On the night of the casualty he had not been out on deck, but watched the sea state through the windows, the speed of the "Estonia" was highly excessive under the circumstances, as a matter of fact Pierre Thiger has never before or thereafter experienced that a vessel was smashed so hard into heavy headseas, each time the bow smashed into the sea, the vessel almost stopped, was shaking and vibrating and then accelerated again until it smashed into the next wave and so on, in addition to this very hard pitching, she was rolling, always more to starboard than to port, because he remembers having to continuously hold himself to the bar with one hand (for the last hour or so he was sitting together with Altti Hakanpää in the Admiral's Pub on 5th deck) to avoid his bar stool tilting over to starboard.
According to his observations the sequence-of-events started 10-15 minutes before midnight (Swedish time) when he heard 3 bangs with 15-20 seconds in between, metal to metal and thought it was a collision, the ship was shaking and vibrating differently than before, shortly afterwards he noted that she was pitching more, but made much slower and deeper movements, there were no more bangs but suddenly he felt vibrations in the aft ship which made him think that they had turned the stern into the sea and the pitch was on astern, he could not see anything out of the window, he felt the vibrations from the propeller (glasses were clinking) and then he heard the strange noise: A very low noise and simultaneously the pitch movements stopped as if a wave had struck under the stern, then all vibrations stopped and in the same second she continued to pitch again, however, without any engine noise, for about one minute she was only pitching, then pitching and rolling, and then only rolling - she made two full swings - more to starboard, less to port, and the third time she heeled over deep to starboard, did not right up again and then fell abruptly to about 40°/45°, this was just before midnight (Swedish time), she came back to almost upright position and then heeled to about 10°/15° and further heeled to about 40°/45° when she stabilised herself for at least 10 probably 12 minutes, whereafter she continued to heel from 45° to 90° relatively quickly before she was fully on the side, the funnel smashed a couple of times on the waves;
when he had reached the outside of the 7th deck, the list was about 40°, wind and sea were coming abeam from starboard and at port side, 5-6 points aft of abeam there were lights, after they had been on deck for sometime already and the list had slowly increased to about 45°, the lights went out, but immediately thereafter came back, all this was within the ca. 10-12 minute phase, when the ferry had stabilised herself at a heel of 40°-45°.
He was subsequently picked-up by SILJA SYMPHONY and came ashore at Helsinki, where he was interrogated for the first time but does not have a copy of the protocol. In Stockholm he was subsequently questioned again by the Swedish police and by Olof Forsberg from the JAIC.
