They could see each other's lights. IIRC they were nine km away.
The self-inflating lift rafts had a supply of flares, so what the Captains of Europa and Mariella saw were almost certainly the survivors on the life rafts setting them off. Most had abandoned ship within the ten minute times slot of the violent list to starboard and then a momentary self-righting. So almost all of the survivors were in the life rafts as of the time of the Mayday calls circa 1:22, when the other Captains became aware.
Europa was 10.5 nautical miles from Estonia when it got the first mayday.
That is 19.5 kilometers.
It was the second transmission ten minutes later that fixed the position.
I should just have read that part of the report instead of asking. Interestingly, despite what one ship's captain knew about responses to the Mayday calls, there were multiple stations which heard a Mayday from the Estonia:
"The first distress call was received from the ESTONIA at about 0122 hrs and was answered by the MARIELLA, which was north-east of and closest to the ESTONIA. When the distress call was heard on the Silja Symphony, a tape recorder was turned on to record the radio traffic.
A second distress call from the ESTONIA was received at 0124 hrs by 14 radio stations. One of these was MRCC Turku, which assumed control of the SAR operation.
At 0129 hrs the ESTONIA's position became known, and after receiving the distress message vessels in the vicinity turned towards the scene of the accident. The MARIELLA was by that time about nine nautical miles away from the ESTONIA. The Silja Europa, which had direct radio contact with the ESTONIA during the distress traffic, assumed control of the distress radio traffic and at 0205 hrs MRCC Turku designated her master as the On-Scene Commander (OSC).
After receiving the distress call MRCC Turku alerted rescue units and those responsible for the management of the rescue services. The first units to be alerted were the coast guard patrol vessel TURSAS at 0126 hrs and stand-by maritime rescue helicopter OH-HVG in Turku at 0135 hrs. The helicopter took off at 0230 hrs. MRCC Turku formally designated the situation as a major accident at 0230 hrs and the appropriate alarms were initiated.
At 0142 hrs the MARIELLA informed Helsinki Radio about the accident. Instead of transmitting a Mayday Relay Helsinki Radio transmitted a Pan-Pan message at 0150 hrs.
Maritime Rescue Subcentre (MRSC) Mariehamn informed MRCC Stockholm of the accident at 0152 hrs, whereupon the alerting of Swedish maritime rescue helicopters was initiated. The first of these, stand-by helicopter Q 97, took off at 0250 hrs.
MRCC Helsinki notified MRCC Tallinn of the accident at 0255 hrs.
The MARIELLA was the first vessel to reach the scene of the accident, at 0212 hrs. At this time many persons, liferafts, lifeboats and lifejackets could be seen in the water. People were heard screaming in the sea. At 0230 hrs the SILJA EUROPA arrived and by 0320 hrs all five passenger ferries had reached the scene of the accident."
As Captain Thornroos points out, this is incorrect. The signals might show as recorded, but if n-oone picked them up then they must have been too weak for anyone to have heard it. The standard procedure is to acknowledge receipt of the Channel 16 message and nobody did, except Mariella and Europa and then, not both of them at the same time.
The EPIRBs were found floating in the sea with life jackets and messed up rafts flooded and other assorted detritus that was buoyant from the wreck. I thought that was common knowledge, but I am happy to hurl a link if you wish.
Take a pause there. Some folk will intentionally bork it. Watch out.
Well it is a bit odd. 29 vessels rocked up but OP insists there were only two. Silja and Mariella. OP has no clue that Isabella plucked survivors from the sea. Or Symphony. Or anyone else.
OP claims that channel 16 was blocked by Russian interference. Yet we have recordings of channel 16. Somehow, those do not count. Engineers on the boat had no welding gear, a car deck had watertight doors and so on.
Estonia did not have automatic beacons. they had to be manually activated.
How they release is not the same as how they are turned on and off.
It was because of the Estonia disaster that the rules were changed to make automatic activation mandatory for class approval on ferries and passenger ships.
As Captain Thornroos points out, this is incorrect. The signals might show as recorded, but if n-oone picked them up then they must have been too weak for anyone to have heard it. The standard procedure is to acknowledge receipt of the Channel 16 message and nobody did, except Mariella and Europa and then, not both of them at the same time.
Europa was 10.5 nautical miles from Estonia when it got the first mayday.
That is 19.5 kilometers.
It was the second transmission ten minutes later that fixed the position.
Rockwater (Dec 1994) confirms the Estonia EPIRB's were hydrostatically operated.
The Cospas-Sarsat system was invented circa 1980. Estonia was built as Viking Sally in 1984. It was a Meyer-Werft ship. Your claim that in 1994 it 'must have had the old-fashioned manual type' cannot be true if it was the hydrostatic release type.
Fact is, it was inspected the week before and no problems were noted. The inspection involves four green lights flashing and a beeping noise, without actually activating the signal. This means there was zero reason for it to not have (a) floated to the top of the sea, and (b) to start transmitting a signal once surfaced. The Rockwater divers found the capsules open and the EPIRB's not present.
The attached youtube explains the inspection process at four minutes in.
the mechanism governing the switching on of the radio transmitters of the buoys
ARE NOT THE SAME THING. NOR ARE THEY INTERRELATED.
The only mechanism for switching on the radio transmitters of the EPIRBs on the Estonia was the hand of a crewmember.
What was supposed to happen (again, for the nth time) was this: once the crew realised the ship was going to sink*, a designated crewmember - or any crewmember, for that matter - should have exited the bridge and manually switched on the radio transmitters on the two EPIRBs (which were mounted just outside the bridge on either side IIRC). It's entirely clear that, in the event, no crewmember performed that task. That would have been due to bad training and/or general panic.
And that - and only that - is why no signal from the Estonia's EPIRBs was ever picked up, and why they were still in the switched-off state when they were eventually found and recovered. The deployment mechanism worked just fine (and we can assume that since nobody switched on the transmitters, nobody manually released the buoys either). But the deployment mechanism on these particular EPIRBs was a totally separate matter from the (manual-only) mechanism to switch on the transmitter.
How is it that you still cannot understand this??
*and bear in mind, ships don't sink in the blink of an eye - there's always going to be at least several minutes when it's clear the ship is going to sink, but there's still time to do things like switch on the EPIRB transmitters.
It is in the report that they were manual activation.
In 1999 the IMO introduced new SOLAS requirements for commercial vessels to require EPIRB buoys to be self activating.
At the same time special training requirements related to crowd and crisis management, was expanded to cover crew on all passenger ships, and amendments made regarding watch-keeping standards.
Estonia was also a major factor in the regulations regarding the use of Voice Data Recorders on commercial vessels above a certain siz.
Also, IMO introduced new SOLAS liferaft regulations for rescue from listing ships in rough water.
Yeah but..... in the hands of a conspiracy theorist, the JAIC Report is a farrago of lies, misdirections and cover-ups.
So in the hands of a conspiracy theorist, what the JAIC Report wrote about the EPIRBs is a lie to (attempt) to cover up the fact that some malevolent actor somehow switched off the transmitters which had initially been automatically activated.
And they'd have gotten away with it.... had it not been for a dogged and determined band of truth-seekers who - against the odds, and against the considerable power and might of The Establishment - triumphed in exposing the venal corruption and cover-up at the heart of this tragedy. It's the least that the victims deserved, after all.
You're claiming Captain Thornroos is psychic. Why else would he be the authority on how many other radio stations received the same Mayday calls he heard?
Don't be stupid. He was one witness. He told them what he knew. He didn't know everything by magic.
What do you mean by "of said" life vests? Are you claiming to be able to tell these specific Estonia life vests apart from all the others and positively identify them as the same ones abaddon mentions?
For the umpteenth time, it's as incorrect/improper to talk of people "ringing the coastguards on their NMTs" as it is to talk of you "ringing the bank on your LTE-Advanced".
Because "NMT" was nothing more than the technical standard used to transmit/receive mobile phone traffic in the Nordic region in 1994. Just as "LTE-Advanced" is the prevailing technical standard across the world for mobile phone traffic in 2021.
So, in exactly the same way as you would say you "called the bank on your mobile phone"..... these people in 1994 simply "called the coastguard on their mobile phones".
What is your point here? Are you trying to make some weird insinuation about why the other ships, which were all further away than the Mariella, didn't get to the scene before it?
It is in the report that they were manual activation.
In 1999 the IMO introduced new SOLAS requirements for commercial vessels to require EPIRB buoys to be self activating.
At the same time special training requirements related to crowd and crisis management, was expanded to cover crew on all passenger ships, and amendments made regarding watch-keeping standards.
Estonia was also a major factor in the regulations regarding the use of Voice Data Recorders on commercial vessels above a certain siz.
Also, IMO introduced new SOLAS liferaft regulations for rescue from listing ships in rough water.
Citation please of where in the report it says 'manual activation only' and where in SOLAS does it reference Estonia as the basis of their new edict?
With all due respect, no amount of 'crew training' would have saved 90% of the passengers, given the extremely rapid sinking. In addition, the JAIC never considered sabotage so it just assumed the missing EPIRBs were 'user error' and the non-receipt of the Mayday signals - except at the eleventh hour by walkie-talkie by two nearby vessels - were the error of the Coast Guards and receiving stations.
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