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The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II

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junkshop said:
A landline. On a ship.

Of course, back in the '90s all ships trailed physical telephone lines back to their home port. The kids these days with their whiffy and whatnot, they don't understand. Still, at least it was an improvement over the 1980s, when they only had old baked bean cans and a length of string.
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Heh. Maybe it was some kind of walkie-talkie.

ETA: It was by NMT telphone:

NMT – Nordic Mobile Telephone
NMT stands for Nordic Mobile Telephone and is an analog mobile telephone network that was jointly built up in the Nordic countries. NMT was a fully automated network created for the public and put into operation after ten years of development.
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https://www.soluno.se/en/nmt-mobile-telephony/

Re Channel 16:

Helsinki Radio did not receive the ESTONIA's distress message nor the subsequent radio communications. The MARIELLA informed Helsinki Radio by NMT telephone of the distress at 0142 hrs after failing to get contact on channel 16 and on 2182 kHz. On request by the Silja Europa, MRCC Helsinki also alerted Helsinki Radio.
The channel 16 distress traffic transmitted by the ESTONIA did not reach the coast radio stations in Sweden or Estonia because of the distance.
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https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt07_1.html
 
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Vixen said:
It goes to show that people with likely far more expertise in t hese matters than London John did think a mine was possible. This was 3 Oct 1994 and James Meek for the GUARDIAN reported it.

It is no more and no less conjecture that Carl Bildt's claim on the date of the accident itself saying it 'must have been the bow visor falling off'.
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What experience do journalists have with sea mines?

If it was a sea mine left from ww2 why is the hole nothing like the damage a sea mine would do?
 
Vixen said:
Ha! Ha! I note you swerved around using the words 'by bow visor'. LOL.

Not even you can bring yourself to say it.
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I see; we're playing silly rhetorical games today. Okay, I find it far more probable that MS Estonia perished due to the loss of her bow visor, and the subsequent infiltration of water, than that she was struck by a sea mine in a heavily-traveled area.
 
JayUtah said:
That wasn't my question. What did you to to assure yourself that Hummel is a reliable source on this point?
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He has been willing to put forward his submissions in a court of law and be ready to back them up under cross examination. Plus he has to adhere to professional standards or be subject to disciplinary proceedings by his professional body/bodies.
 
Vixen said:
As of that date - remember a newspaper comes out the day after - nobody had even yet located the ship.
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Wouldn't that tend to make it irresponsible of a journalist to claim a sea mine had caused the sinking? What experience did James Meek have with shipping and/or sea mines when he wrote that article? You are the one asserting Mr Meek must have more expertise on the matter than LondonJohn. Explain how you arrived at that determination.
 
Vixen said:
He has been willing to put forward his submissions in a court of law...
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Is his claim that the "entire phone network" was non-functional for nearly an hour a statement he made under oath in court? If so, what evidence did he present to substantiate that?

Plus he has to adhere to professional standards or be subject to disciplinary proceedings by his professional body/bodies.
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How many times does this happen in his profession? Are you now claiming to be an expert in the ethical responsibilities of maritime experts?

Further, if he is testifying to whether a particular utility service was operational or not, he would be testifying as a fact witness, not an expert witness. His professional qualifications would be irrelevant to such testimony. And as he would not be testifying as an expert, there is very little a professional organization could do about it.
 
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Vixen said:
Citation please for your claim about Estonia's EPIRB buoys. These buoys are always 'switched on' as it were, so that should they touch the surface of the sea, their GPS signal is activated. There is no reason to 'switch them off' and a manual 'switching on' in distress is not necessary as they are designed to activate themselves.
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Subsequently, the IMO adopted special training requirements in crowd and crisis management for crews on passenger vessels. EPIRBS were required to activate automatically and voyage data recorders were mandated.

https://maritimecyprus.com/2020/09/...n-28-september-1994-claiming-852-lives-video/

Furthermore, Estonia’s distress beacons or EPIRBs had to be manually activated, something that did not happen. If they were activated, they would have made it immediately obvious that the ship had sunk and the location would have been clear. As a result, All EPIRBs were then required to be automatic, while it is considered that the accident played a key role to legislate Voyage Data Recorder

https://safety4sea.com/cm-ms-estoni...R2D3wRKsR4Q-1631745519-0-gqNtZGzNAiWjcnBszQeR

Firstly all vessels now must carry automatically activated EPIRBs - those aboard the “Estonia” were not activated during the disaster as they were manual devices, though fully functional and proven to be working subsequently

https://web.archive.org/web/2007111...?option=com_content&task=view&id=66&Itemid=41
 
JayUtah said:
Wouldn't that tend to make it irresponsible of a journalist to claim a sea mine had caused the sinking? What experience did James Meek have with shipping and/or sea mines when he wrote that article? You are the one asserting Mr Meek must have more expertise on the matter than LondonJohn. Explain how you arrived at that determination.
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It is very clear he is quoting a reputable and reliable source as journalists of his stature are professionally trained to do.

Remember as of the early days, of course it was speculation. Except for Bildt's. That was the forgone conclusion. 'Sobvious innit? It's yer bleedin' bow visor, innit? Gawd blimey, 'ave seen 'ow 'igh those blinkin' waves lap in this 'ere Baltic Sea? Gordon Bennett!
 
junkshop said:
So the telephone network was working, then?
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NMT then was a very niche product. Hummel was likely referring to the common or garden phone networks.

So what was so great about NMT? Well, NMT had a superior range compared to other systems. Even if you were far away from a mast, you could still place a call. This was particularly favorable in countries with a sparse population, such as Iceland or northern Sweden. Since later systems often reach a large percentage of the population of the country, there are still large land areas that have no coverage at all. NTM, on the other hand, reaches almost the entire land surface and also a good distance out to sea.

The longer reach in the system was due to two different things. Partly, NMT had a lower frequency, which allowed the signals to travel longer. With the lower frequency, the wavelength became longer and so you could be farther from the mast. In addition, NMT phones had a higher transmission power. An NMT 450 phone is allowed to have a transmit power of 15 watts while a GSM phone (second generation telephony, 2G) has a maximum of 6 watts only.
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https://www.soluno.se/en/nmt-mobile-telephony/


IOW you would not expect a ship in distress to have to use an NMT in 1994 but it seems Tammes was also using some hand held phone as well.
 
Vixen said:
NMT then was a very niche product. Hummel was likely referring to the common or garden phone networks.

https://www.soluno.se/en/nmt-mobile-telephony/


IOW you would not expect a ship in distress to have to use an NMT in 1994 but it seems Tammes was also using some hand held phone as well.
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Thats not how cell phones work. They don't "direct connect"* they tie into the landline system. Which, had it been down, the call could not have connected.

*Yes, Sprint made some that also functioned as a radio. I used to have one for work, they would've been well out of range of each other.
 
Vixen said:
Somebody in Tallinn who knows about these things, I expect.
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You apparently don't know. So you have absolutely no clue whether they are "reputable and reliable."

The article by James Meek headlined "Video shows disaster ferry doors torn off by waves" appears on page 22 of The Guardian, 4 October 1994. It mentions absolutely nothing about sea mines. In fact, it rather strongly corroborates the mainstream narrative. And despite your claims, the reporting is indeed based on video examination of the wreckage. Have you actually read the material in question? Or are you relying on mining citations from secondary sources which may have misrepresented the content?

You may have your story conflated with Mr Meek's article on 29 Sept. 1994 headlined "Death ferry sailed into Baltic storm with faulty door seals." No mention of sea mines there either. At that point the wreck had not yet been found. But I can find no evidence that James Meek reported anything about sea mines at any time in The Guardian.
 
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Vixen said:
Citation please for your claim about Estonia's EPIRB buoys. These buoys are always 'switched on' as it were, so that should they touch the surface of the sea, their GPS signal is activated. There is no reason to 'switch them off' and a manual 'switching on' in distress is not necessary as they are designed to activate themselves.

For the record the radio and telecommunications was the old system in 1994, which was replaced in 1999.

Re the EPIRB buoys:



Re radio and telecommunications:


https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt07_1.html
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EPIRB buoys do not activate if they 'touch the surface of the sea'
If that was the case then spray or rain would activate them.

They will not activate until deployed.

Deployment can happen either manually where someone must physically remove it from its bracket or automatically where water pressure will cause a hydrostatic release unit to separate the EPIRB from its bracket. If it does not come out of the bracket it will not activate. There is a magnet in the bracket which operates a reed safety switch in the EPIRB. This prevents accidental activation if the unit gets wet from rain or shipped seas. It usually takes 4 meters of water to deploy.

Once deployed, EPIRBs can be activated, depending on the circumstances, either manually when a crewman flicks a switch or automatically when water contacts the unit's "sea-switch".

They are not 'always on'. they are not powered until activated.
They have a life of 2 years from fitting and need to be sent back to a depot to have the batteries replaced.

If the beacons weren't deployed they would not transmit. there is no way to 'switch them off' without completely destroying them.

Estonia had manually deployed EPIRB buoys.
 
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