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

[LondonJohn]

The Swedish authorities took heir own scan of the bow visor six months after Prof Anders Ulfvarson et al. So if Westermann found significant deformations not concommitent 'banging on the bulbous bow area', then the Swedes will have obtained the exact same results.

I'll repeat: why would the visor have even needed to have "banged on the bulbous bow area" in order for the accident to have been caused in the way the official report says it was caused?

 

[LondonJohn]

Like I said, it has attracted more loonies.

Seriously, Bill Clinton? That's insane.



What did the Germans say when asked?
The UK, being an island nation, tends to go along to get along in matters that are not all that important. A lot of trade goes both ways through the Baltic, and the UK knows it's better to have as many friends as possible for a variety of smart economic reasons.

The ship took a lot of lives, Sweden at the very least was trying to keep scavengers from stripping the wreck. And by then, thanks to Titanic, there was a movement to set aside wrecks as grave sites to protect them.

And the UK, as both a maritime nation and as a nation with one of the largest communities (outside the US) of technical divers and ROV operators, is usually keen to support these kinds of endeavours to keep wrecks containing fatalities safe from unofficial expeditions. Plus of course there's a British national amongst the dead in this case.

 

[LondonJohn]

The expert engineer on board the RS Sentinel.

ERR

Yes, that's what I'd opined that they were. And they've been down there for quite some time.

(They don't emit visible light though. Still.)

 

[LondonJohn]

Three of them, still transmitting?

No. Almost certainly not operating (NB: not necessarily "transmitting"). They'd obviously been down there for quite some period by the time they were filmed here.

The only way in which they might a) still be operable and b) have been there so long that this level of undersea crud had accumulated on them, would have been if they'd 1) been connected to batteries with relatively huge Ah capacities, and 2) had proximity/magnetic/light (piezo) sensors built in (although it would still take a constant micro-trickle charge to enable those sensors in any case).


In any event - and irrespective of what they actually are - there's absolutely no requirement to draw any sinister/adverse inferences from their presence.

 

[LondonJohn]

When you find something close to a shipwreck, your first hypothesis should be that it's something that came off the wreck.

I thumbed through some catalogs in our library, and there are definitely some cylindrical sonar transducers that could be similar to the cylindrical object inside the cage at the top of the larger cylinder. I don't have a good sense of scale from these photos. No exact matches, though, regardless of scale. I wish I could see the rest of the structure, the alleged skid that it's mounted on. If its a seabed equipment skid, those tend to be built according to only a few common patterns.

And it goes without saying (I'd hope, anyhow....) that if they are sonar transducers, they're parts of the ship that would have gone down with it when it sank - rather than additional items that were placed there once the ship was laying on the seabed.


(ETA: And I can't help thinking that - as I said in my previous post - this is all something of an irrelevant/unimportant red herring, irrespective of what these objects truly are....)

 

[LondonJohn]

No, they are 100 metres north of it.



The wreck lies 59° 23' N 21° 42' E ~ 22 nautical miles in bearing ~ 157° from Utö island (Finland) in the Baltic Sea

The bow lying facing SE aspect, stern NW. AIUI

This changes things considerably. If - as this post implies - all three of these objects are a) lying fairly close to one another, and b) lying 100m north of the wreck itself....

.... the obvious inference is that these objects have nothing to do with any monitoring of the wreck, or monitoring of sea conditions wrt the wreck, or serving as positioning beacons wrt the wreck.

I'd say that this information makes it very highly likely that these objects were either part of the ship or aboard the ship, at the time it sank - and that they all detached from the ship at the same time as the ship was foundering/capsizing, sinking and coming to rest in a close grouping 100m from the wreck.

 

[Vixen]

What evidence is there that these things are 'transmitting'?

The fact they appeared to be responsible for the signal interference...?

"I cannot tell you what triggered them and caused them to interfere with our work the last time," he went on, though said that the beacons, which would likely be expensive, would overall make surveying easier.

Peeter Ude is referring to when he was there on a prvious occaison. Not sure if that was the Arikas one - I doubt it - or whether he was with Bemis and Rabe, or even Evertsson. I know Rabe and Bemis mysteriously lost their GPS and had to find the wreck by old-fashioned means of navigation.

 

[Vixen]

Maybe if they'd had more time they could have better pictures.

If they're not from the Estonia they could be old positioning beacons from the original accident investigation. Unless they're hard-wired they're not communicating with anyone, and they've been down there a long time. If they are hard-wired just follow the cable back to the source, or cut the cable and find out whose navy comes out to fix it.

Why don't the "Experts" on the ship doing to survey know what they are?

They are used for triangulation but why would they have just been left there, or were they tracking the ROV's.

He said: "The very idea of these devices is to send out alternating signals that makes it possible to triangulate the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles' (AUV) position," referring to remote dive robots used heavily in modern-day investigations of this nature.

And why would they be interfering with the signals.

 

[Vixen]

I'll repeat: why would the visor have even needed to have "banged on the bulbous bow area" in order for the accident to have been caused in the way the official report says it was caused?

Wan't this banging supposed to explain the eyewitness accounts of a series of bangs and sensations of colliding, together with shaking and vibrations?

 

[Vixen]

And the UK, as both a maritime nation and as a nation with one of the largest communities (outside the US) of technical divers and ROV operators, is usually keen to support these kinds of endeavours to keep wrecks containing fatalities safe from unofficial expeditions. Plus of course there's a British national amongst the dead in this case.

Utter nonsense. There were 17 nationalities among the dead. The UK was the only non-Baltic nation to sign the treaty. Norway didn't. The Netherlands did not.


There is really nothing exceptional about being British.

 

[junkshop]

And the UK, as both a maritime nation and as a nation with one of the largest communities (outside the US) of technical divers and ROV operators, is usually keen to support these kinds of endeavours to keep wrecks containing fatalities safe from unofficial expeditions. Plus of course there's a British national amongst the dead in this case.

Utter nonsense. There were 17 nationalities among the dead. The UK was the only non-Baltic nation to sign the treaty. Norway didn't. The Netherlands did not.


There is really nothing exceptional about being British.

Maybe I'm being dense, but I'm not seeing a claim of exceptionalism in LondonJohn's post. Could you explain what you mean?

 

[LondonJohn]

Wan't this banging supposed to explain the eyewitness accounts of a series of bangs and sensations of colliding, together with shaking and vibrations?

The banging didn't involve the bulbous bow. The banging was caused by the bottom of the bow visor repeatedly swinging down (from its top hinges) and banging against the area of the now-broken bottom lock. Well above the bulbous bow.

 

[LondonJohn]

Utter nonsense. There were 17 nationalities among the dead. The UK was the only non-Baltic nation to sign the treaty. Norway didn't. The Netherlands did not.


There is really nothing exceptional about being British.

Once again, you don't appear to have read what I actually wrote.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Wan't this banging supposed to explain the eyewitness accounts of a series of bangs and sensations of colliding, together with shaking and vibrations?

But why would it be banging on the bulb?

 

[Andy_Ross]

They are used for triangulation but why would they have just been left there, or were they tracking the ROV's.





And why would they be interfering with the signals.

We don't know they were interfering with anything.

How would they be used for 'triangulation'?

 

[Andy_Ross]

The fact they appeared to be responsible for the signal interference...?




Peeter Ude is referring to when he was there on a prvious occaison. Not sure if that was the Arikas one - I doubt it - or whether he was with Bemis and Rabe, or even Evertsson. I know Rabe and Bemis mysteriously lost their GPS and had to find the wreck by old-fashioned means of navigation.

We don't know they were responsible for any kind of 'signal interference'

How would anything on the seabed interfere with GPS?

You do know how GPS works?

 

[Mojo]

We don't know they were responsible for any kind of 'signal interference'

How would anything on the seabed interfere with GPS?

You do know how GPS works?

It’s a network of frogmen with theodolites, isn’t it? The bright lights on the beacons will have dazzled them.

 

[Mojo]

Then explain how nuclear waste can eat away at the bow of the ship. You've stated that this is a theory worth considering, so defend it.

Elementary chemistry.

Anyway, third time of asking. Vixen, please can you explain this “elementary chemistry”? What species are involved, how do they react, what are the products? Perhaps you could provide some simple equations

 

[GlennB]

Anyway, third time of asking. Vixen, please can you explain this “elementary chemistry”? What species are involved, how do they react, what are the products? Perhaps you could provide some simple equations

Don't hold your breath. 'Toss in a random sciencey-sounding phrase and avoid the subject in future' is standard procedure in Vixenworld.

 

[Vixen]

Maybe I'm being dense, but I'm not seeing a claim of exceptionalism in LondonJohn's post. Could you explain what you mean?

There was zero reason for the UK to sign the treaty. Unless, of course, as several people in the know believe, MI6 was involved and therefore made its involvement classified.

I note a tweet yesterday claims the Swedish government have suddenly arranged for themselves to be indemnified against any prosecution as a result of anything that comes out of the current investigation. Well, this is the government that agreed to the new investigation due to the discovery of the starboard infraction and would not include anyone who was around in the 1990's, anyway.