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

[Andy_Ross]

The Estonia's EPIRB buoys were of the type that had to be activated manually. Regulations were subsequently written requiring ships to keep a type that automatically deploy if a ship sinks.

EPIRB buoys have always been able to activate automatically when deployed by hydrostatic pressure, usually around 4 meters is needed to avoid rain or spray activating them.
The holders are designed to deploy the buoys when they are 4 meters below the surface.
If they deployed before the activation depth they would not work and if they failed to deploy the signal would not be picked up if they sank with the ship.

Class A had automatic and manual activation, Class B was manual only.

Current types are referred to as Class 1 and Class 2 as the operating frequency has changed so the designation was changed to avoid confusion.

There was no requirement at the time of the Estonia sinking for ferries to carry automatic buoys though.

 

[Andy_Ross]

You seemed to be claiming that whilst it was perfectly normal for a ship to sink by bow visor, a mine OTOH would be most unusual.

Are you sure you have your sense of probabilities in perspective?

When and where was the last time a passenger ship was sunk by a mine?

 

[phiwum]

I am guessing one of those hand-held jobs that are really landline phones recharged to be carried around. This was 1994, remember!!!

Um....

So they dragged a long cord behind them?

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[JayUtah]

Um....

So they dragged a long cord behind them?

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

The Great Eastern did.

 

[phiwum]

The Great Eastern did.

I suppose I learned something from looking it up on WP.

 

[phiwum]

To be fair to London John, I don't think any shops have been lost to mine in that region since, so perhaps the odds were slim.

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Not all car ferries have bow visors. So wow, a double whammy with both the visor and the car ramp falling off/open. All thanks to a few strong waves. Who knew the Baltic was such a raging leviathan.

What an odd reply to my message.

Before I get to your reply, let me point out the weakness of my own argument. I should have looked at the percentage of sinkings in that shipping lane which were caused by an old mine over a period of several decades. Perhaps, to give you all benefits due, I could have restricted myself to "fast" sinkings, from, say, 1960 to 1994. I don't know how many such incidents there would be in a 34 year span -- literally have no idea -- and if there are too few, then the whole approach isn't really reliable.

Now, to your reply. No matter the cause, we know that the Estonia had a bow visor/hood. I don't know what point you're trying to make when you say that not all ferries have such. We're talking about a particular ferry that sank and that did have a hood. So I don't see where the coincidence comes in (especially since the dominant theory involves the failure of the hood).

As far as your comments about the storm, according to Wikipedia, it was Force 7-8 with significant wave height of 4 to 6m. I mean, it's just a fact that this was how bad the storm was. Are you doubting the reported strength of the winds? Or do you doubt that such a storm could cause significant damage to a bow hood? What is your point?

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

Ah good. Yet more ignorance.

NMT is simply a mobile (cellular) phone standard. It covers the way in which the call is transmitted/received. It was one of several first-generation (1G) analogue standards - the UK, for example, used a 1G standard named TACS, and the US used one named AMPS.

And in fact, 1G mobile phone network/usage was very far from a "very niche product" in the Nordic countries by 1994. The first 1G phone call was made back in the late 70s, and the Nordic region was actually a world leader in 1G adoption.

One cannot talk of "us(ing) an NMT" - in just the same way as one doesn't talk of "using an NTSC" or "using a PAL" to refer to watching TV broadcasts (NTSC and PAL are television broadcast standards).

So in other words, all that happened in the Estonia incident is that someone placed a mobile phone (cellphone) call, using a (large, by modern standards) mobile phone - the ship was obviously within range of an onshore cellphone mast somewhere near the coastline.


ETA: And as others have already explained to you, it's nonsense to suggest that this was a "common or garden" (by which I assume you mean "landline") call, using a cordless phone such as people use within their homes. You obviously don't realise that when people use cordless phones in their homes, all it means is that the phone in the person's hand connects to a short-range base station that's also within their home, which in turn is connected to the physical phone line which runs into their home from their local telephone exchange/substation. It would literally have been impossible for this to be the case abord any ship - for reasons which ought (to anyone with even an iota of knowledge & understanding....) to be clear.

 

[whoanellie]

You can say that but reputable reporter James Meek in Tallinn and Greg Mcivor in Stockholm reported in the GUARDIAN , 3 October 1994: 'Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry Claim'.

Do you have a link to the article? Thank you in advance.

 

[JayUtah]

You can say that but reputable reporter James Meek in Tallinn and Greg Mcivor in Stockholm reported in the GUARDIAN , 3 October 1994: 'Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry Claim'.

Did you actually read this article? Or did you just copy the reference from Drew Wilson's self-published nonsense?

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

Yet again, you're making incorrect pronouncements on something you very clearly know little or nothing about.

If you'd stopped for even a few seconds to think about what you'd written here, you might have realised the fundamental & fatal flaw in your claim. It's a one-word flaw: batteries.

See, the beacons on these buoys ("boo-wees" to Americans ) don't power themselves by magic. And EPIRB buoys are not solar-powered - for several good reasons. So they have charged batteries within them, ready to supply power to the beacons when required.

If these beacons were "always switched on", as you claim, the batteries would have run down and died within days of renewal. Which is precisely why they are not always switched on. And it's why they're only ever switched on if/when they're actually needed - ie when the ship is sinking.

Now, in 1994 there were two ways in which the buoys could be switched on if the ship was sinking: either a) they could be manually switched on by a crew member, or b) they could be fitted with a sensor which was capable of detecting immersion of the buoy in water (something which would only occur if the buoy was deployed by a sinking ship). But here's the thing: in 1994 these buoys with immersion sensors were a costly upgrade for those ships which had already been fitted with manual-activation buoys.

These immersion sensors were not mandatory in 1994. So, as (presumably) a cost-saving measure, the Estonia's owners chose not to install buoys with immersion sensors. Which meant, by definition, that the EPIRB buoys that were on the Estonia needed to be manually switched on by a crew member once they realised that the ship was going down.

And it's exactly this which prompted a change in regulations to make immersion sensors mandatory: the Estonia sinking showed that manually-switched-on EPIRB beacons were a liability - their obvious shortcomings could significantly hamper attempts to identify the sinking ship's position and optimise search & rescue efforts.

 

[Axxman300]

Do pay attention. We were talking about communications interference on the night of the accident.

Helps for lay-people to skip to the end of accident reports heavy in technical explanations.

Getting hung up on communications is tricky because while Estonia couldn't reach shore-based radios she could talk to the other ship nearby...something that couldn't happen if the Russians, Royal Navy, or US Navy were jamming radios.

All that matters is the hood got knocked loose and fell off in heavy seas while te crew twiddled their thumbs.

Oh, and the the Estonia was a Ro-Go ferry, the USS Cole was a US Navy destroyer. It's like comparing apples to a warship.

 

[Mojo]

You can say that but reputable reporter James Meek in Tallinn and Greg Mcivor in Stockholm reported in the GUARDIAN , 3 October 1994: 'Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry Claim'.

If the headline you have quoted is accurate, they seem to have reported that someone had claimed that it could have been sunk by a mine.

 

[Kid Eager]

If the headline you have quoted is accurate, they seem to have reported that someone had claimed that it could have been sunk by a mine.

That's a very big "If". Funny that a Google for that exact quoted phrase returns no match...

 

[Mojo]

That's a very big "If". Funny that a Google for that exact quoted phrase returns no match...

If I drop the word “claim” and search for the phrase “Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry” it finds something, apparently in a footnote to something called “AUK”.

 

[erwinl]

If I drop the word “claim” and search for the phrase “Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry” it finds something, apparently in a footnote to something called “AUK”.

That's a PDF of a book, published in 2006.

If the Google translate is correct it is written by Drew Wilson in order to prove: 'This book is based on a simple assumption: the hull of Estonia was broken below the waterline, causing a rapid sinking to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Estonia is looking for an hole.'
(quote from page 8 of the PDF and translated from Estonian to English using Google Translate).

 

[junkshop]

If I drop the word “claim” and search for the phrase “Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry” it finds something, apparently in a footnote to something called “AUK”.

I got that result, too. I can't get the PDF that it's a link to to download or open, but the phrase in the google preview bit seems familiar:

James Meek, Tallinn and Greg Mcivor, Stockholm, “Mine Could Have Sunk Ferry. Claim“

The Guardian's archive isn't freely accessible online that far back, so stymied any chance of searching that by date and author.

 

[erwinl]

I got that result, too. I can't get the PDF that it's a link to to download or open, but the phrase in the google preview bit seems familiar:




The Guardian's archive isn't freely accessible online that far back, so stymied any chance of searching that by date and author.

If you search the PDF for 'Meek' you will find the phrase. It's a source reference (nr 65 in chapter 5 'alternative explanations') and belongs to this paragraph.

'Finnish vessels detected the location of the sunken ferry on 30 September at a depth of about 80 meters. The ship was almost upside down. The Finns scanned the wreck from the side with a sonar, the images were shown at a press conference. Reporters reported that the sonar images showed a large object on the seabed 9 to 18 meters from the bow of the wreck. No one knew what it was.65'

It is well possible the original text by Meek, suggests a hit from a mine would be a possibility (and knowing little else at that moment, it could be construed as a reasonable possibility). Yet it is clear that by the time this book was written by Wilson, he did not use the mine option of Meek's text, but something else from it. Unfortunately we don't have the original Meek text as of now.

 

[junkshop]

Thank you, erwinl. My tablet seems to be refusing to download PDFs today.

 

[Andy_Ross]

What an odd reply to my message.

Before I get to your reply, let me point out the weakness of my own argument. I should have looked at the percentage of sinkings in that shipping lane which were caused by an old mine over a period of several decades. Perhaps, to give you all benefits due, I could have restricted myself to "fast" sinkings, from, say, 1960 to 1994. I don't know how many such incidents there would be in a 34 year span -- literally have no idea -- and if there are too few, then the whole approach isn't really reliable.

Now, to your reply. No matter the cause, we know that the Estonia had a bow visor/hood. I don't know what point you're trying to make when you say that not all ferries have such. We're talking about a particular ferry that sank and that did have a hood. So I don't see where the coincidence comes in (especially since the dominant theory involves the failure of the hood).

As far as your comments about the storm, according to Wikipedia, it was Force 7-8 with significant wave height of 4 to 6m. I mean, it's just a fact that this was how bad the storm was. Are you doubting the reported strength of the winds? Or do you doubt that such a storm could cause significant damage to a bow hood? What is your point?

Don't forget it was not just a 'a few strong waves' but over a decade of strong waves and the bow visor was already known to have faults.

 

[theprestige]

You seemed to be claiming that whilst it was perfectly normal for a ship to sink by bow visor, a mine OTOH would be most unusual.

No I didn't. I seemed to be claiming that the Estonia's bow visor is something known to exist.

Live mines in Baltic shipping lanes is not something known to exist.

Therefore, any claim that hinges on the existence of the bow visor is automatically better than any claim that hinges on the existence of a sea mine.

"Normal" is your word, not mine, and has no place in my claim.

Are you sure you have your sense of probabilities in perspective?

Quite sure. But this isn't a question of probabilities. It's a question of the superiority of claims about things we know exist over claims about things we don't know exist.