The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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lobosrul5 said:
My conjecture: With the bow visor gone, the force of the water likely cause the ramp to go down, but not tear it off its hinges. With the ship partially capsized it may have swung back closed.
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The visor is semi-articulated with the ramp. The ramp, when closed, is too tall for the nominal weather deck height. So an accommodating housing is build into the deck of the visor. When the visor is raised and lowered normally, there is no problem. But if the visor hinges fail such that the visor falls downward, the housing will pull the top of the ramp down with it. opening it. The opening of the ramp doesn't need to be explained by the action of water.
 
JayUtah said:
The visor is semi-articulated with the ramp. The ramp, when closed, is too tall for the nominal weather deck height. So an accommodating housing is build into the deck of the visor. When the visor is raised and lowered normally, there is no problem. But if the visor hinges fail such that the visor falls downward, the housing will pull the top of the ramp down with it. opening it. The opening of the ramp doesn't need to be explained by the action of water.
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Ahh, I stand corrected.
 
lobosrul5 said:
But the Wilhelm Gustloff was also torpedoed and took 50 minutes to sink which proves....no I have no frickin idea actually.
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Lots of ships have been torpedoed and rammed and not sunk at all.

Almost as if different circumstances lead to different results.
 
Vixen said:
Carl Bildt claimed the bow visor had come off within sixteen hours of the accident, 'due to a technical fault'. Hours after the accident he ordered the Swedish Maritime Board to check the bow visors on all the other ferries 'because there might be a construction fault'.

The director of Nordstrom-Thulin, joint owners with Estonia, Estline, two days after Bildt's announcement, also told the public it was the fault of the bow visor. The JAIC 4 Oct 1994, which had only just been formed announced that, 'The Estonia sank due to thousands of tons of water entering the car deck. This occurred (it continues) because the bow lockings were of a design that was too weak, that allowed for a few strong waves to break them, after which, the bow visor was torn off, ripping off the car ramp* in the process and, as a consequence the car deck was flooded.'


*Of course, it would not be enough to simply have the bow visor fall off, the car ramp would also need to come off for it to have sank so fast.

All very convenient. No investigation or calculations needed. All decided within six days. Marvellous.
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That was a lot of words just to say: "No, I'm not sure and don't have a timeline to support my claim.
 
Vixen said:
Can't have done. The bow visor fell off 1:15 the ship was at near 90° list by 1:30. The engines and lights will have cut off at 40°. Some emergency lights did come on.
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A seaman says he saw the visor. Either he's lying, or you're wrong.

It was a cloudy night and would have been very dark at the end of September. Paul Barney was only able to see the ship go down because the moonlight broke through a cloud clearance and he saw the bow perfectly whilst the boat was in a near vertical straight line.
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So what? What Paul Barney remembers seeing is not a limitation on what other witnesses saw nor could have seen, especially not for ones who were both better trained at what to look for than he and were interviewed within hours when their recollections were fresher than his.

There is no way the seamen were ready to conclude it was the fault of the bow visor falling off 'because the bow bolts were of a weak design' within sixteen hours so that Carl Bildt could issue that statement. It is complete and utter nonsense.
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At most, it means that Bildt rushed to judgement based on what little he knew. Which, given what I know about Carl Bildt, is unsurprising. Doesn't mean there was some sort of conspiracy or coverup. Doesn't even mean he was wrong.
 
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There's another thing about this that people are forgetting, which is that Carl Bildt left office less than two weeks after the disaster happened. So nobody, after 7 October 1994, had any reason to give a crap what he thought.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
There's another thing about this that people are forgetting, which is that Carl Bildt left office less than two weeks after the disaster happened. So nobody, after 7 October 1994, had any reason to give a crap what he thought.
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Hmm which got me to reading a bit about the man. His government was a four party coalition. I'm highly skeptical that members of FOUR political parties could keep quiet about a conspiracy for decades. Not to mention the SD's took over a few weeks later and also kept quiet? Not happening.
 
Vixen said:
The sea bed where the Estonia lies is on a gradient of 30°. There is a ridge along which the upside down bridge sits. The part on a gradient is moraine clay which is very hard (Arikas says it broke his drill) the lower part is on this soft clay.
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No, according to Arikas the the bridge sits on bedrock, this is what broke his drill.

Baltic Times said:
"The geological composition of the seabed is rather simple in the area of the wreck. It can be seen quite clearly that the middle part of the wreck rests on a hard bedrock," Suuroja said.

"The rock in the middle part of the wreck is so strong it broke our drill," Arikas noted, adding that the clay below the bow and stern definitely offer less support for the wreck.
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junkshop said:
No, according to Arikas the the bridge sits on bedrock, this is what broke his drill.
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Oh?
That means the ship is firmly supported at one area, but the rest of the ship is on ground, which could quite possibly give way due to the weight resting on it?

And people are amazed about holes emerging?
 
I think the true answer can be found by looking at repairs and modifications made to similar ships after the accident. I point to the NIST World Trade Center reports where a list of recommendations were made which quietly hinted about problems with the construction, and how the RMS Olympic was placed in dry-dock after Titanic sank to work on her expansion joint. If there were a number of quiet fixes to those doors and new cargo protocols implemented then you should be able to backtrack to the cause...which was that door coming loose...
 
erwinl said:
Oh?
That means the ship is firmly supported at one area, but the rest of the ship is on ground, which could quite possibly give way due to the weight resting on it?

And people are amazed about holes emerging?
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Indeed, from the same article:

Baltic Times said:
The soil around the wreck has collapsed on four occasions at different times.

"This means that the soil around the wreck is very unstable and further landslides cannot be ruled out," Arikas said.
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Axxman300 said:
I think the true answer can be found by looking at repairs and modifications made to similar ships after the accident. I point to the NIST World Trade Center reports where a list of recommendations were made which quietly hinted about problems with the construction, and how the RMS Olympic was placed in dry-dock after Titanic sank to work on her expansion joint. If there were a number of quiet fixes to those doors and new cargo protocols implemented then you should be able to backtrack to the cause...which was that door coming loose...
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Means nothing. It's all just a part of the conspiracy! :eek:
 
Steve said:
Means nothing. It's all just a part of the conspiracy! :eek:
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Maybe there were Blue Meanies onboard and the sub just took care of business?

giphy.gif


*and now that song is stuck in your head. Conspiracy?*:D
 
So we can rule out the sub colliding with the ferry. We can rule out a surface ship colliding with the ferry. That just leaves the explosion part. Just to be thorough, is it possible explosives could sink the ferry, leave no trace and cause the damage shown?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
That's where the sabotage theory and the mysterious disappearing crew members come in to it.
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And the loud bangs, scrapings and shudders is exactly what happens when a submarine collides with a vessel or tries to emerge without doing a proper sonar check first. After the bangs/scraping the ship came to a sudden halt before proceeding. This is everything you expect from crash. Paul Barney thought the boat had hit rocks. Seven survivors (remember, there were vanishingly few of them) from deck 1 all the way up to deck 7, all independently described the same thing.

So, yeah, let's just disregard this as it doesn't fit the 'bow visor fell off' conclusion.
 
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