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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen

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The case of the sinking of the Estonia is to be reopened. This was decided September last year and the new investigation begins on Thursday 8 July 2021. Several investigators, including engineers and marine experts will be taking a boat out to the stricken ship which lies 74m to 85m underwater on the seabed. There were talks of covering it with concrete or granite rocks after the accident, but this was rejected. This means the investigation teams will be disturbing the final resting place of over six hundred people, so various memorial services from the neighbouring countries will be held in honour of them on the 9th July 2021.

The preliminary study will map the conditions for the actual assessment of the Estonian wreck, which is scheduled to start next year. In the background is a documentary from the Discovery Network published in 2020. It found damage on the side of a ship resting 80 meters below sea level for which no cause has been given in previous investigations. There is also a hole about four meters long on the side of the ship.
TS

The original May Day call can be heard here:



28th September, 1994, the cruise ferry ship, MS Estonia, on its way from Tallinn to Stockholm, suddenly sank in the early hours of the morning. The Baltic Sea was rough but that was not something the crews were not used to. A May Day distress call went out as the ship listed to its side and then sank bow down stern up. It was carrying 889 passengers and crew, of which 138 were rescued, another 121 or so bodies were recovered, whilst the remaining 630 who drowned remain in entombed in their watery grave, 41 km from the Finnish island of Ütö, although the waters themselves are international waters. Most of the victims were Swedes and Estonians, with a few other nationalities, including ten Finns.

The official inquiry concluded that the cause of the accident was that the bow doors to the parking area for cars and lorries had come unhinged, allowing sea water to seep in, when it eventually fell off. Survivors report hearing a bang. A treaty between several countries was signed that it was unlawful for anyone to approach the spot where the stricken vessel lies, and it is regularly patrolled by coastguards. One country which did not sign the treaty was Germany.

One day, a couple of investigative German journalists engaged a boat to approach the MS Estonia, they dived below the waves and took pictures. They discovered something staggering: there was a large hole at the side of the ship. This has led to speculation that the disaster was caused by a submarine crashing into it, or one of the lorries, which included Russian military equipment, said to be sneaking secret weapons out of Russia, was the cause, i.e., some kind of explosive. The Germans involved are likely to be arrested and charged if they ever set foot in Sweden.

The new investigation is thanks to the revelations of this German team, as exposed in the Discovery documentary.



Location of MS Estonia here.

One of the survivors was an English guy, Paul Barney, and he tell his amazing story here:

 
Any chance of linking to a pic of the hole? Those 2 videos amount to ~2.5 hours of viewing.
 
A clear case of conspiritis. The official explanation is well documented, researched and very logical. A conspiracy would need a very convoluted and unlikely chain of events.
 
There are lots of stresses a ship is subjected to when going bow down/stern up. More stresses on the way down, more again on hitting bottom, continuing on yet further during the long process of "coming to rest."

So the very alarming and shocking question "why did the original investigation not address the hole" presupposes the hole existed at the time.
 
A clear case of conspiritis. The official explanation is well documented, researched and very logical. A conspiracy would need a very convoluted and unlikely chain of events.

It makes a difference to the survivors and families of the dead. They were refused a £41m compensation pot by a court in Paris as it was deemed no-one was identified as responsible. The theory of the bow door coming loose seemed the obvious reason. The fact the authorities have agreed to revisit the accident is quite remarkable, as they refused for many years. Even it turns out that the hole at the side and what looks like a long horizontal cut was caused by the movement of the ship going down and hitting the bed, at least the families will have a final answer. The boat did list violently to one side which could be caused by a hole appearing on that side and water flooding in. Many surviving witnesses did report a loud bang, which was assumed to be the bow door coming off.
 
Thanks. That looks like a crack as opposed to a "hole". It should be very interesting to follow this story.

There's another picture here. It is 4m x 1.2m. That's roughly thirteen feet by four feet. and looks like a clean cut.
 

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Erratum: It was the stern that went down first, not the bow:

In a statement sent to the news agency STT, Tuomo Karppinen and Heimo Iivonen, former members of the Finnish Commission of Inquiry , say that they believe that the hole on Estonia's side was created when the ship sank further into the seabed.

According to them, there are likely to be more holes in the hull of the wreck that may become visible over time and as the shipwreck moves.

- Estonia sank so that the stern sank first, and the stern touched the bottom. The ship remained upright at a 45-degree angle to float the bow above sea level. When it filled, the bow also began to fall down. The whole hull hit the bottom of the sea, Karppinen says.

He believes that when a heavy passenger ship collapses and hits the seabed, "damage will, of course, occur."

When they hit the bottom, the hull of the ship has sagged, as a result of which the steel siding plate on the side has been torn.

Terrible sound of steel tearing
None of the people rescued from Estonia have said that they have heard the sounds of the side hole in the ship. According to Karppinen's and Iivonen's statement, people were saved not only from the ship's engine room but also from cabins that are very close to the hole.

- The side plate was 8-10 millimeters thick steel. If you start tearing one up, it will make a terrible sound, Karppinen says.

According to Iivonen and Karppinen, the four-meter-high hole extends from the car deck to at least the cabin compartment below it. According to them, the Estonian system engineer and others who worked in and rescued from the control room have not said that they found water inside the ship outside the car deck.
YLE

Since it hit the seabed, the wreck has shifted so the drone photos were able to capture the gap appearing.

The issue to be settled is whether the bow doors came off before it sank, as it would not possible to have done so once submerged.

Anyway, it is planned to take a 3-D model of the wreck.
 
Is the issue that the hole\tear wasn't mentioned in the original report? If that's the case then I would be a bit upset too. You don't leave something like that out of a report. That's the only part I'm curious about.
 
Is the issue that the hole\tear wasn't mentioned in the original report? If that's the case then I would be a bit upset too. You don't leave something like that out of a report. That's the only part I'm curious about.

It would be perfectly fine for the report to not mention it if the hole wasn't there when the report was made.

So until that has been established, everything else is supposition.
 
It would be perfectly fine for the report to not mention it if the hole wasn't there when the report was made.

So until that has been established, everything else is supposition.

No arguments, that what I meant and that's all I'm curious about. I'm sure there's a way to find out or at least establish what caused the tear.
 
There’s a thread in CT about this.

Wish I'd known about that thread! Seems the Swedish and Estonian authorities are no longer treating it as conspiracy theory.

It is all very well saying the four metre long gap happened when the stern hit the seabed. However, it is not just a gap, there is actually a 1.2m hole in the middle of it. As ships are designed to be bouyant - the Estonia took a total of ninety minutes to sink - so even if it did sink to the bottom once the bow was 45° it seems unlikely to me that a 'rock caused the hole in the hull' and the split in the thick reinforced steel due to the vessel shifting on the seabed.

At least a proper reevaluation will put these issues to bed once and for all (no pun intended).
 
Is the issue that the hole\tear wasn't mentioned in the original report? If that's the case then I would be a bit upset too. You don't leave something like that out of a report. That's the only part I'm curious about.

No, the hole/tears was not known of until the two German film makers recently (illegally) sent down a drone to take photos. Their documentary is the reason the marine body has decided to amend the law banning all incursions into the area, allowing the investigators access for up to I believe 2026. They will be there until the 16 July but have scheduled two extra days if needed, on this current expedition that arrives Thursday morning (8 July). They plan to make a 3-D model of it, I guess using electronic soundwave type equipment.

The accident happened 1994 so it is interesting they have reopened the case after so long.
 
No arguments, that what I meant and that's all I'm curious about. I'm sure there's a way to find out or at least establish what caused the tear.

I'm sure there is a way. I'm just not sure finding out is worth the effort. I'm also not sure there's any reason to drum up public interest at this point.
 
That's a tear by a pulling force. The one in the image could be a stress tear from any number of force directions.

As for the hatch doors coming off, I thought at the time they said the doors were not properly latched.

ISTM if they never sent down divers to examine the wreck then the theory it was the bow doors coming off is just armchair investigation. Whilst the four metre 'cut' might just be a stress tear (in reinforced strong metal) resulting from moving around on the seabed, it doesn't explain the clear hole within it. AIUI it lies on a muddy seabed, although being near the Finnish archipelago, there might well be granite rocks here and there, but could it cause a hole in thick reinforced metal? For example, where I to drop a cast iron saucepan or even a steel frying pan off a cliff of the same height - 74m - 85m, and it hit a sharp rock at the bottom, would this cause a clear hole in either of them? Maybe they would be dented.
 
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I'm sure there is a way. I'm just not sure finding out is worth the effort. I'm also not sure there's any reason to drum up public interest at this point.

Erm, the relatives of the 989 victims, which included children?

If there is a design fault then they will be able to resume a claim for compensation from the shipbuilders, which previously failed.


I, too, would like to know as I travelled on this same vessel between Stockholm and Turku when it was called Viking Sally. In fact, it has quite a history. Two young German tourists were attacked and one murdered in 1987 on the helicopter pad of the ship. A Danish guy, who at the time was 18 has just been cleared by a Finnish court of being the murderer, due to foreign language evidence being barred. I think the prosecution plan to appeal.

It's interesting that two unsolved issues to do with this vessel are now coming to a head. It is good for things to come to a resolution.
 
Wish I'd known about that thread! Seems the Swedish and Estonian authorities are no longer treating it as conspiracy theory.

It is all very well saying the four metre long gap happened when the stern hit the seabed. However, it is not just a gap, there is actually a 1.2m hole in the middle of it. As ships are designed to be bouyant - the Estonia took a total of ninety minutes to sink - so even if it did sink to the bottom once the bow was 45° it seems unlikely to me that a 'rock caused the hole in the hull' and the split in the thick reinforced steel due to the vessel shifting on the seabed.

At least a proper reevaluation will put these issues to bed once and for all (no pun intended).

What 'thick reinforced steel" is that?

Ferries do not have much plating on the side at all.
 
ISTM if they never sent down divers to examine the wreck then the theory it was the bow doors coming off is just armchair investigation. Whilst the four metre 'cut' might just be a stress tear (in reinforced strong metal) resulting from moving around on the seabed, it doesn't explain the clear hole within it. AIUI it lies on a muddy seabed, although being near the Finnish archipelago, there might well be granite rocks here and there, but could it cause a hole in thick reinforced metal? For example, where I to drop a cast iron saucepan or even a steel frying pan off a cliff of the same height - 74m - 85m, and it hit a sharp rock at the bottom, would this cause a clear hole in either of them? Maybe they would be dented.

Again, what "reinforced strong metal"

A ship sinking has stresses on the hull it was not designed for.
A ferry like this is not that strong. It has to have a large enclosed hull space so the plating is quite thin. Put a lot of large unsecured loads like 40 ton trucks inside it and it would be a surprise if there weren't stress fractures and tears in the hull.
 
What 'thick reinforced steel" is that?

Ferries do not have much plating on the side at all.
I would expect the hull plating to be ~10mm thick, depending on load/size. That is however a figure I vaguely remember from helping someone compute the Lloyd’s Register formula in Excel years ago.
 
Which is far from 'thick reinforced steel"
It's standard plate.

Also plate thickness varies depending on location.
 
Which is far from 'thick reinforced steel"
It's standard plate.

Also plate thickness varies depending on location.

OK. I know nothing about metallurgy or shipbuilding.

- The side plate was 8-10 millimeters thick steel. If you start tearing one up, it will start to sound awful, Karppinen says.
YLE

This guy was one of the contributors to the original report, which you can see in full, in English here. It has a handy 'go to' so you go straight to the relevant chapter.
 
The documentary cites a Norwegian marine technology professor, Jørgen Amdahl of Trondheim University, as saying the damage – which he estimated was caused by a collision with an object weighing between 1,000 and 5,000 tonnes, travelling at between two and four knots – could have played “a major part” in the sinking.


The film-makers’ findings, made public for the first time last week, have prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity. In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Estonia, Finland and Sweden said they had “agreed that verification of the new information presented in the documentary will be carried out”.
GUARDIAN
 
I'm sure there is a way. I'm just not sure finding out is worth the effort. I'm also not sure there's any reason to drum up public interest at this point.

According to that last article it looks like there already was a large amount of public interest. The leaders of all the countries have called for a new investigation, and it appears there are public calls for an investigation.

I see no issue with it. I don't know that the ship ran into a submarine but people quoted in the article appear to have genuine curiosity as to what happened. Whether true or not, it's being investigated again.
 
I came across some amazing pictures of the rescue operation in the Swedish paper AFTONBLADET. Look out for the one of 20-year-old Estonian, Janno Aser, wearing a life jacket, just about to slide off the hull of the ship into the water. It is the only known photo taken before the ship went down. The photographer, 34-year-old Mikael Oun was an Estonian engineer living in Stockholm, who was an avid photographer. He could see the lights of two other cruise ferry ships in the distance, the Europa and the Mariella, which had set off from Helsinki to Stockholm, so he hit on the idea of taking a lot of flashes with his camera to attract attention to their location, and inadvertently caught Janno Aser, struggling for survival (both did survive).

https://estonia.story.aftonbladet.se/chapter/bilder/
 
Why does a bang only imply collision or explosion? Sudden catastrophic failure of structural components doesn't happen quietly.

How was the mass of the as yet unidentified object supposedly collided with "estimated?"

And then there's this crap:

It was a hole, way bigger than a film frame. I mean, a huge hole: 4 metres high, 1.2 metres wide.”

How big is a film frame? What aspect ratio was the lens, at what distance, and how zoomed in?

Sounds like someone trying to make it sound alarming by taking advantage of people's unfamiliarity with photography.
 
I came across some amazing pictures of the rescue operation in the Swedish paper AFTONBLADET. Look out for the one of 20-year-old Estonian, Janno Aser, wearing a life jacket, just about to slide off the hull of the ship into the water. It is the only known photo taken before the ship went down. The photographer, 34-year-old Mikael Oun was an Estonian engineer living in Stockholm, who was an avid photographer. He could see the lights of two other cruise ferry ships in the distance, the Europa and the Mariella, which had set off from Helsinki to Stockholm, so he hit on the idea of taking a lot of flashes with his camera to attract attention to their location, and inadvertently caught Janno Aser, struggling for survival (both did survive).

https://estonia.story.aftonbladet.se/chapter/bilder/
I read that whole piece, fascinating and horrid at the same time. They had 30 minutes but so many people didn't recognize what was happening. The captain got a mayday out but I have to wonder why there was no command to get life vests on and lower the lifeboats. More people might have survived. One guy, though he did make it, stopped to brush his teeth as the boat was listing almost on its side.

And in the lifeboat we read about, upside down with a black bottom it wasn't seen until morning and by that time half the people on it had died from the cold. Why are any lifeboats black on the bottom? I hope that has since changed. And the people in the lifeboat, why did none of them think to huddle together? They could have rotated people into the middle like penguins do during storms.

Incredibly sad obviously, but so many died even after they made it into lifeboats is an additional tragedy.


As for the hole in the side, they already know the bow visor that opens up to load vehicles came off first. It was even recovered. I can't see how the hole in the side is going to be implicated. When it first happened the news said the door for the cars wasn't properly latched. Hinges coming off or not properly latched, either way the hole in the side seems irrelevant.
 
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I read that whole piece, fascinating and horrid at the same time. They had 30 minutes but so many people didn't recognize what was happening. The captain got a mayday out but I have to wonder why there was no command to get life vests on and lower the lifeboats. More people might have survived. One guy, though he did make it, stopped to brush his teeth as the boat was listing almost on its side.

And in the lifeboat we read about, upside down with a black bottom it wasn't seen until morning and by that time half the people on it had died from the cold. Why are any lifeboats black on the bottom? I hope that has since changed. And the people in the lifeboat, why did none of them think to huddle together? They could have rotated people into the middle like penguins do during storms.

Incredibly sad obviously, but so many died even after they made it into lifeboats is an additional tragedy.


As for the hole in the side, they already know the bow visor that opens up to load vehicles came off first. It was even recovered. I can't see how the hole in the side is going to be implicated. When it first happened the news said the door for the cars wasn't properly latched. Hinges coming off or not properly latched, either way the hole in the side seems irrelevant.

It seems the 'alert' was put out in Estonian, without realising people needed it in Swedish and English, also - most passengers were Swedish and Estonian would have sounded like Double Dutch to their ears. The horn that was supposed to be a final warning, didn't sound until it was certainly too late for anyone to do anything more.*

Because the ship was listing at over 30º angle, it could not right itself. Ships are designed to be self- balancing, however, once it lists too far in one direction, the crew could then use the enormous ballast tanks filled with water to try to rebalance to the other side. However, on this occasion all the ballast tanks were already full. Because of the list, what was the wall, was now almost the ceiling. The steps leading up the eight-storey ship was now like climbing up a wall. People were having to use the stair railings as a ladder. Crew who made it to the deck were handing out life jackets and life rafts were inflated. However, people didn't know how to use them. the rope ladders attached to the raft should have been in the water for people to climb up, so many drowned because they could not get over the high sides. People had to be helped up by others already in the raft. As for the life boats proper, because of the list, with one side of the ship submerged in the water, they were too high up to be released and would have crashed down on the people below, or smashed into smithereens.

The bow visor was recovered but it is not known whether it came off before the boat sank (=the cause) or after it. If the boat was hit by something, like a submarine, from the outside, then that could distort internal structures (think of squeezing a tin). If an explosion from one of the military trucks (which were on the ship), then that could have had the effect of blowing the bow door out. Bear in mind, this ship had made thousands upon thousands of crossings as do tens of other similar ships run by Viking Line, Silja Line, Estline (now called 'Tallink', I believe) every day, so even a bow door coming loose needs to be explained.


*The boat sank within 24 minutes of the 'May Day' message, and even that was not done properly. Marine protocol means you are supposed to say 'May Day' three times. The guy contacting other ships in the area took a long time to say it, and then only twice. He even led with 'Good morning' on one occasion.

'May Day' is believed to be derived from the French 'm'aidez' ['help me!]. The original CQD call of the Titanic (come quickly, in distress) was replaced by SOS which could be easily tapped out telegraphically as 'dash-dash-dash - dit-dit-dit- dash-dash-dash', or 'dot-dot-dot-dit-dit-dit' repeatedly. However, in the age of electronic communication 'May day' said three times became the conventional marine call of distress, then others know you were really in trouble.
 
No they aren't.
They have to be trimmed by stowage of cargo and shifting ballast and fuel.
It isn't automatic.

Erm... most (all?) modern passenger ships and ferries have fin stabilizers to keep them level while underway. And they work automatically. Cargo ships and ferries still need to be balanced manually while loading and unloading, though. You're both right, I'd say.
 
What puzzles me is, if the bow visor was ripped off, presumably by the storm - which wasn't particularly fierce by September/October Baltic Sea standards - then one would have thought the seawater would have flooded in evenly, no? Assuming when the cars and trucks rolled on they were directed so that it was evenly balanced. Even if one lorry outbalanced the other side, that shouldn't cause a massive list of 30º, which at that angle, the engines cut off? OTOH say the gap/hole in one of the sides came first, then it is more understandable why that caused the ship to capsize and then sink.

The bow visor was recovered but perhaps it was only an assumption that it caused the sinking because of what happened on the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 as it left Zeebrugge and killing 193. It was found that the bow door had been left open.

MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ferry which capsized moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew.[1]

The eight-deck car and passenger ferry was owned by Townsend Thoresen, designed for rapid loading and unloading on the competitive cross-channel route, and there were no watertight compartments. The ship left harbour with her bow door open, and the sea immediately flooded the decks; within minutes, she was lying on her side in shallow water. The immediate cause of the capsizing was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, who was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow door.
wiki

Another case was the Polish ship Jan Heweliusz from Ystad to Świnoujście (extreme NW Poland).

At 4:10 am on Jan 14 1993, the ship started listing in hurricane-force winds, estimated at 180 kilometres per hour (50 m/s). It capsized at 5:12am. The waves were up to 6 metres high and ferries in the nearby port of Sassnitz had been cancelled. Prior to its sinking, Jan Heweliusz had been involved in 28 incidents, including collisions with fishing boats, listing, engine failure, and a fire in 1986.
wiki

Cause there was that a whole load of concrete had been used to repair the ship in the past. Relatives received €4,600 each because of an attributable negligence.
 
Erm... most (all?) modern passenger ships and ferries have fin stabilizers to keep them level while underway. And they work automatically. Cargo ships and ferries still need to be balanced manually while loading and unloading, though. You're both right, I'd say.

The fin doesn't do much to stop a slow list. It catches the compression wave under the water when coming from the side to reduce heeling (very brief description).
 
Erm... most (all?) modern passenger ships and ferries have fin stabilizers to keep them level while underway. And they work automatically. Cargo ships and ferries still need to be balanced manually while loading and unloading, though. You're both right, I'd say.

Fin stabilisers do not 'self right' a ship that is taking on a list or heel. They reduce rolling on a ship underway, they are for passenger comfort.

RoRo ferries will capsize very quickly if water gets on to the vehicle decks and the ship rolls.
After a certain degree of roll the vehicles will also move.
 
What puzzles me is, if the bow visor was ripped off, presumably by the storm - which wasn't particularly fierce by September/October Baltic Sea standards - then one would have thought the seawater would have flooded in evenly, no?

Vehicle decks are the full width and length of the ship.
If water gets in and the ship rolls then the water goes to the lower side. this amplifies and continues the roll.
It is called 'free surface effect'
Quite a relatively small tonnage of water can capsize a ferry.
 
Vehicle decks are the full width and length of the ship.
If water gets in and the ship rolls then the water goes to the lower side. this amplifies and continues the roll.
It is called 'free surface effect'
Quite a relatively small tonnage of water can capsize a ferry.

Ah, right. There is a diagram of the layout of M/S Estonia here, when it was Viking Sally (which won't have changed). As you say, the car deck is almost the full length. The way it operates is that cars and trucks 'roll on' at the bow end. The bow visor lifts, rather like a drawbridge, and a second ramp that goes up, is lowered so that cars can alight the ferry. The Ramp is then lifted up and the bow visor dropped over it. So even when the visor was wrenched off in the high winds (not unusual in the Baltic) the sealed ramp should have formed a wall against waves, except there was a three-foot gap at the top, which enabled them to breach it.

The international investigators at the time said in their report that a major cause of failure was that the shipbuilders, Joseph L. Meyer Company of Germany, had miscalculated the strength needed for the bow-locking device to hold up against severe storms (this one was not particularly). The shipbuilders used plates that were too thin to last and locks that were too weak.

It was fourteen years old as of the time of the accident, and the shipping lines generally ran the ferries on alternate days, with the following day the return day, so had voyaged many thousands of times - mainly between Sweden - Alands - Finland - before being sold to Estlines in Estonia in 1993, one year before the accident. Estonia had just come out of the fall of the USSR and had just gained independence in 1991, thus her captain and officers were trained at Russian naval schools.
 

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