And yet after more than a decade of pounding by rough seas the bow visor failed and fell off.
You are undermining your own case.
Have you forgotten that just a short time ago the Estonia was, according to you, built to the highest standards by the best German yard?
you want to have your cake and eat it.
Fact is, it has become apparent the crew were used to plugging a leaky car ramp deck with towels and blankets. In one video - shot I believe by Rockwater - you can see a red mattress by it. Plus the crew is said to have had to hammer the bolt on the atlantic lock with a hammer to get it to bolt, together with the mating lugs not aligning properly on the side bolts. So the fact this had become habitual indicates that this doesn't mean it was the cause of the accident.
Even by 29 September 1994, the day after the accident, Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt reveals he had spoken to engineer Sillaste who had informed him he thought water was coming in through the sides of the car ramp.
It is a human tragedy beyond belief, and most certainly the worst human disaster that has affected my country for at least a century," Prime Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden said at a news conference here.
The three Prime Ministers declined to discuss what they had been told by investigators, but reports from the ferry's crew members suggested that water may have leaked into the ship, the Estonia, through an unsealed door, destabilizing it and causing autos and other cargo to shift suddenly.
[...]
On Tuesday, just hours before the ferry's fatal journey, Swedish inspectors had found its supposedly watertight seals to be in unsatisfactory condition, a Swedish maritime official said.
"They had opinions on the ramp, mainly that the seal was not in a satisfactory condition," said the official, Anders Lindstrom.
Whether the condition of the seals warranted refusing to allow the ship to put to sea has not been determined, but the condition of the seals is certain to be a major question in the investigation.
One member of the Estonian crew who survived, Henrik Sillaste, reported seeing water flood into the ferry's parking deck.
"On the TV monitor in the machine room, we could see water rushing in on the car deck," Mr. Sillaste said in an interview. "I think the rough seas somehow broke the entrance to the car deck open. We saw that the ramp was not closed properly. There was something wrong. The outer ramp was closed, but the inner door was not properly attached."
New York Times 29.9.1994
So where did Carl Bildt get the information from that the bow visor had fallen off? Nobody reported seeing it fall off. Sillaste was interviewed 28 Sept 1994 by Bildt, Laar and Aho, together with police officers and as confirmed by Laar, Sillaste never mentioned the bow visor was missing or hanging loose. You can see this confirmed at the press conference reported in a newspaper dated 29 September 1994, above, when even Bildt just says it was the car ramp at fault.
Others believe the water seen on the monitor (where Sillaste had seen the car ramp, which was closed, so he can't have seen the condition of the bow visor) was actually that of a fire sprinkler spraying water across the lens.
Nobody saw the bow visor missing. That only came at a much, much later date after several interviews, and the JAIC put this in large after each crew member statement summary '
He saw the bow visor was missing', which I believe was a fabrication and simply done to underline their ready made conclusion as it was based on a tenuous assumption, probably arisen from the already faulty car ramp.
Silver Linde admitted he lied and changed his statements.
He served nine years for drug smuggling - a whopping 13 kilograms of amphetamines (consider how incredibly light tablets are and that gives you an insight into the sheer quantity). In a newspaper interview Linde claimed he had been fitted up and was just being picked on because of his role in the
Estonia. He claimed police claims that he had had phone conversations with the truck driver caught transporting the smuggled drugs to ruin Finland's youth were merely about a building project, gypsum and concrete,
etcetera, which shows you like many criminals, he is a liar and has no problem at all in telling the hearer whatever he wans to hear, and never admitting fault or responsibility for his own actions.
Yet Silver Linde was JAIC's star witness.
If the
Estonia had a faulty car ramp and the bow visor didn't align properly, then the JAIC should have investigated its seaworthiness and maintenance history but never did, claiming the bow visor was to blame for the sudden accident which happened on the stoke of midnight and with the VHF signals jammed for the duration, without ever considering any other explanation.
