estonians were to rapidly develop naval forces from scratch in the last days of 1918 and the first days of 1919 to operate in their War of Independence. The Estonian Navy had a pivotal role in the War of Independence conducting raids and amphibious operations and providing naval gunfire support for land forces. The development of Estonian maritime enterprise was assisted by the opening of maritime schools at Heinaste (Aina?i) in 1864 opened through private efforts led by Latvian national figure Kristjans Valdemars and then in Estonia at Narva (1873), K?smu (1884) and Kuressaare (1891).[16]  Personnel for the Estonian navy largely came from the experience pool of merchant mariners, including the naval forces commander during the War of Independence Captain Johan Pitka.

Captain Mender would be in the Far East at time of Estonia’s War of Independence 1918 – 1920. Mender was originally from the Estonian island of Vilsandi, he was from a seafaring family and served as a common seaman on various foreign vessels after completing his basic education. After some time sailing Atlantic waters he returned to Estonia and attended the Kuresaare Maritime School. He completed the Kuresaare school in 1904 and served as an officer aboard a sailing vessel for a time. Mender went on to study at the Riga Maritime School. He finished school in 1907 and made his way to Vladivostok to serve aboard vessels of  Count Keyserlings’ fleet plying the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea. Mender became captain of 2000 ton Oleg, the largest vessel in Keyserlings’ fleet. With growing chaos in the Russian Far East in Spring 1919 he moved his family from Vladivostok to Shanghai becoming a first officer in the Standard Oil tanker fleet.[17] Given situation in the Russian Empire, much of the Estonian maritime community Vladivostok left returning to Estonia or going to work in China. 

Photo: Captain Peeter Mender aboard the Standard Tanker Mei Ping

Operating on Chinese rivers could be hazardous during the period, soldiers of various warlord armies would alternate from being soldiers to being bandits. Opium use was widespread in China with the Chinese Communists and various warlords vying for control of the trade. The Chinese seamen employed by Standard were a “healthier group” because they earned a living on foreign ships and would not be able to keep their jobs if they smoked opium.[18]  Bandits attacked river vessels and trains or terrorized entire towns or districts when warlord generals were unable to pay wages to their armies. Large groups of bandits and river pirates sometimes with armed junks attacked river vessels. As according to Captain Mender, “ships had steel shutters on the bridge which were lowered in emergencies. In addition, ships carried tear gas, automatic rifles, machine guns, and colt pistols. Gun battles were an everyday occurrence. Sometimes the bands of robbers were very large. One time I saw a large band of robbers that numbered 4,500 men. The robbers were on one bank of the river and [nationalist] soldiers were on the other side. There was shooting over our heads as we passed by.”[19] As the Japanese advanced from the coast along the Yangtze closing on Nanjing (Nanking), commercial traffic ended on the river, Captain Mender due to retire on 1 January 1938. With his family on a French liner returning to Europe, in late November 1937 Mender had one last task with Standard - to take his tanker the Mei Ping from Wuhan (Hankow) to Nanking where British, French and US warships were evacuating their nationals from the city which was besieged by the Japanese and refuel the American and French warships. The Mei Ping was to join with the Standard tankers Mei Hsia and Mei An to refuel the warships and evacuate Standard’s foreign and Chinese employees. The tankers were to be under the protection of the USS Panay, (PR - 5) a US Navy river patrol boat.

Photo: USS Panay (Naval Historical Center)

However, Captain Mender took the tankers back upriver from Nanking towards Wuhu where refueling could take place without the danger of being hit by shrapnel or an errant bomb or shell in the fighting around the city. The USS Panay had to remain at Nanking because there were sixteen American missionaries and one reporter who refused evacuation – the vessel had to stay in case those people needed assistance. Lieutenant Commander James J. Hughes, commander of the USS Panay, at did not want the tankers to go upriver but Captain Mender convinced him of the soundness of the idea. Mender wanted to keep the tankers out of harm’s way as much as possible, complete their task and get them underway all as quickly as possible. The tankers required escort from USS Panay once underway par agreement between the Navy and the Standard Company. However, the tankers remained in the vicinity of Nanking from 6 December to 11 December, they lingered as they waited for the USS Panay to escort them further upriver. On the night of 11 December, the USS Panay was able to get underway to join up with the Mei Ping, Mei Hsia, and Mei An. As the tankers got underway with the naval vessel steaming behind them on 12 December at 1330, the USS Panay was struck by two bombs from aircraft of Imperial Japanese Navy’s 12th Air Group under Captain Miki Morihiko. The USS Panay was modern vessel purpose built to protect commerce from river and shore threats but lacked air defense capabilities. By 1400 the USS Panay was engulfed in flames and sinking. The vessel sank at 1545 having the dubious distinction of being the first US Navy vessel ever to be sunk by hostile aircraft.

The Mei Ping was struck by two bombs, Captain Mender despite being injured steered the vessel to the south bank of the river to ground the vessel to give the Chinese passengers, most who could not swim, a chance to escape. The tanker had good firefighting equipment but much it was damaged in the attack, nevertheless the crew of the Mei Ping began to fight the fires that broke out aboard the vessel. On the south shore, the crew and passengers of Mei Ping were met by Japanese troops, who thought they were part of a Chinese river fleet evacuating Chinese nationalist troops from Nanking. Mender was able to convince  them that they were US flagged vessels. The Japanese major commanding the detachment was convinced of this, however he could only communicate directly with the Japanese aircraft with flags and flares as the B4Y1 Type 96 and A4N Type 95 biplanes which made the raid where not equipped with radios.

Photo: B4Y1 Type 96

The Mei Hsia was nearby to assist the Mei Ping, the Mei An which was trailing was also hit by bombs and also grounded itself.  The twelve aircraft made a second attack with bombs hitting the Mei Hsia setting the petroleum products aboard on fire. The vessel burned with brilliant orange flames billowing acrid black smoke, the survivors jumped overboard and made their way to shore with the assistance of Mender and his men. A number of Japanese soldiers were also wounded in the attack. Captain Mender and his crew and survivors of the USS Panay organized care for the wounded, doing what they could until assistance arrived. They remained ashore at an iron ore mining operation which was not functioning because of the fighting. The survivors remained in a cold and uncomfortable conditions before relief arrived in the form of three Japanese Imperial Navy Kawanishi H6K flying-boats carrying doctors, nurses and food and the British gunboats HMS Ladybird and HMS Bee and the USS Oahu, a sister vessel to the USS Panay on 15 December 1937. 

Photo: Kawanishi H6K flying-boat

Some 91 people were killed, mainly employees of Standard Oil. Captain Mender and the Estonian helmsman of the Mei Ping, Peeter Jakobson survived the attack.[20] Mender received medical treatment aboard the HMS Bee for wounds he received during the bombing and attempts to quell the fires. Mender had to arrange a loan from the Royal Navy paymaster to see that the injured Chinese employees of Standard Oil received local medical treatment. Aboard the HMS Bee he dined with the Commander of the British Yangtze flotilla Admiral R.V. Holt. Holt knew much about Estonia and commented that the Estonians were good mariners, he knew of the exploits of Estonian yachtsman, Ahto Walter who crossed the Atlantic singlehandedly. Mender met the British military attaché who spent time in Estonia and a number of naval officers of the British flotilla who were in Estonia during the Independence War period. Mender commented of Japanese who came to their assistance, that the chief medical officer and commander knew about Estonia, “the Japanese knew where Estonia was, and even the common people knew. They knew this better than the British and Americans.”[21] Officials of the Standard company knew of Estonians and valued their service as would the US Navy. From the US Navy, Captain Mender received the Naval Expeditionary Medal for his services during the incident. The Japanese apologized for the attack to the United States and paid 2.2 million dollars in compensation. Certain political factions within the presidential administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the “China lobby” which consisted largely of Protestant missionaries and business interests in China hoped the incident would lead to war between the US and Japan. However, the majority of the American public was against war as they saw that there was no greater national interest in it. The Panay incident did renew the idea of using an oil embargo to put pressure on Japan.[22] War did come between the United States and Japan in December 1941 over the issue of oil after negotiations broke over a tight oil embargo the American government placed on the Japanese in July 1941 because of their continuing war in China. The Japanese High Command saw no resolution to the situation and thus attacked American forces in the Hawaiian Islands on 7 December 1941. The Japanese leadership hoped for a quick war with a negotiated settlement.  

Photo: Naval Expeditionary Medal

In 1938 Captain Mender retired to Tartu, Estonia, as Soviet occupation loomed the Standard Company arranged for him and his family to immigrate to the United States. Other Estonian mariners also departed the Far East, Estonians who felt under Japanese rule or lived in Japanese territories were fortunate as the Japanese government treated them as citizens of a neutral country. Many other Estonians working for Standard, undertook hazardous duties in Allied convoys during the World War II.

[1]Gilbert Holland Montague, “The Rise and Supremacy of the Standard Oil Company,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. (February 1902): 265

[2] C.M. Keyes, “Standard Oil Plans to Make the World It’s Market,” New York Times (25 July 1908): 4, Mabel H. Wharton, “From the Line to North of 53,” Nation’s Business (September 1918): 17

[3] W.S.A. Pott, “John Hay and the Open Door,” The Weekly Review of the Far East. (1 October 1921): 204

[4] Pott, “John Hay and the Open Door,” 205

[5] Joel E. Hamby, “Striking the Balance: Strategy and Force in the Russo – Japanese War,” Armed Forces and Society. (Spring 2004): 329 – 330, Robert L. Kirwan, “Japanese Strategy in the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905,” Military Review (February 1971): 73 - 74

[6]Denis & Peggy Warner. The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905. (New York: Charterhouse. 1974): 570, J. A. White, “Portsmouth 1905: Peace or Truce?” Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 6 No. 4 (1969): 363

[7] Herbert O. Yardley. The American Black Chamber. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1931): 244

[8] Ernest Allen Jr. “Waiting for Tojo: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932-1943,” Gateway Heritage (Fall 1995): 40, Yardley. The American Black Chamber: 244

[9] Thomas A. Breslin, “Trouble Over Oil: America, Japan and the Oil Cartel 1934 – 1936,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (July–September 1975): 42, “The Manchurian Problem,” Times of London (21 September 1931): 1

[10] Breslin, “Trouble Over Oil: America, Japan and the Oil Cartel 1934 – 1936,” 48 -49

[11] Peter Mender (Hillar Kalmar trans.) Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937. (Saint Petersburg FL: Book locker. 2010): 32 - 33

[12] Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937: 37

[13] Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937: 35

[14] H. Sepp, “P?gus pilk Eesti laevanduse arengusse,” [A brief look at the development of Estonian shipping] ERK (July 13, 1937): 74 - 75

[15] Alfred Thayer Mahan. the Influence of Seapower Upon History 1660 – 1783. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company. 1890): 50

[16] Sepp, “P?gus pilk Eesti laevanduse arengusse,” 75

[17] “Eesti Meremehed Hiinas,” [Estonian Mariners in China] Wabamaa (16 December 1937): 4, Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937: 8

[18] Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937:  136 – 137, Ralph Townsend. Ways that are Dark: The Truth About China. (New York: G.P. Putnam’s. 1933): 254 - 255

[19] Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937:  145

[20] “Eesti Meremehed Hiinas,” 1, Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937: 106 – 120, Masatake Okumiya, "How the Panay Was Sunk," US Naval Institute Proceedings (June 1953): 587-596

[21] Mender. Thirty Years A Mariner in the Far East 1907 – 1937: 127

[22] Joseph F. Bouchard, “Accidents and Crises: "Panay, Liberty," and "Stark," The Naval War College Review (Autumn 1988): 90, Alvin D. Coox. Year of the Tiger (Philadelphia PA: Orient-West Inc. 1964): 83-98 Bettina Bien Greaves, “Why War?” The Freeman (April 1994): 163