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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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lobosrul5 said:
Yes, American English is the same. I'd never say someone "banged the door" I'd say slammed. But if its flapping in the wind I'd say its banging in the wind.
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I'm kinda regretting my illustration that "bang" means many things.

Especially since it required disparaging my blameless screen door.
 
Vixen said:
So, if a whole bunch of passenger survivors, a reasonably good cross section of the public, albeit, nobody under twelve or much older than 65, and few females, ranging from barmen, to policemen, to PhD students, to musicians, report a series of 'bangs' and feelings of collision, why should you object to it just because it doesn't fit the narrative of a bow visor falling off?
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Literally nobody doubts that there were several bangs heard.

But did anyone literally report hearing an explosion (or several)? If so, give us some evidence. Because, after all, you said the following:

Vixen said:
I have no idea whether there were explosives or not. All I know is that some survivors claim to have heard explosions - in fact a series of them - and a naval military explosives expert, Brian Braidwood, claims to have identified possible explosive devices at the bow bulkhead.
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Oh, and others strongly dispute your claim that the reported noises are inconsistent with the bow visor explanation, but I'll leave that to them. I don't know doodly about that.

But I do know that you're plumb lying when you pretend anyone is ignoring or rejecting witness accounts. You, on the other hand, are twisting their words. If they said they saw a flash of light, you'd say they reported lightning and we're asses if we don't conclude there was lightning.
 
phiwum said:
I only asked because I was trying to understand. While I sail these days, I was raised far inland and am still trying to get the terminology down.

Crap summer. Boat almost sunk due to a lightning strike in July and had to be hauled out. Very short season.
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I haven't sailed for years. When I lived and worked in London I used to charter a yacht with some friends at weekend out of the Solent and sail down the Channel and across to the Channel Islands regularly. I skipped a yacht down to the Azores and across to the Caribbean once too and the Med was a second home.
 
Vixen said:
I was woken up at 5:00am with a flash of light across my eyes. I realised there was a storm going on so went back to sleep. Later I discovered the storm had created some rather nasty havoc with a barn near our summer cottage being burnt to a crisp (not ours). With the triple glazing I didn't hear the thunder. This is very different from the flash bulb of a camera. I used to be into amateur photography with all the gadgets including flash. Flashbulbs are nothing like lightning.

However, say a whole bunch of people are at an event and there is an incident, after which people are asked for an eye witness account. You are not asking them for their conclusion, you just want to know what they saw, which should be in their own words, not yours. If some people relate they saw lightning, it simply confirms there was a flash of light. Your aim isn't to berate them for mistaking a flashlight of a camera with a lightning strike. 'Wrong! It was a flashbulb, not lightning, you twit!'

What you will have are a whole load of witness statements from which you can glean the sequence of events (a time line) what time, what did they see, what direction did the flash of light appear from, where was it directed, what happened next, why did you think it was lightning, etcetera, etcetera.

So, if a whole bunch of passenger survivors, a reasonably good cross section of the public, albeit, nobody under twelve or much older than 65, and few females, ranging from barmen, to policemen, to PhD students, to musicians, report a series of 'bangs' and feelings of collision, why should you object to it just because it doesn't fit the narrative of a bow visor falling off?

Incidentally, several of the crew also reported similar experiences, for example, the ship's accountant found herself on the floor and got the hell out.

Nobody on the Herald of Free Enterprise reported any of this, the 'terrible noise' they heard being people screaming and glass shattering, with a grinding engine.
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HOFE was not in a storm, the bow visor was already open.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
I haven't sailed for years. When I lived and worked in London I used to charter a yacht with some friends at weekend out of the Solent and sail down the Channel and across to the Channel Islands regularly. I skipped a yacht down to the Azores and across to the Caribbean once too and the Med was a second home.
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Eh, I'm a timid day sailor. Been planning an overnight 20nm away for two years, but other things got in the way.

Well, if J.J. Cale comments are disrespectful, this aside must amount to dancing on graves.
 
phiwum said:
No matter, unless whoever summarized the reports (or whoever translated them first) uses the word "bang" exclusively to mean "explosion".

But, as you know and have said somewhere (though I can't find the post at present), "bang" often means a loud, unexpected noise. Thus, we can't claim that the survivors reported explosions just because this site uses the word "bang" in its summaries.
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Sure,

'A sudden loud, sharp noise.
‘the door slammed with a bang’

Might make you jump, especially if you weren't expecting anyone and it turns out to be the wind. However, you would be able to describe it as a door slamming shut.

One bang, okay, shrug. Another bang. Okaaaay and then another enormous BOM. Oh wait the clock just struck twelve. What the... way-hey-hay...now you are suddenly slung forward against a wall and the ship lurches violently to one side without righting itself.

That is not a door slamming shut in the wind.


Come off it.
 
Go for it. 20nm can be done pootling around in a few hours messing around.

Didn't win the quiz by the way.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Hefty impacts, such as from a loose bow door being repeatedly slammed against the ship by waves, cause loud bangs and shaking and vibrations.

What part of that is even slightly hard to grasp?
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The bow visor in weight was 327th that of the entire ship. Imagine a row of 327 buses and the roof of one of them has come off and is clattering against the frame. Do you really think those other 300 odd buses will shake and vibrate? Or that passengers in the end buses would even be aware of it?





.
 
phiwum said:
Literally nobody doubts that there were several bangs heard.

But did anyone literally report hearing an explosion (or several)? If so, give us some evidence. Because, after all, you said the following:



Oh, and others strongly dispute your claim that the reported noises are inconsistent with the bow visor explanation, but I'll leave that to them. I don't know doodly about that.

But I do know that you're plumb lying when you pretend anyone is ignoring or rejecting witness accounts. You, on the other hand, are twisting their words. If they said they saw a flash of light, you'd say they reported lightning and we're asses if we don't conclude there was lightning.
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Explosions was obviously my word for 'bangs'. As I followed it up with the witness accounts, it is clear nobody was being misled.

If they said they saw short sharp bursts of light, when summing up in my own words I might well describe them as 'flashes of light' and then instead of understanding the point being made - hey, this person saw short sharp bursts of light - you then jump down my throat for calling them flashes when the Estonian gentleman never used that word. The topic then becomes all about clever semantics instead of what the survivors saw and about how Finns often don't need to use the word 'like' nor Swedes when they say something smells ('like') because it is all contained in the verb. But I am hammered for saying a Finnish guy said 'it was like an explosion', as if that dilutes meaning and he likely never used the word 'like' anyway.
 
Vixen said:
The bow visor in weight was 327th that of the entire ship.
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Why do you think mass is the only determining factor?

Imagine a row of 327 buses and the roof of one of them has come off and is clattering against the frame. Do you really think those other 300 odd buses will shake and vibrate?
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Why would you think that a row of busses is in any way mechanically equivalent to a ship?
 
Vixen said:
The bow visor in weight was 327th that of the entire ship. Imagine a row of 327 buses and the roof of one of them has come off and is clattering against the frame. Do you really think those other 300 odd buses will shake and vibrate? Or that passengers in the end buses would even be aware of it?
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To be equivalent one whole bus would need to be hitting against the other buses. The noise of that would not be insignificant.
 
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Jack by the hedge said:
The early de Havilland Comets were airworthy right up until they fell out of the sky due to undetected metal fatigue. You seem to think you have a "gotcha" with the ship being described as seaworthy as if that meant that no circumstance could cause any part of it to fail. I am underwhelmed by your supposed checkmate.
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But the JAIC never said the Estonia had metal fatigue, undetected or otherwise.
 
Vixen said:
Should have been mentioned and investigated by the JAIC, especially in light of what 48% of the passenger survivors reported at the time of the accident.
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Wy would they mention it if it was not there when the ship sank?
 
Vixen said:
The bow visor in weight was 327th that of the entire ship. Imagine a row of 327 buses and the roof of one of them has come off and is clattering against the frame. Do you really think those other 300 odd buses will shake and vibrate? Or that passengers in the end buses would even be aware of it?
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The other day I dropped a saucepan on our stone kitchen floor. I'd estimate its weight at about 1/100,00th the weight of the house.

MrsB came downstairs and asked what the hell that noise was.

Vixen, are you making silly arguments for the fun of it? I ask because your clattering bus analogy is so stupid that it can only be meant comically, as far as I can see.
 
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Vixen said:
The bow visor in weight was 327th that of the entire ship. Imagine a row of 327 buses and the roof of one of them has come off and is clattering against the frame. Do you really think those other 300 odd buses will shake and vibrate? Or that passengers in the end buses would even be aware of it?
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How is that the same? A ship's hull is not the same as a row of houses or even a row of buses.
It is a single monolithic thing.

I can tell you from personal experience that a 55 ton weight striking a ship will be heard and felt through the ship.
I could feel and hear an anchor slamming in to the Hawse Pipe of a Frigate.

55 tons is a massive weight. it is the same as an Abrams Tank!
 
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