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

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Vixen said:
Here are a couple of stills from the film released by the Fokus group showing the parts they claim are deformed by what looks like 'very high heat' (=aka a detonation). This would confirm Brian Braidwood's own views from an earlier expedition.

The other clip shows a thick piece of metal from the bow visor area completely twisted out of shape, on each of the x, y and z axis.

Could a few strong waves really cause this type of deformation? Or hitting the seabed?
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Short answer: Yes.

I'll let Jay Utah explain "heat" in relation to metal stress failure or whatever the propper term is for this is.
 
The one thing in this situation I fully understand is wave action.

I don't care if you're sailing a squid boat or an Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier, there is a wave out there with your name on it. This is where basic seamanship comes into play and where the Estonia's captain failed. From all I've read it's a bad idea to sail headlong into the wind in a storm at flank speed, which is what he did. The other ferries (the ones that didn't sink) were sailing at slower speeds and at a heading which kept the wind slightly to their port beam. The fact that ALL those other ships in the area that night were doing the same thing should stand out as to the underlying cause of the Estonia's demise.

People confuse rogue waves with giant waves, and while most are on the large size it is really about the power and surge pushing that wave. Over past past few years forecasters here in California have added the phrase "Sneaker Waves" to the lexicon which are waves of average height but hit the shore with unusual power that can send them sweeping sixty to ninety meters up the beach.

Couple wave action with a poorly maintained bow section and an incompetent captain and you get big artificial reef.
 
Axxman300 said:
The one thing in this situation I fully understand is wave action.

I don't care if you're sailing a squid boat or an Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier, there is a wave out there with your name on it. This is where basic seamanship comes into play and where the Estonia's captain failed. From all I've read it's a bad idea to sail headlong into the wind in a storm at flank speed, which is what he did. The other ferries (the ones that didn't sink) were sailing at slower speeds and at a heading which kept the wind slightly to their port beam. The fact that ALL those other ships in the area that night were doing the same thing should stand out as to the underlying cause of the Estonia's demise.

People confuse rogue waves with giant waves, and while most are on the large size it is really about the power and surge pushing that wave. Over past past few years forecasters here in California have added the phrase "Sneaker Waves" to the lexicon which are waves of average height but hit the shore with unusual power that can send them sweeping sixty to ninety meters up the beach.

Couple wave action with a poorly maintained bow section and an incompetent captain and you get big artificial reef.
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Speed into a sea will depend on the characteristics of the ship.
Royal Navy Manual of Seamanship volume 3 has an entire section on the sailing characteristics of ships in a big swell.
A lot depends on the ship's overall shape, it's form underwater, beam, length etc and it's distribution of buoyancy and ballast.
There will be several speeds at which the ship rides well, it's down to the experience of the captain to find the optimal speed for the conditions,

As for taking the swell off the bow, that depends on the course you need to steer and the overall roll characteristics of the ship.
Passenger comfort has also to be taken in to account.
A good captain will balance things. If I knew I had a dodgy bow visor I would slow down or even heave to and try to take the sea head on to make sure the forces acting on it were reduced and evenly distributed.
 
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Captain_Swoop said:
here is a link to Bureau Veritas documents that lay out the requirements for ship classification and testing.

I linked to it once before.
They are concerned with the way the ship is constructed, the materials and techniques used and the standards they have to meet.

Once a ship is built unless any structural changes are made or it needs to be reclassified for a different use then the structure is not tested.
If a ship changes flags (which is not the same as changing ownership) it needs to be recertified in to it's classification under the new flag.
How it was built and the standards it was built to are already known. There will be no NDT testing of fittings and welds, it is a paper exercise as far as construction goes.

https://marine-offshore.bureauveritas.com/nr467-rules-classification-steel-ships

Here is the main page for Rules and Guidelines.

https://marine-offshore.bureauveritas.com/rules-guidelines
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Ah, good research.

And as you point out, it goes to show that a problem such as metal fatigue in a lock mechanism simply wouldn't be picked up in a general seaworthiness inspection. In fact, the onus would be on the ship's owner/operator itself to carry out regular tests/checks, especially on critical components.

In the case of the Estonia, I keep going back to the notion that it all stems back to the very design of the bow opening mechanism. For such a critical set of components - the failure of which would almost-certainly result in the loss of the vessel - there should without doubt have been redundancy (even multiple redundancy). It should therefore have been perfectly possible for something like the bottom lock to fail, but for alternative means to have reliably and safely kept the bow visor in its lowered position.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
If the captain had been competent then the sinking might not have occurred and if it did more would have survived.
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Oh yes, I agree. The captain and crew could - and should - have reacted far, far better to these events as they unfolded; and by doing so, they'd almost certainly have saved more lives.

On the other matter, I think it's more difficult to judge whether they'd have been able to save the ship from sinking. They could - and should - have taken swift action to go hard astern and possibly also to place the vessel beam on to the wind and waves. But they wouldn't have been able to "put the cork back in the bottle" in terms of re-sealing the bow. And I think it's arguable that even if they'd done everything possible within a reasonable amount of time, the ship would simply have taken on too much water by that point for it to survive.
 
LondonJohn said:
Oh yes, I agree. The captain and crew could - and should - have reacted far, far better to these events as they unfolded; and by doing so, they'd almost certainly have saved more lives.

On the other matter, I think it's more difficult to judge whether they'd have been able to save the ship from sinking. They could - and should - have taken swift action to go hard astern and possibly also to place the vessel beam on to the wind and waves. But they wouldn't have been able to "put the cork back in the bottle" in terms of re-sealing the bow. And I think it's arguable that even if they'd done everything possible within a reasonable amount of time, the ship would simply have taken on too much water by that point for it to survive.
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Going astern wouldn't have helped and going beam on in a storm is a recipe for a different disaster.
A proper inspection should have been made when the 'banging' was heard and the water ingress was noticed.
Speed should have been reduced and the ship turned stern on to the waves and a course plotted for the nearest shelter.
Force being used to close the visor bolts and the visor being distorted enough to cause water to flood around the car ramp to the extent that mattresses were being used to try and stop it should have been enough to take the ship out of service.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Going astern wouldn't have helped and going beam on in a storm is a recipe for a different disaster.
A proper inspection should have been made when the 'banging' was heard and the water ingress was noticed.
Speed should have been reduced and the ship turned stern on to the waves and a course plotted for the nearest shelter.
Force being used to close the visor bolts and the visor being distorted enough to cause water to flood around the car ramp to the extent that mattresses were being used to try and stop it should have been enough to take the ship out of service.
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I would have thought that the most immediate and quickest way to slow down the rate of seawater intake - assuming that the captain/crew knew that the bow door mechanism had by then been totally compromised - would have been to go hard astern in order to slow the vessel down in the shortest possible time. Obviously not to the point that the ship ended up coming to a complete stop though.

And yes, I didn't mean turning the ship beam on and leaving it beam on. I meant (though I didn't express it very well) it in the sense of turning the ship away from its bow on heading. It stands to reason that the optimal direction for the ship would be stern on, but the ship would have had no choice but to go beam on while doing so.


And yes: the prior evidence of crew "workarounds" re the bow visor lock and the plugging-up round the sides of the bow ramp.... should most certainly have raised a massive red flag. Did the captain, or any of his senior officers, know that this was being done? If they did know, well they should have reported this up the management chain and refused to sail the ship until proper repairs had been carried out. If they didn't know, well they should have known (and it was part of their job to have known about these sorts of things).
 
Captain_Swoop said:
If the captain had been competent then the sinking might not have occurred and if it did more would have survived.
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Of course, the captain is ultimately responsible for his ship. Herein lies the mystery of why Captain Andresson would be zooming head-on with windspeeds up to 24 m/s south westerly into port side, with the vessel almost in a westerly direction and a clear sense of something wrong, especially when the engine would have cut off when the lilt was circa 45°.

Andresson graduated from the Naval Academy in Tallinn in 1973, went to sea in 1974, studied at the Makarov Academy in St. Petersburg 1977-1982 and received a sea captain's certificate in 1986. He then served as master of a general cargo ship and in 1992 became commander of the passenger ship Georg Ots , which ran between Tallinn and Helsinki . When M / S Estonia was put into operation, Andresson became the ship's first captain and when Estonia became independent in 1991, Andresson became the country's first sea captain
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Wiki


He was authoritarian and a strict disciplinarian in the Russian heel-clicking style, yet he seems to have been quite a high-class captain, despite anecdotes of scrapes against quays and being somewhat new to a more powerful ferry like the Estonia at age 40.

There seems to be a mystery as to why Andresson did not take the May Day call and he certainly does not seem to have been in charge of the ship or in control when things began to go wrong. Silver Linde emphasised to interviewers that he followed Andresson as he was going up the steps to the bridge whilst he was due to come on watch at 1:00am. A Finnish diver claimed he saw Andresson with a shot to the head. Plus another witness claimed he was usually in a positive upbeat mood but on this occasion there was something off about his demeanour.

In the evening, September 27 visited Andre Petersson bridge at 20 o'clock and at 23 o'clock was reported that the powerful waves beat against the ship's port side. Andresson returned to the command bridge at 11.30 pm and ordered that the stabilizers be started. Andresson then left the bridge. [ 3 ] During the shift change on the bridge at 01 o'clock, Andresson returned to the command bridge and found that the ship was one hour behind schedule. [ 4 ] In the final stages of the accident, third mate Andres Tammes and first mate Tormi Ainsalu were seen leaving the bridge, and it was likely that Andresson and chief mate Juhan Herma remained on the bridge and died. [ 5 ]In 1997, the German journalist Jutta Rabe came in contact with a high-ranking Finnish military in the navy, who stated to her that he had been commissioned by the Finnish part of the Accident Investigation Board to evaluate the diving material. The video would have started on the bridge, and much should have been cut off as it should be clear from the material that Andresson must have had gunshot wounds to the head
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ibid

What is unprofessional is not turning the ship away from the waves but instead appearing to head into even deeper water and reports suggest they had not even reached the worst of the Beaufort Scale 7 storm yet. It seems unlikely Andresson would have been so completely out of control of the ship had he been around and in command, so where was he? Why were the Rockwater divers instructed to not identify the bodies on the bridge (or even retrieve them, although I guess that's not their job) yet they had to specifically go to Second Captain Arvo Piht's cabin (along intricate corridors and decks) to retrieve an attaché case, which they did as it brought up to the surface. The voice sending instructions is muted on the video but could ahve been Simm, the defence head who was subsequently jailed for high treason - spying for the Russians.
 
JesseCuster said:
"Very high heat" is NOT also known as "a detonation".

That's pure nonsense.
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So it is.

Another thing that's rearing its ugly head in these partisan *unofficial* investigations: the old "...is consistent with..." chestnut.

Now of course there are plenty of occasions where such a construction may be used properly and with intellectual honesty. But it's also wide open to being abused in pursuit of a particular agenda. And I already get the feeling that this "Fokus Group" investigation is erring towards the latter.


(To take an extreme (fictional) example as an illustration of abuse of this construction: a disreputable lawyer representing a man on trial for murder might tell the court: "The evidence is wholly consistent with a scenario in which an entirely different man, whose height and appearance approximated those of my client, expertly broke into my client's house that night (leaving no visible trace), stealing some of his clothing and his gun, going to the bar and shooting the victim, then returning to my clients house to deposit the gun and the clothing back there again." And in a strictly logical sense, the lawyer might very well be correct......)
 
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Axxman300 said:
The one thing in this situation I fully understand is wave action.

I don't care if you're sailing a squid boat or an Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier, there is a wave out there with your name on it. This is where basic seamanship comes into play and where the Estonia's captain failed. From all I've read it's a bad idea to sail headlong into the wind in a storm at flank speed, which is what he did. The other ferries (the ones that didn't sink) were sailing at slower speeds and at a heading which kept the wind slightly to their port beam. The fact that ALL those other ships in the area that night were doing the same thing should stand out as to the underlying cause of the Estonia's demise.

People confuse rogue waves with giant waves, and while most are on the large size it is really about the power and surge pushing that wave. Over past past few years forecasters here in California have added the phrase "Sneaker Waves" to the lexicon which are waves of average height but hit the shore with unusual power that can send them sweeping sixty to ninety meters up the beach.

Couple wave action with a poorly maintained bow section and an incompetent captain and you get big artificial reef.
Click to expand...

But where is the evidence Andresson was 'incompetent'? If he was incapacitated for some reason, that is not the same as being incompetent.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Good to know I'm still being ignored while Vixen continues to Gish-gallop. Pathetic.
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Surely you can look up the one thousand and one highly infammable and hazardous substances on wikipedia for yourself? The CIA list could be yoru guide. Caesium, Uranium-238 and cobalt all seem to be common substances being smuggled out of the old Soviet Union base at Paldiski.

Given there was definitely a container on bard that was not registered to any driver there is a high chance it contained illicit cargo, no? We know this because the Swedish prosecutor opened an investigation into it.
 
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Vixen said:
Of course, the captain is ultimately responsible for his ship. Herein lies the mystery of why Captain Andresson would be zooming head-on with windspeeds up to 24 m/s south westerly into port side, with the vessel almost in a westerly direction and a clear sense of something wrong, especially when the engine would have cut off when the lilt was circa 45°.

Wiki


He was authoritarian and a strict disciplinarian in the Russian heel-clicking style, yet he seems to have been quite a high-class captain, despite anecdotes of scrapes against quays and being somewhat new to a more powerful ferry like the Estonia at age 40.

There seems to be a mystery as to why Andresson did not take the May Day call and he certainly does not seem to have been in charge of the ship or in control when things began to go wrong. Silver Linde emphasised to interviewers that he followed Andresson as he was going up the steps to the bridge whilst he was due to come on watch at 1:00am. A Finnish diver claimed he saw Andresson with a shot to the head. Plus another witness claimed he was usually in a positive upbeat mood but on this occasion there was something off about his demeanour.

ibid

What is unprofessional is not turning the ship away from the waves but instead appearing to head into even deeper water and reports suggest they had not even reached the worst of the Beaufort Scale 7 storm yet. It seems unlikely Andresson would have been so completely out of control of the ship had he been around and in command, so where was he? Why were the Rockwater divers instructed to not identify the bodies on the bridge (or even retrieve them, although I guess that's not their job) yet they had to specifically go to Second Captain Arvo Piht's cabin (along intricate corridors and decks) to retrieve an attaché case, which they did as it brought up to the surface. The voice sending instructions is muted on the video but could ahve been Simm, the defence head who was subsequently jailed for high treason - spying for the Russians.
Click to expand...


It's not really a mystery at all.

It's an instance of a captain who took unnecessary risks with his ship and its passengers, who (almost certainly) was derelict in his duty to know if his crew were having any significant problems wrt critical equipment/mechanisms, and who very probably froze and mis-reacted when confronted - for (probably) the very first time in his career - with a major emergency.


The world of air accident investigation is sadly littered with instances of captains and first officers - even highly-commended and highly-experienced ones - who a) had become lazy or negligent wrt sticking to the correct protocols/checklists/procedures/etc; and/or b) panicked or froze or reacted improperly (often making the original problem worse still) when, after having flown for perhaps decades with nothing more than the odd minor incident, they were suddenly confronted with either an immediately-huge or rapidly-escalating problem which required them to think clearly and take the correct course of action. A textbook case in point would be AF447. And I'd argue that airline pilots are, as a general rule, deemed to be of higher calibre than merchant ship captains.
 
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Jack by the hedge said:
A solid axle with no differential in the middle and the hint of another wheel to the lower left beyond the wheel in the last image makes my first guess a twin axle goods vehicle trailer.

Do I win anything?

<edit> Oh, wait, did you want me to say "an army truck"? No, an army truck would typically be rigid rather than articulated construction and would be rear wheel drive so there would be a large and obvious differential in the middle of the axle.
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Ta. Just idle curiosity.
 
Vixen said:
But where is the evidence Andresson was 'incompetent'? If he was incapacitated for some reason, that is not the same as being incompetent.
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If he'd been incapacitated for any reason, don't you think that the radio transmissions that night might have mentioned this factor (eg: "We've tried to alert the captain to come to the bridge but nobody can get hold of him", or "The captain just slipped and fell, and he's currently unconscious and unresponsive", or "The captain just collapsed here on the bridge, and he's totally unresponsive")?
 
Kid Eager said:
What evidence of incompetence would satisfy your question?
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Well, he failed to engineer the guaranteed death of everyone on board (on the "leave no witnesses" principle) under orders from his Russian overlords.... so there's that.
 
Vixen said:
Surely you can look up the one thousand and one highly infammable and hazardous substances on wikipedia for yourself? The CIA list could be yoru guide. Caesium, Uranium-23 and cobalt all seem to be common substances being smuggled out of the old Soviet Union base at Paldiski.

Given there was definitely a container on bard that was not registered to any driver there is a high chance it contained illicit cargo, no? We know this because the Swedish prosecutor opened an investigation into it.
Click to expand...


The question is not just about what hazardous cargo might (or might not) have been carried on board the Estonia that night.

The question is more: how could/would the presence of these sorts of hazardous materials (if they'd been on board that night, that is) have contributed in any significant fashion to the ultimate loss of the ship?
 
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