The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[JayUtah]

Citation please. I know you said you don't like people depending on experts, but I prefer to know who make a claim, together with the quote.

However, a preliminary examination report published on the Estonian government website concluded that the newly discovered damage was too small to have sunk the ship as quickly as it did. The hole probably appeared as the sinking ship hit rocks on sea bottom, it added.

"The findings cannot change the conclusions" of the earlier investigation, said the new preliminary report, authored by four Estonian scientists and a senior adviser at Foreign Affairs Ministry.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-estonia-ferry-preliminary-idUSKBN2762JG

 

[Andy_Ross]

Sigh. We were not discussing 'Who has the biggest waves'.

Fact is, the Baltic is a wavy sea, so is honestly no problem for the numerous cruise liners over the decades.

Apart from the ones it was a problem for?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Please add them to my list, stating ship name, year of accident, tonnage and cause of sinking, together with time taken to sink.

Speed of sinking

Here are the ten worst passenger shipping accidents, together with tonnage, cause of the accident and time taken to sink. It is in the order of 'time taken to sink'.


1. Empress of Ireland (UK 1914) 14,191, COLLISION, 14 minutes
2. Admiral Nakhimov (USSR 1986) - 17,053, COLLISION - 15 minutes
3. Don Juan (Philippines 1980) - 2,311 - COLLISION - 15 minutes
4. Lusitania (UK, 1915) - 31,550 - TORPEDO - 15 minutes
5. Royal Pacific (Greece 1992) - 3,176 - COLLISION - 15 minutes
6. Salem Express (Egypt 1991) - 4,771 - COLLISION - 15 minutes
7. European Gateway (UK 1982) - 4,263 - COLLISION - 30 minutes
8. M/S Estonia (Estonia 1994) - 15,598 - "Er, the bow fell off" - 35 minutes
9. Jupiter (Greece 1988) - 6,306 - COLLISION - 40 minutes
10. Express Samina (Greece 2000) - 4,455 - COLLISION - 45 minutes
11. Wilhelm Gustloff (Germany 1945) - 19,350 - TORPEDOES - 50 minutes
12. Brittanic (UK 1916) - 48,158 - EXPLOSION - 55 minutes

Notandum: M/S Estonia is the only vessel that was supposedly 'intact' that sank in less than one hour.

It wasn't intact the bows fell off.

 

[RolandRat]

Big:

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/yunLFq5tevAsw/giphy.gif[/qimg]

That's a big arse wave.

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh dear. Do look up displacement of air.

Uhmmmmm..... I beg your pardon? "Displacement of air"?

Enlighten me from my state of ignorance, I beseech you.

 

[Axxman300]

But the Baltic doesn't have the biggest waves. We know how big the waves were when the ship sank.

Correct.

 

[LondonJohn]

It wasn't intact the bows fell off.

I suspect, in Vixen's trademark sloppy and imprecise manner, what she meant by "intact" was "without the hull having been breached at or below the waterline by an external object". Amirite?

 

[Axxman300]

The consensus is that the Titanic was never seaworthy.

Not true by any measure of history, engineering, or fact.

The Titanic was in great shape right up until she hit the iceberg. From there, like the Estonia, her design flaws contributed to her demise.

 

[Vixen]

Herald of Free Enterprise sank in literally a matter of minutes.

Notandum rolleyes: Herald of Free Enterprise was a RO-RO ferry which sank because of an open bow door letting water enter rapidly into the vehicle deck, causing swift destabilisation and loss of buoyancy, which in turn led to a capsize and sinking. Without any external breach of the hull at or below the waterline. I can't imagine how this might in any way be relevant to the Estonia incident.....

It didn't sink. It lay on its side partly submerged. Had the water been deeper, it would not have sank but would have floated belly up.

 

[Andy_Ross]

You don't know that. It is not like-for-like. Had it been like for like - say the boatswain opened the ramp mid North Sea - it would have capsized and floated upside down for any length of time up to a few days.

How do you know this?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Archimedes Priniciple.

What about it?

 

[Vixen]

I was referring to the one specific point regarding Brian Braidwood. There is zero evidence to say he dived on the wreck. Zero. Yet you literally just invented a reason why he did and consequently it was all hushed up. You are absolutely unwilling to concede anything, even when you are obviously wrong.

I made it quite clear it was my opinion citing the reason for that opinion, viz-a-viz the UK having signed a Treaty of Estonia Gravesite making it a criminal offence for a British national to breach it.

You are asking who torch-cut the two panels from the bow bulkhead. I said the diver/s were not named by Braidwood.

That is clear enough, surely.

So, which bit do you reckon is wrong or let me guess, this is a game.

 

[RolandRat]

I made it quite clear it was my opinion citing the reason for that opinion, viz-a-viz the UK having signed a Treaty of Estonia Gravesite making it a criminal offence for a British national to breach it.

You are asking who torch-cut the two panels from the bow bulkhead. I said the diver/s were not named by Braidwood.

That is clear enough, surely.

So, which bit do you reckon is wrong or let me guess, this is a game.

You stated that Braidwood dived the wreck and cut the pieces off. You then changed that to he was in charge of the dive. You are now back to him diving the wreck with a fantasy story to cover his dive. Which is it?

 

[Vixen]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-estonia-ferry-preliminary-idUSKBN2762JG

Do check the date of the article:

OCTOBER 21, 20207:25 PMUPDATED 10 MONTHS AGO

Nine months before the new review opened.

8 July 2021 Rene Arikas heading the new research and hiring an American 3-D modeller went on an eight-day expedition, with the aim of taking 15,000-25,000 photos, in order to build up a 3-D model of the wreck.

 

[Axxman300]

However, the hull of the ship did not, apart from the stern, hit the sea bed as the vessel sank with the bow up face down, like a domino, and thus never hit the sea bed.

The ship is longer than the depth of the ocean in the spot where it sank. At some point, since we know it is currently on the sea floor, the stern made contact with the sea bed. And as described in the update, the center of the ship's mass is resting on hard rock...right where the crack is.

The vessel has been anchored in place by a rocky ridge keeping the upside down bridge from moving forward into the soft clay, whilst the starboard side is on a rigid moraine** clay and of course will show damage that corresponds with that geology, as Arikas says. That does not cancel out any damage caused before the ship sank.

That would be the bow-cover failing.

If you paid attention to Arikas' press conference report, you would have understood that they have not yet investigated their findings or analysed them.

And if you had paid attention you would have read that I said the investigation is ongoing. This article is just an update. The findings will be issued this fall.

When Rockwater presented its report and videos of the scene, it claimed it could not get into the car ramp as it was locked shut from the bottom lock and could only see in through a gap. The JAIC claimed that in any case, it was only looking at the bow visor area.

Which is true.

It seems clear to me that in the interim a naval team - as it has never been publicised that anyone else has been caught diving in those waters (note, how Bemis and Rabes' boat, the Something Reuters and Evertsson's One Eagle expedition were both reported on tv news broadcasts and criminal charges issued). Unless, of course, an unseen [by sonar] and completely undetected submarine crew - with a mini-sub platform that would allow divers to work close by - somehow broke in, in an effort to inspect the cars, lorries and trucks in the car ramp itself, or even an attempt to inventorise a potential list of valuables (unlikely IMV). However, were there military secrets on board, then it makes sense for a sneaky Russian crew to pop by.

Every time you state something is clear to you comedy ensues.

The article said they will be examining the dislodged ramp, so we'll know if someone tampered with it, or it gave up the ship.

** Moraine clay is formed of hard granite type debris as a result of the iceage when it melted away and corroded the hard rock into a more or less level hard ground. NB there are no rocky protusions in the area that could stick up and cause an impact of the type seen on Evertsson's documentary.

No true, the current side-scan sonar imaging and the documentary itself show a large rock outcrop in the area where the hole is located.

 

[Vixen]

How do you know this?

Laws of physics.

 

[JayUtah]

Do check the date of the article:



OCTOBER 21, 20207:25 PMUPDATED 10 MONTHS AGO



Nine months before the new review opened.



8 July 2021 Rene Arikas heading the new research and hiring an American 3-D modeller went on an eight-day expedition, with the aim of taking 15,000-25,000 photos, in order to build up a 3-D model of the wreck.

Irrelevant. Flood rate is a relatively straightforward computation that can be done with data already in hand.

 

[Andy_Ross]

[qimg]https://media.giphy.com/media/oT5NDGxwIo6f6/giphy.gif[/qimg].

This gif also illustrates another factor.

Length of the ship effects how it interacts with waves.

Your image shows how the Frigates I served on interact with Atlantic waves, they ships are of just the right length to not fit with the wavelength of the sea.

A shorter ship will ride up and down each wave, a longer ship rides the waves easier as it is longer than the wavelength.
A 'Leander' for example was the right length to ride up one wave but hit the next one bows down and 'ship it green' as we used to say as in the gif.

Rn Frigates from the 50s through to the 70s had raised bows to add extra freeboard and buoyance forward to cope with Atlantic waves. Later ships were longer and so tended to plunge a lot less.

Raised bows

HMS Ajax in a good chop.

 

[LondonJohn]

It didn't sink.

Yes, it did sink. It didn't sink entirely, but it did sink. You probably ought to learn the meaning of the term "sink" as it applies in these sorts of contexts.

It lay on its side partly submerged. Had the water been deeper, it would not have sank but would have floated belly up.

And just how do you know this?

You didn't just....... make it up..... did you?!!

 

[Vixen]

You stated that Braidwood dived the wreck and cut the pieces off. You then changed that to he was in charge of the dive. You are now back to him diving the wreck with a fantasy story to cover his dive. Which is it?

I used the name Braidwood as it was his dive and he wrote the report. It was Braidwood's project. I also said we call it Scott's Expedition to the Antarctic, it doesn't mean he is a one-man band.

I said in my view it was Braidwood himself who cut them out.

I thought your question was in good faith and that you sincerely wanted to know. Now it has become apparent that you are just indulging in group personal attack. So rather than thanking me for taking the trouble to find out the information for you I discover your true aim is to mock.

Enjoy the brinkmanship. However, I find it boring, so I shan't contribute anything else to this particular issue.