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

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Here_to_learn said:
If you today participate in a "Basic Safety" course, based on IMO STCW Manila 95, you will be told to prioritise putting on the survival suite in an emergency. I'm not sure how earlier trainings were set up, but if you have (cold) water where it shouldn't be, a survival suite is quite useful.

Regarding the captain, the maritime tradition is that "the captain goes down with the ship", and as such, they may not prioritise a survival suite for themselves.
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Survival suit is a priority. A captain should also put one on at the earliest opportunity.

Captains 'going down with the ship' is as much a myth as reality.

If I was a captain I certainly wouldn't deliberately want to go down with the ship.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I could just as easily say JayUtah is not an expert in the Middle Eastern conflict.
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Which I am not, despite having lived in the Middle East for a time. I have no knowledge of, and not a whole lot of interest in, the politics of the Middle East or the history of its conflicts. I'm fascinated by the archaeology of the region, and was privileged to observe ruins and artifacts. But I'm by no means an archaeologist either.

That isn't an insult, it is simply true.
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Even if I were caught dropping naive, incorrect propositions on the basis of my limited understanding of Middle East conflicts, it would still remain a statement of fact and not an insult no matter how much discomfort it might cause me to be reminded I am not speaking from knowledge or expertise.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Survival suit is a priority. A captain should also put one on at the earliest opportunity.

Captains 'going down with the ship' is as much a myth as reality.

If I was a captain I certainly wouldn't deliberately want to go down with the ship.
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I'm of the understanding that it was reality back in the days where a defeat on the battlefield would have caused the losing general to blow their brains out for the sake of honour, or in cases where the loss f the ship was solely due to the captain's failure and the idea of staying on it was to save the time of the trial and execution.
 
Vixen said:
That homily sounds fine on paper but in reality, I feel sure that if Capt Andresson was not incapacitated he surely would have given the correct May Day message at least fifteen minutes earlier and arranged evacuation sooner.

Many of the survivors who escaped wearing nothing but underpants or nightwear - as that is how incredibly little time they had to get out - expressed surprise to find on getting into a life raft (cf Barney, Sörman) the crew fully kitted out. So the crews' claims that they were running around all over the place seem a bit unlikely.
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It is part of the training and basic drill to put on a survival suit. They are called survival suits for a reason.

Crew detailed off to man a raft or boat will have been wearing a suit. It is part of the drill. You will be no use to the passengers you are supposed to be helping if you are incapacitated due to cold.

Abandon ship procedures including launching of rafts and boats and how they are crewed is laid down in the SOLAS regulations. Everyone that works offshore goes through the training. If you are detailed as crew for a raft or boat you have further training in your duties.

I would have had my suit on as soon as I had a whiff of trouble and certainly by the time the alert was sounded.
 
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Vixen said:
One of the passengers - one with a seemingly dodgy background - was also ready and waiting in a life raft in a survivor suit. He claimed he 'found it in the life raft provisions'. How likely is that story?

It is very interesting.
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Doesn't answer the question, and seems to be an attempt to change the subject. Par for the course.

ETA: I also sense a distinct lack of respect for a survivor. Please do not ever try to school us on that topic again.
 
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Vixen said:
That homily sounds fine on paper but in reality, I feel sure that if Capt Andresson was not incapacitated he surely would have given the correct May Day message at least fifteen minutes earlier and arranged evacuation sooner.
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Are you now suggesting the captain was drugged/murdered/restrained?? I mean if you feel sure he would've otherwise responded differently, well thats good enough for me. :rolleyes:
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I disagree. My grasp of mathematics is probably not good enough to become an accountant without a lot of hard work, and I have done very little training on accounting ever (I have some basic knowledge of accounting software and I'm not innumerate) but I couldn't call myself an accountant.

Being an accountant IS impressive, particularly if you are at the level of US CPA equivalent.

It still doesn't make you a scientist though.
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I always assumed people who did economics degrees were good at advanced maths?

I was up against guys who had maths degrees so admittedly, it was nice to get to their level, not having specialised in maths at an earlier stage. But I would say running an enterprise is science based as all kinds of formulae are employed, although there are no empirical experiments to perform in a lab.
 
LondonJohn said:
Bear in mind also that I only brought up air accident investigation in order to refute Vixen's claim that it was a "mystery" as to why the Estonia's master and crew didn't apparently act properly in accordance with procedures as the disaster was unfolding: I was pointing out that there have been many, many air accidents where even highly-rated cabin crew either a) have become somewhat slapdash wrt protocols/processes/procedures, and/or b) have frozen or panicked or acted otherwise irrationally when suddenly confronted with an emergency.

And Vixen's "response" to this was to talk about the reassembly of aircraft wreckage by accident investigators.......
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Fair point. However, on the second issue, I was pointing out that the wreck should have been examined closer, not just concentrating on the bow area. I would have thought the JAIC would think the bridge important if only to understand what was going on with the captain.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
It is part of the training and basic drill to put on a survival suit. They are called survival suits for a reason.

Crew detailed off to man a raft or boat will have been wearing a suit. It is part of the drill. You will be no use to the passengers you are supposed to be helping if you are incapacitated due to cold.

Abandon ship procedures including launching of rafts and boats and how they are crewed is laid down in the SOLAS regulations. Everyone that works offshore goes through the training. If you are detailed as crew for a raft or boat you have further training in your duties.

I would have had my suit on as soon as I had a whiff of trouble and certainly by the time the alert was sounded.
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Exactly. I happen to have been thrown into the Irish Sea in springtime, wearing a survival suit*, before being "rescued" by a Sea King helicopter in a training exercise. I can report that after 15 mins in the sea, even with the protection of the suit, you start to get so cold that breathing becomes difficult and your cognitive abilities get impaired. Without any sort of survival suit, it'd be hard to be much more than a dead weight in the water after that length of time, and you'd certainly be dead well within the hour.

And as you say, there are excellent - and obvious - reasons why crew should don survival suits as soon as they realise there's a fair chance they're going to end up immersed in cold seas.


* though in aviation they're termed "immersion suits", but they're the same thing.
 
Vixen said:
I always assumed people who did economics degrees were good at advanced maths?
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Wow!

Vixen said:
I was up against guys who had maths degrees so admittedly, it was nice to get to their level, not having specialised in maths at an earlier stage. But I would say running an enterprise is science based as all kinds of formulae are employed, although there are no empirical experiments to perform in a lab.
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Even more Wow!
 
LondonJohn said:
That doesn't really help much at all, I'm afraid.

The only reference to whereabouts on the bow visor these sample pieces are from - as far as I can see from that video - is the self-referencing "These samples are from the area of the bow visor where our experts said an explosion would have occurred".

Is there anything which actually shows, in pictorial/photographic form, precisely where on the bow visor the samples came from?


(Oh and why did you put "too heavy" in inverted commas? Are you trying to imply that the bottom lock actually wasn't too heavy to be lifted by helicopter, but that they invented that reason in order to conceal the fact that they wanted it to remain on the seabed for other, malevolent reasons....?)
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It's in quotation marks because that is the excuse that was supposedly given for not bringing it ashore.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I disagree. My grasp of mathematics is probably not good enough to become an accountant without a lot of hard work, and I have done very little training on accounting ever (I have some basic knowledge of accounting software and I'm not innumerate) but I couldn't call myself an accountant.

Being an accountant IS impressive, particularly if you are at the level of US CPA equivalent.

It still doesn't make you a scientist though.
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I switched my degree from Computer Science to Accounting in college. I could not get my head around the advanced, and often theoretical (it seemed to me) mathematical concepts for a CS degree. Accounting is more like memorizing where to plug numbers in. Its relatively very simple.

I do know the CPA exam is pretty damn hard though, I'm not one.

ETA: the couple of finance classes I had to take had tougher math requirements than any accounting class. Of course any accountant needs a basic concept of finance I should think.
 
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whoanellie said:
You aren't a scientist.
1) Having a B.Sc. degree does not qualify you as a scientist.
2) Having written 15 lab reports in school does not qualify you as a scientist
3) Working as an accountant does not mean you are a scientist.
4) You've written countless posts here on ISF demonstrating your ignorance of basic concepts in a broad range of scientific fields.
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Claim you, with a well known past grudge.
 
Vixen said:
They counted towards the degree. Entry level to a profession. I am not barred from talking about it today.
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Would you agree with yourself that your lab reports are not relevant?

Vixen said:
FWIW I am not an 18-year old or 20-something when qualifications from school or college are relevant.
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FWIW I am not impressed with your undergraduate lab reports either.
 
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Vixen said:
Claim you, with a well known past grudge.
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I don't know what grudge you are referring to. I've backed up my 'claim' of your scientific incompetence with numerous quotes from your own posts. Others are free to draw their own conclusions.
 
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MarkCorrigan said:
An MSci is not an undergrad degree, it's a post-grad degree. Master of Sciences. You can only take an MSci after you've got a BSc.
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No, that is wrong.

I have an MSci in Natural Sciences from Durham.
It is an Undergrad degree.

I went in as a mature student in the late 80s with no previous degree after I left the Navy.

Here is todays equivalent degree
https://www.durham.ac.uk/study/courses/fgc0/
 
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