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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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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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The bridge of the ship is propped by the ridge rather like an anchor, that is why it hasn't toppled over into the muddy side.
 
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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If you are looking for a high standard of reverse engineering, why would you take Carl Bildt at his word within hours of the accident, 'it was the weak bow visor bolts'?


He was only a politician. Yet people think his utterly ridiculous pronouncement is gospel.
 
Axxman300 said:
Maybe there were Blue Meanies onboard and the sub just took care of business?

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/116ZscshjGW0SY/giphy.gif[/qimg]

*and now that song is stuck in your head. Conspiracy?*:D
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Sky is blue
And sea is green
In our Yellow Submarine.

Many a true word said in jest. The Baltic Sea has been awash with submarines of all shapes and sizes. Many many wars have been fought over that region over the centuries for control. The soviets had 186 submarines that we know of before the downfall in 1991. By 1994 they had just 96. They were selling them to nations like Iran (proven fact, causing Sweden to issue a formal complaint) and tinpot Third World dictatorships. A sneaky Russian sub got stuck in some rocks in the archipelego so its presence had to become known for rescue. The whole area of each different country is awash with submarine defence listening posts.
 
RolandRat said:
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?
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I wouldn't rule out a submarine collision at all. IMV that is the most probable cause of the rapid sinking.
 
Vixen said:
No, it is pretty much grounded. Only four shifts, which will cause some wear and tear but can't possibly explain the massive impact damage in the hull.
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Ah! Is see you're using your material- and construction engineering knowledge again.
 
Vixen said:
Seawater. Passengers often complained to find their cars in several centimetres of it.

One reason it is best to leave your car at home and just hire one the other end.
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On the Estonia?

That does not point to a well water tight ship at that point of it's life. If water on the car deck is normal (normal enough to have passengers complain often about it), the bow visor cannot have closed very well.
Now, imagine what the extra stress a storm might bring about!

Thank you for this evidence, that the seaworthiness of the Estonia was not all it should have been!
 
Vixen said:
The bridge of the ship is propped by the ridge rather like an anchor, that is why it hasn't toppled over into the muddy side.
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Vixen said:
No, it is pretty much grounded. Only four shifts, which will cause some wear and tear but can't possibly explain the massive impact damage in the hull.
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The bridge (which is not designed to support the weight of the ship) sits on hard rock. The bow and stern sit on softer clay, which is prone to movement.

It would be entirely unsurprising that this should lead to deformation of the hull, and that the stresses caused by this may cause one or more seam to fail.

It seems to me that it is very much possible that this could explain "the massive impact damage in the hull", but I am no marine architect or metallurgist, so I stand ready to be corrected by those with greater expertise.
 
erwinl said:
On the Estonia?

That does not point to a well water tight ship at that point of it's life. If water on the car deck is normal (normal enough to have passengers complain often about it), the bow visor cannot have closed very well.
Now, imagine what the extra stress a storm might bring about!

Thank you for this evidence, that the seaworthiness of the Estonia was not all it should have been!
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Talking about the Ro-Ro ferries in general. Don't forget cars and lorries are designed to withstand weather conditions.
 
Vixen said:
Talking about the Ro-Ro ferries in general. Don't forget cars and lorries are designed to withstand weather conditions.
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Cars and lorries are designed to withstand weather conditions.
Being for several hours in a layer of seawater is not part of that.

I've been to the UK many times via car ferry and the lower deck was always completely dry when we arrived there, or back again.

Dry other than through rainwater dripping of cars if it had been raining during embarking.

Seawater, especially if it is several centimeters deep is not normal on a car ferry.
 
RolandRat said:
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?
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Not by blowing a hole in the hull without being very obvious to the passengers and crew.

I suppose they could have been used to blow the visor open but again that would be very obvious to the crew.
 
Vixen said:
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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How do you know what would be expected of a sub colliding with a ship?
Why would the ship come to a 'sudden halt' if something had hit the side of it?
What evidence is there that the ship came to a sudden halt?
 
Vixen said:
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.
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Why would it turn completely turtle before sinking? If the ship is on the bottom of the sea it has sunk.
I can show you plenty of ships that sank without turning completely over, I can show you ships that went down on an even keel.
 
Vixen said:
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.
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If you let the air out of the mattress it will sink, what a stupid comparison.
 
Vixen said:
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.
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Lots of ships have gone down very quickly without being torpedoed or rammed.
Some go down so fast the crew below decks have no chance of escape.
 
Vixen said:
We are talking about a hole that was cause by a significant impact.
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You have no evidence that the hole was caused by a 'significant impact'

This is a hole caused by a 'significant impact' by another ship hitting 'bows on'

picture.php



This is a hole caused by a significant impact

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This is a hole caused by a significant impact

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They look nothing like the split in the Estonia.


(Last picture is HMS Diomede one of my old ships from a collision with an Icelandic gun boat in the Cod War. Many years before I was aboard though)
 
Vixen said:
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.




In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire the Baltic, hurricanes/typhoons hardly ever happen.
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She was significantly larger than the Estonia and had been weather routed to miss the worst of it. She was 'hove to' just meeting the waves. They were not conditions outside the spec of the ship.

It sank because it started taking water in at the bow through a damaged ventilator which resulted in the bows being driven under and a sudden flooding of the cargo space.

At the time there was a large bulk carrier sinking every couple of weeks.

Two ships a week are lost at sea.
 
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