The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Vixen]

It did sink, it was on the bottom. What is that if not sunk?
If it was in deeper water it would have gone down just like the Estonia.

No. The buoyancy of a ship's hull means it turns turtle if it capsizes. Try it. Inflate a rubber mattress or pillow, then try to push it down below the water surface. It is astonishingly hard to do this because the air gives it buoyancy and all ships would immediately sink without it.

 

[Vixen]

Or an increase of 0.7% in the ship's displacement, or 1.9-point difference in the ballast ratio. (In other words, a negligible weight increase.) Having that weight topside would certainly affect the ship's stability, but not its flood rate or reserve buoyancy.

Well, it's academic as the Eastland was in a river that was only 20 feet deep.

 

[Vixen]

Why do you think that is important?

I can get you a list of ships that sank a lot faster after being torpedoed if you want. I am sure you could find one yourself with minimal searching.

Point. Missed?

The point is exactly that a ship only goes down as fast as that if it has been torpedoed or suffers a collision with another ship.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank immediately and when found they discovered it had been split in two.

 

[Vixen]

Which would explain why the wreck has shifted over the decades and started to tear apart.

We are talking about a hole that was cause by a significant impact.

 

[Vixen]

But they won't be passenger ships with high death tolls which is are the only types of sinkings that are relevant because they fit Vixens narrative. I mean I could bring up the USS Indianapolis off the top of my head.

The list wasn't anything to do with the death toll, it was to do with speed of sinking in passenger ships, although, granted, it would have been high, being passenger ships in the middle of the ocean or the sea.

Er, the USS Indianapolis was, um, torpedoed? Kimo sabi?

At 0015 on 30 July, the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.[4]

wiki

Ah, no wonder it sank so quickly!!! _DOH!



...as did the Estonia.

 

[Vixen]

I already gave the example of the MV Derbyshire, the largest British flagged ship ever to have been lost at sea, 300m length and 160,000 tons
She went down so quickly that a mayday was never transmitted and all 42 of the crew were lost.
She doesn't count for some reason.

According to wiki, MV Derbyshire sank in a typhoon with no May Day, thus we have no idea how quickly it sank, although obviously, it must have been very sudden.

The Derbyshire was lost on 9 September 1980 during Typhoon Orchid, south of Japan. All 42 crew members and two of their wives were killed in the sinking. At 91,655 gross register tons, she is the largest British ship ever to have been lost at sea.[3]

In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire the Baltic, hurricanes/typhoons hardly ever happen.

 

[erwinl]

No. The buoyancy of a ship's hull means it turns turtle if it capsizes. Try it. Inflate a rubber mattress or pillow, then try to push it down below the water surface. It is astonishingly hard to do this because the air gives it buoyancy and all ships would immediately sink without it.

Only if the hull has no holes into it at all at the top (the top being as things are oriented when the ship is normally upright).
The moment there are holes (open hatches, chutes, air intakes and more), the ship will not float upside down, but sink.

 

[Vixen]

How are your examples all of the same category?
Estonia was a cargo ship, it was full of cars and lorries. It had a bow that could be opened to load and unload the cargo. Which other of your examples carried a cargo and had a bow that could come off?

No, it was not. It was a cruise luxury liner Ro-Ro. They have have been running everyday of the week from at least three different shipping companies (Viking, Silja and Tallink) for literally decades, so obviously would not sink in half an hour because of water on the car deck, which is actually not uncommon.

 

[Vixen]

If the visor was in place how did anyone see the ramp?
You do know the ramp is not a structural or watertight component?

This is the image ship's engineer, Sillaste drew for the JAIC and for the various press several times.

You can see that he and Linde (the other witness to this) were looking at the car ramp from inside the car deck, where water is breaching the sides of the ramp, and as seen from a monitor elsewhere.

Note that the car ramp is up?

Then how could they see the bow visor was missing?



The bow visor could not be seen from the bridge.

Yet a witness who did see the boat from the outside in a life raft, Paul Barney, a PhD student, so obviously not a moron, saw the bow on the boat clearly as it went down. He was a random survivor (of very few people) with no agenda and no reason to lie. He gave a statement to the police at the hospital he was taken to for hypothermia but has never been asked for his account by JAIC and has been ignored by the UK government when he submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act as to why the UK signed the Estonia Gravesite Treaty but he was completely ignored.

 

[erwinl]

No, it was not. It was a cruise luxury liner Ro-Ro. They have have been running everyday of the week from at least three different shipping companies (Viking, Silja and Tallink) for literally decades, so obviously would not sink in half an hour because of water on the car deck, which is actually not uncommon.

Seawater? Or rain?
Please be specific.

 

[Vixen]

Lusitania 18 minutes

Which is in my table, if you care to look.

 

[Vixen]

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.

Think about it. If the waves are coming towards the boat then obviously the pressure on the car ramp is inwards, not outwards. So assuming the edges of the car ramp are wider than the frame it shuts onto any great pressure against the car ramp sailing into large waves would cause it to remain firmly shut and prevent anyone inside from pushing it open. If you have ever tried to open your car door when there is a very strong wind pushing against it, you will understand that your door could not fly open outwards of its own accord.

 

[Vixen]

But the Wilhelm Gustloff was also torpedoed and took 50 minutes to sink which proves....no I have no frickin idea actually.

The Lusitania was some fifty years earlier, so there's your answer.

 

[Vixen]

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.

With the force of the sea against it, it can't have fallen open. Had the ship turned 180º in the other direction, all the ship's mates needed to do was open the car ramp and all the water therein would have just flowed out.

The car ramp had eight locks, each of which could withstand 25 tonnes of pressure. However, it could also be secured by a thick hawser secured around a capstan on the deck at the bow. So in other words, it is locked quite independently of the bow visor. Even if the bow visor came up via hydraulic arms on either side the ram has to be lowered quite independently of the bow visor. It is nonsense to claim the 'bow visor dragged the car ramp down', as it is a completely independent mechanism to it. If it fell off, it would not take the ramp with it.

 

[Vixen]

Lots of ships have been torpedoed and rammed and not sunk at all.

Almost as if different circumstances lead to different results.

Do look at the table again. It is about how fast passenger ships sink as compared to the Estonia, together with their cause and the weight of the vessel. You will find that the Estonia sank as fast or even quicker than ships that had collided or had been torpedoed (cf: Wilhelm Gustloff 50" torpedoed thrice, Estonia 35" supposedly intact).

The fact that other torpedoed/crashed ships also sank fast is neither here nor there but underlines the point being made.

 

[Vixen]

That was a lot of words just to say: "No, I'm not sure and don't have a timeline to support my claim.

Timeline: 28 Sept 1994, Accident started 1:15 (according to JAIC) when bow visor fell off.

May day x 2 at 1:22 and 1: 25 Third captain Tammes reported a list of 30º - 40º.

1:30 (JAIC) list near 90 º

1:30 - 1:50 ship turned towards east whilst listed on starboard side

ship went down stern first, turned to face the bow, bow went down face forward.

Survivors managed to get to an inflatable life raft.

2: 30 Carl Bildt was at an official meeting somewhere when he had a call from presumably the intelligence agencies and this is when he was informed of the tragedy

3:30 Helicoptors and nearby ships come to the rescue throughout the night.

7:10 (apx) last survivors are picked up, including Paul Barney, some rescued via the cruise liners. All have hypothermia and/or broken bones. All are transported to hospitals in Sweden, Åland and Finland.


17:00 -ish(same day): Carl Bildt issues his statement to the Swedish press that the accident was caused by the bow visor.

30 Sept 1994: The CEO of Nordstrom-Thulin (co-owners of the ferry) issued a statement to the same effect.

2 Oct 1994 - Swedish navy finds the wreck

4 Oct 1994 the newly formed JIAC announces the accident was caused by the bow visor and its weak design with regard to its bolts.

 

[junkshop]

We are talking about a hole that was cause by a significant impact.

No, we are talking about a hole that may have been caused by a significant impact.

 

[Vixen]

A seaman says he saw the visor. Either he's lying, or you're wrong.



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.



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.

No, the seamen could npt have seen the bow visor from their view point of the car deck for they have categorically testified that the car ramp was up (i.e., locked) and not down.

They could have no idea the bow visor had fallen off. It could just as easily been inferred that it was raised, to account for the water breaching the car ramps sides, as drawn by engineer Sillaste.

They could not have been in any fit state to give any rational testimony whilst in a hospital bed with hypothermia and the severe stress and shock of looking death in the eye and being unable to save their passengers. No way coudl Bildt state with confidence it was the bow visor design, when all along he had knowledge of the smuggling of ex-Soviet state secrets on the Estonia at least twice during that month.

At that stage as an investigator, you have to have a list of things to rule out, not go straight to a conclusion.

 

[Vixen]

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.

Irrelevant. Carl Bildt was the PM who gave the go ahead for the use of the Estonia for the Soviet military smuggling. He was the one who appointed the person who took over as head of the JAIC, which was heavily dominated by him.

 

[Vixen]

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.

They kept quiet for one decade. In 2005 under Persson, it confirmed at the Rikstag via Appeal Court Judge Hirschfeldt it had indeed smuggled Soviet military equipment on the Estonia on the 14 September and the 20 September, 1994, which was all it would admit to, in the face of evidence it could not deny.

So it did cover up.


Further, Bildt had discussed the formation of the coalition party with an alien foreign power, the USA.