The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[LondonJohn]

I need to point out that in my years as a ghost hunter I interviewed almost 200 people who "witnessed" all kinds of stuff. Some of these people were highly educated, and a few were police officers, soldiers, pilots, and other folks who do no commonly report things that go bump in the night.

Bottom Line: A sound without a visual source causes automatic confusion. Depending on the situation and the sound, people will investigate, but will look for the wrong thing because what they heard and what they thought they heard are two different things.

As a ghost hunter AND a studio musician I can categorically state that a lot of sounds share common frequencies and impulses which push air molecules in a similar fashion. I had a friend who did sound effects for movies and TV shows. Everything you hear in a movie or TV show is artificially recreated in a studio. EVERYTHING. And it's all done with items which sound like the real things, or what sounds good to the director (Until Saving Private Ryan I'd never heard accurate bullet and hand grenade sounds before).

People will assign a source to sounds whose origins are unknown. They will do this every time.

Just because passengers heard what they thought was an explosion doesn't mean that's what the noise was. They surveyed the ship, they recovered the hood. They know many of the vehicles, including trucks, were not tied down. Before explosives can be ruled in those other factors must be ruled out, and right now they cannot be ruled out as the sources of the loud bangs.

Ahh, the wonderful world of the Foley artist! I spent an hour with a Foley team working on a major motion picture (at my aforementioned visit to Pinewood), and they were laying down the very banal sound of two sets of footsteps on a concrete pavement. Suffice it to say - as you point out - they didn't create the sound by pointing a microphone at the feet of two people walking on the spot on concrete paving tiles. It was amazing to watch them work - even to the extent of altering the sound where the video showed a slightly lighter footfall on a couple of the steps.

As you say, what we think things sound like - when they aren't actually things we hear for real often if at all in our own lives - are more often than not different from what they actually do sound like. And probably highest up on that list is catastrophic-style events including collisions of extremely heavy vehicles, explosions, and gunfire. Heck, most people wouldn't be able to accurately identify the sound of a medium-speed collision between two saloon cars. Let alone anything to do with a very large and heavy ferry with a steel-plate hull, carrying momentum and KE that are outside virtually everyone's instinctive comprehension.

 

[whoanellie]

Oh please. The ship was 18,000 tonnage the bow visor just 55 tonnes. In addition, it was afixed to the ship thus had little freedom of movement to do little more than clatter.


In any case, you don't know what came first: the explosion/s and/or the collision or the bow visor loosening.

Do you seriously think that a 55 ton bow visor breaking loose from a ship would do little more than clatter? Who is being silly?

 

[lobosrul5]

Exactly. I know you'll have a wealth of experience in this area, but I at least have some limited experience of being in/around small-arms fire, rifle/LMG fire, and a variety of heavier ordnance - as well as having been some 500m from a large car bomb in the middle east. And, as you say, it really doesn't sound like the movies. To me, small-arms fire sounded almost like pop guns, rifle/LMG sounded like loud pop guns (unless you're near the receiving end, when all you hear is the small crackle of the bullet's miniature sonic boom, followed by the muffled thud of the powder explosion catching up. And a fairly sizeable car bomb is, in my own case at least, experienced more than it's simply heard or seen. The initial visual registration is followed almost immediately by the shockwave, which is an incredible visceral (but noiseless) thump that jolts the whole body. Then there's the rush of explosive wind, and finally the dull thud of the explosion itself. It's so unlike it's portrayed in almost every movie or TV show*.

So yes, even if the passengers on the Estonia thought they knew what an explosion on a ship, or two ships colliding, might sound like, the very high probability is that they did not. The sounds they heard are valid evidence, as are the sounds from their own personal experience to which they likened the noises. However, their inferences as to what actually caused the noises within the ship that night have little or no evidential value.

* Funnily enough, I was talking about exactly this, a dozen or so years ago, with someone I knew (through a mutual friend) who worked at Pinewood Studios. And she said that film and TV studios have understood for a very long time now that what they depict on screen isn't realistic - but they continue with the misrepresentation because this is what audiences are now conditioned to think they look/sound like (and if they did accurate depictions, audiences would simply think they'd screwed it up). As another part of this, they also kept/keep showing people being thrown violently backwards if they're shot with a handgun/rifle - whereas in reality, even a direct hit to the torso from an AK-47 at close range will just make the victim crumple and fall to the floor on the spot.


ETA: Hoooo man, National Geographic channel is showing the first episode of its 4-night documentary about 9/11 in the UK right now. It's gut-wrenchingly powerful viewing (not sure if they've started showing it in the US yet). Try to catch it if you can.

Yes they are. Its on Nat Geo, and also Hulu.

ETA: on the gunfire part... I've heard many many different firearms fired. It doesn't sound remotely the same when recorded and played back to my ears. I've also been down in a trench at a 1000 yd range to score targets with bullets going overhead. Yeah its just a crack. Couldn't even hear the rifle.

Oh also I used to live in a house where if the weather conditions were right the frames or joists or something would pop really loudly a few times at night (hot day, rapidly cooling night). I was awakened several times after moving in thinking there was nearby gunfire. And I've heard many thousands of actual gunshots in my life.

 

[Vixen]

There is a need for them to supply an appropriate level of observation to support any inferences they may wish to make regarding what was causing what they heard or felt. Otherwise their inferences must be considered in light of other non-inferential evidence, or rejected altogether.

You seem to be willfully forgetting that these are survivors of a tragic accident not defendants in a criminal trial needing to defend themselves, or alternatively try to convict someone.

 

[JayUtah]

You seem to be willfully forgetting that these are survivors of a tragic accident not defendants in a criminal trial needing to defend themselves, or alternatively try to convict someone.

You seem to be willfully misrepresenting my position.

 

[Vixen]

I asked how many said they heard explosions and how many said they heard collisions. Those are two different (conclusory) claims. They are in conflict unless you suppose that both occurred.

Instead, you gave me a full account of someone who claimed neither explosion nor collision. You also mention someone else who thought they had hit a rock. But you ignore the question I asked.

Did they hit a rock, Vixen? An eyewitness thought so, right? So they did, unless you're a survivor-hater, right?

One more time: How many explicitly said, "I heard [what sounded like] an explosion"? How many said "I heard [what sounded like] a collision"? I don't care about bangs. I don't care about the sum total of people who heard loud noises. I care about two figures: those reporting the sound of an explosion and those the sound of a collision.

And then you can tell me whether respect for survivors requires you to believe there was both an explosion and a collision.

NOTE: Neither Barney nor Hedrenius say they heard what they thought to be a collision. Now, this is third person reporting, so who knows what they said, but each says they heard a sound and they thought a collision had occurred, not that they heard what they identified as a collision by the sound. They both heard bangs (and scraping) and concluded there had been a collision. So they don't belong in the list of folks who reported hearing a collision.

Quite frankly, phiwum, when there has been a tragic accident with a great sudden loss of life, we want to hear what those few survivors have to say, whether it be in Farsi, Greek, cockney rhyming slang or a string of four-letter expletives. The passengers came from 17 different nationalities so it is not realistic for you to expect them all to use precise Queen's English, when their story through their eyes and in their words are key.

If some poor sod has been sitting up to his waist on a leaky life raft for six hours in temperatures leading to hypothermia bobbing about on a choppy sea watching fellow raft members - including children dying before his eyes - who then tries to convey in an eagerness to communicate what happened during that fateful half an hour it took the ship to sink, I really don't think he gives a darn whether you personally like or dislike his vocabulary. Maybe these survivors should apologise to you for daring to touch on your consciousness.

 

[Vixen]

Are you now claiming that the Estonia was sunk by people with sledgehammers?

This eyewitness is explaining in his own words what he saw, felt and heard. If he identifies the sound as being like sledgehammers, who are you to mock him.

 

[phiwum]

You seem to be willfully forgetting that these are survivors of a tragic accident not defendants in a criminal trial needing to defend themselves, or alternatively try to convict someone.

You've ignored my point a few times.

Your "trust the survivor" mantra surely means you must trust them too. Some number of people (how many?) said there were explosions. Some number said there was a collision. Thus, if we are to trust the witnesses, there must have been both.

Also, it hit a rock.

Of course, I'm taking you at your word that some people claimed to literally hear an explosion and others claimed to literally hear a collision. So far, the accounts involve a loud noise and something like "thought the ship had hit something" which is not the same as "I heard a collision." Both involve inferences, but the former inference is explicit -- the teller recognizes that they are making a leap.

 

[JayUtah]

This eyewitness is explaining in his own words what he saw, felt and heard. If he identifies the sound as being like sledgehammers, who are you to mock him.

There's no mockery. You seem to be pulling out all the stops to shame people away from questioning your interpretation of witness statements. When witnesses say one thing, you step in to represent them and claim they're being figurative or merely deploying a simile. When witnesses say a different thing that your beliefs require to be taken literally, again you step in to represent them and insist that we must take their statements literally. Are you claiming to be the only one who can tell when a witness is being literal versus figurative? You're the one selectively interpreting witness statements according to different criteria, so you're the one who has all the explaining to do.

 

[Vixen]

To be fair though, the (what he inferred to be) noises of "hydraulic pumps under load" (which seems curiously specific...) and "banging of sledgehammers" were apparently two separate things.


On that point though, has anyone* yet asked Vixen how she proposes to account for the very large number of repetitions of all these noises in this man's recollection? After all, he said that he heard repetitive loud banging noises for *checks his statement* for at least as long as 25 minutes.

Does Vixen suppose that the explanation for this is the same submarine repeatedly ramming the ship at (say) 10-second intervals for at least that 25-minute period? Or a gigantic succession of torpedoes at 10-second intervals hitting the ship (which was somehow doing a rope-a-dope and refusing to sink)? Enquiring minds need to know!


* There are so many increasingly barmy whack-a-moles going on (often simultaneously) within this thread right now that I've rather given up trying to figure out which ones have already been bludgeoned to death with the mallet of reason.

This guy was being scrupulously honest in his observations. I have been in one of those lower cabins and you did hear every single clunk and throb of the engines and whatever it is making all the rattling noises. He was asked for his account and he did his best to describe every clunk and clatter, whether it be innocuous or malevolent. He was one of the few who escaped so his hypervigilance - anxiety? - paid off for him as he got the hell out of there.

 

[Vixen]

Exactly.

Was it a bomb blowing a hole in the hull?

Bombs blowing off the bow visor?

A submarine ramming the ship?

A Submarine launching a torpedo at the ship?

Were there saboteurs aboard?

Did one of them shoot the captain?

If thirty-four survivors mentioned it then the accident investigators should have investigated it.

 

[phiwum]

Quite frankly, phiwum, when there has been a tragic accident with a great sudden loss of life, we want to hear what those few survivors have to say, whether it be in Farsi, Greek, cockney rhyming slang or a string of four-letter expletives. The passengers came from 17 different nationalities so it is not realistic for you to expect them all to use precise Queen's English, when their story through their eyes and in their words are key.

If some poor sod has been sitting up to his waist on a leaky life raft for six hours in temperatures leading to hypothermia bobbing about on a choppy sea watching fellow raft members - including children dying before his eyes - who then tries to convey in an eagerness to communicate what happened during that fateful half an hour it took the ship to sink, I really don't think he gives a darn whether you personally like or dislike his vocabulary. Maybe these survivors should apologise to you for daring to touch on your consciousness.

I'm not at all being disrespectful and you know it. You are deflecting.

My question is simple. In any language, one can say "I heard an explosion." How many said that? How many said "I heard a collision"? I'll accept close paraphrases, of course, even "I thought I heard a collision" or "it sounded like a collision".

Let's leave bangs out of it. How many said they heard a collision and how many an explosion. Are they all correct? Was there both a collision and one or more explosions?

And, long as we're trusting the survivors, did Estonia hit a rock too?

 

[JayUtah]

This guy was being scrupulously honest in his observations.

Except what you quoted was not the scrupulous observations of the witness, but rather the edited and interpreted version provided by the editors of a report who, for all we know, added detail themselves that the witness didn't provide.

Could you identify the sound of hydraulics under load? Describe to us what that sounds like. What is the difference between the sound of hydraulics under load versus hydraulics operating normally? The hearsay version you quoted us raises questions that you don't seem very interested in exploring. Where went all that indignance you had earlier about investigators "rewriting" witness statements?

 

[Vixen]

Maybe someone should point out that explosives leave a fragrance after detonation, and this would be doubly obvious in a confined space like a large ship with internal air circulation.

All of those cops Vixen said reported the sound of explosions never reported the odor of explosions. Something a "trained observer" would have been adamant about.

Out of the seventy cops from Stockholm, only four survived, two of whom were in the bar, which I believe is adjacent to the promenade deck and the cafeteria aft of the vessel.

Ronnie Bergqvist - Policeman ST Section

vessel started to shake and vibrate;
bar personnel took down the bottles from the shelves;
just after 01.00 hours the vessel heeled first to port, then followed a very hard push combined with a bang/crash and then the vessel heeled very severely to starboard.
all loose objects flew over to the deep side

Maria Fägersten - Policewoman ST Section

heavy pitching all the time;
at about midnight the vessel ran against something and she and all the others were looking out of the windows but could see nothing;
then the vessel started to shake/vibrate;
at 00.45 hours the casualty sequence-of-events began, glasses above the bar fell out of their holdings;
suddenly everything flew over to one side when the vessel heeled over very rapidly, people were thrown against the wall - she was able to hold on to the bar: "The ship came over me!" - The clock above the bar showed 01.05 hours.

There are a hundred and one different types of explosives and in addition, a collision can very much also sound like an explosion, if you have ever heard two cars crash into each other. It is not a given you will smell anything. This isn't a Chemistry laboratory where you get hydrochloric acid burning holes in your tights or the sulphuric acid giving off alarming fumes.

 

[phiwum]

Except what you quoted was not the scrupulous observations of the witness, but rather the edited and interpreted version provided by the editors of a report who, for all we know, added detail themselves that the witness didn't provide.

Could you identify the sound of hydraulics under load? Describe to us what that sounds like. What is the difference between the sound of hydraulics under load versus hydraulics operating normally? The hearsay version you quoted us raises questions that you don't seem very interested in exploring. Where went all that indignance you had earlier about investigators "rewriting" witness statements?

The quoted material comes from this site. I've only skimmed it. Noticed that they dismissed explosives at one point, but I was interested in the testimonies, not the summaries, and those aren't presented in an easily searchable form.

Jay, I think you mentioned that the JAIC report has English translations of testimony. Do you have a link? I'm just curious about answering my own question since Vixen is reluctant or unable to answer it.

 

[JayUtah]

Jay, I think you mentioned that the JAIC report has English translations of testimony.

The report you linked to claims to have English translations of actual eyewitness statements. If that site provides them, I have no idea where they are.

 

[JayUtah]

There are a hundred and one different types of explosives...

But the people claiming they found evidence of explosives on the wreck didn't consider every single type of available explosive. The suspicious items in photographs were easily enough identified, according to you, by experts in explosives. So they must be of a known type. What type were they? Were they the kind that's odorless?

...and in addition, a collision can very much also sound like an explosion, if you have ever heard two cars crash into each other.

I have heard many car crashes and many explosions and I categorically deny that the two sound anything alike.

This isn't a Chemistry laboratory where you get hydrochloric acid burning holes in your tights or the sulphuric acid giving off alarming fumes.

Straw man. Chemical explosives produce odors. No one reported suspicious odors. Your claim that some sort of odorless explosive must have been used is your burden of proof.

 

[Vixen]

There's no mockery. You seem to be pulling out all the stops to shame people away from questioning your interpretation of witness statements. When witnesses say one thing, you step in to represent them and claim they're being figurative or merely deploying a simile. When witnesses say a different thing that your beliefs require to be taken literally, again you step in to represent them and insist that we must take their statements literally. Are you claiming to be the only one who can tell when a witness is being literal versus figurative? You're the one selectively interpreting witness statements according to different criteria, so you're the one who has all the explaining to do.

Not so. Nowhere have I said, 'We must take them literally'. I have clearly acknowledged that people can be mistaken in their accounts and one witness will notice different things from another witness. There will be differences in detail - for example one eye witness to a car accident might remember the car as being red, whilst another will claim it was white. THiss is all natural and to be expected. What we desperately want when there has been a serious accident is for the eye witnesses to come forward and tell us what happened. A professor of engineering and metallurgy will provide a very different account from an itinerant cobbler from Uzbekisthan, but all accounts should be welcomed because without the accounts of the few who survived we will forget forever what happened to those who perished. Whilst in Jerusalem I visited the Vad Yashem World Holocause Remembrance Museum and I was struck by the amount of effort that went into providing personal accounts from friends and relatives of the deceased about what each of the known victims was like, together with photographs and a biography. Most harrowing of all was the descriptions of what happened to these people. Whether recalling from distant memory or exaggerated, it was nonetheless invaluable to have that narrative, especially from the eye witnesses who escaped.

I did not say we have to literally believe there was an explosion or that there was a collision, just that enough of the (random) witnesses said the same thing and that makes it important to take their testimony seriously, not brush it off as it doesn't fit the bow visor narrative.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

This eyewitness is explaining in his own words what he saw, felt and heard. If he identifies the sound as being like sledgehammers, who are you to mock him.

I don't recall all of this respect for eyewitnesses when it comes to Sillaste or Silvers Linde. Lots of mockery there, dismissal, second-guessing, and dwelling on drug use and extraneous criminal activities, etc.

 

[JayUtah]

Not so. Nowhere have I said, 'We must take them literally'.

You have clearly said we must take some literally, but not others. The criterion by which you take some literally but others figuratively seems to be whether the statement agrees with your belief.