Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

[LondonJohn]

If that is the standard of their English then I wouldn't trust their assessment of anything literary.

Not to mention the preceding doozy: "Who is Apprentice House?"

 

[Vixen]

Communications were not 'down' or 'sabotaged'

You have been shown a full timeline of events and radio traffic.

Really? When VHF Channel 16 should be picked up in Stockholm (not Estonia so much as they had short antennaes) or at least 2182 should be heard all over the Baltic, the Swedes did not hear a dicky bird about the disaster that was unfolding in the the middle of the sea. A local truck driver radioed them to ask what was going on in the Baltic, as obviously, word starts spreading. 0157 Stockholm rang MRCC Turku, who had simply assumed they had got the same relayed message as themselves.

From Helsingin Sanomat 29.9.1994 0200:

The Mayday message sent by Estonia was heard at the Turku Maritime Rescue Center, but not at Estonian radio stations with lower antennas.
Elsewhere, the border guard authority wondered that the alarm was not recorded at all by the Estonian car ferry Balanga Queen, which operates from Tallinn to Travemünde. Balanga Queen left Tallinn at the same time as Estonia and was only thirty miles south of Estonia. According to the authority, it is possible that the radio operator of Balanga Queen had neglected to be on call.

HS

...or a communications blackout.

I now wonder whether Estonia started to race towards Europa and Mariella in order to be close enough to make some kind of contact,

 

[Vixen]

Good grief. Can you not see what you're doing here, Vixen?

You're very obviously trawling the internet for anything that (you think) supports your (incorrect) claim about the EPIRBs.

But for all your efforts - which I imagine are fairly considerable, pathetically - you keep dragging up nothing more than contemporaneous media reports that were made when the actual facts were not yet properly known. They are speculation. Nothing more or less than that.

In this particular instance, the person quoted is trying to figure out why the EPIRB signals weren't picked up that night. His supposition is that it was because the EPIRBs went down with the ship (and, activated or not, they cannot transmit through a large column of water).

But the source didn't know at that point - because nobody knew at that point - that the EPIRBs had indeed released (automatically) and floated free on the surface after the ship sank. So, what actually happened was not what he was supposing might have happened. He also obviously didn't know the specification of the EPIRBs (and their deck mounts) - because if he had, he'd have known that his supposition was wrong, and that EPIRBs wouldn't have gone down with the ship.

It's also easy to infer that he didn't know whether the Estonia's EPIRBs had automatic activation or were manual-only. Because few if any people - outside of the ship's owners and whoever last maintained the buoys - actually did know at that point. So his low-information supposition (and that's all it ever was, Vixen: a supposition, not a statement of fact), however sincerely it was intended, was factually wrong on two counts: 1) the EPIRBs did not fail to operate because they had gone down with the ship (because they were auto-released, which he clearly didn't know at that time); and 2) the real reason why the EPIRBs failed to operate was because a) they were manual-activation only, and b) nobody in the crew remembered to (manually) switch them on.


Q. E. D.

The fact people thought it important to locate the WPIRB's from Day One indicates they were not such an unimportant facet as people like to make out (oh, they didn't matter anyway). They should matter to a decent investigator.

Early reports are of great use to an historian. It used to be the case one had to rely on verse by Homer, Virgil, or the oral tradition of the Icelandic Sagas, or even diaries written by people such as Samuel Pepys for an insight into days of yore.

Don't dismiss early news reports. I've notice from HS, Henrik Sillaste, has been brought into the story very quickly, from Day One, a lowly fourth or third engineer. All he saw was water seeping in at the sides of the car ramp on a monitor screen and already we see the intelligence services in operation (who often double up as journalists) purveying the cause of the disaster the bow visor, before it had even been recovered and nobody saw it fall off.

Why? Surely it takes longer than one day and from hearing one person who really didn't see anything definitive - maybe a clue, sure - as being proof that what happened was a The Herald of Free Enterprise Mark II?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Really? When VHF Channel 16 should be picked up in Stockholm (not Estonia so much as they had short antennaes) or at least 2182 should be heard all over the Baltic, the Swedes did not hear a dicky bird about the disaster that was unfolding in the the middle of the sea. A local truck driver radioed them to ask what was going on in the Baltic, as obviously, word starts spreading. 0157 Stockholm rang MRCC Turku, who had simply assumed they had got the same relayed message as themselves.

From Helsingin Sanomat 29.9.1994 0200:

HS

...or a communications blackout.

I now wonder whether Estonia started to race towards Europa and Mariella in order to be close enough to make some kind of contact,

As has been explained 3o miles in those conditions and using a low power hand held radio is pushing the practical limit for a VHF transmission from a ship

 

[Andy_Ross]

The fact people thought it important to locate the WPIRB's from Day One indicates they were not such an unimportant facet as people like to make out (oh, they didn't matter anyway). They should matter to a decent investigator.

Early reports are of great use to an historian. It used to be the case one had to rely on verse by Homer, Virgil, or the oral tradition of the Icelandic Sagas, or even diaries written by people such as Samuel Pepys for an insight into days of yore.

Don't dismiss early news reports. I've notice from HS, Henrik Sillaste, has been brought into the story very quickly, from Day One, a lowly fourth or third engineer. All he saw was water seeping in at the sides of the car ramp on a monitor screen and already we see the intelligence services in operation (who often double up as journalists) purveying the cause of the disaster the bow visor, before it had even been recovered and nobody saw it fall off.

Why? Surely it takes longer than one day and from hearing one person who really didn't see anything definitive - maybe a clue, sure - as being proof that what happened was a The Herald of Free Enterprise Mark II?

It was important to find the buoys because no transmission was picked up from either of them.
I was important to find out if this was because of some fault on the buoys.
If they had both been activated but not worked it would have had important ramifications for all the other buoys of the same type in use on other ships.

When they were recovered it was found that they had not been activated, that was the reason no transmission was picked up.
When turned on they worked correctly and a transmission was detected.

This lack of activation was considered important enough for the IMO through SOLAS regulations to make automatic activation buoys mandatory to avoid a similar situation in the future.

 

[abaddon]

Really? When VHF Channel 16 should be picked up in Stockholm (not Estonia so much as they had short antennaes) or at least 2182 should be heard all over the Baltic, the Swedes did not hear a dicky bird about the disaster that was unfolding in the the middle of the sea. A local truck driver radioed them to ask what was going on in the Baltic, as obviously, word starts spreading. 0157 Stockholm rang MRCC Turku, who had simply assumed they had got the same relayed message as themselves.

From Helsingin Sanomat 29.9.1994 0200:

HS

...or a communications blackout.

I now wonder whether Estonia started to race towards Europa and Mariella in order to be close enough to make some kind of contact,

We know there was no "blackout". We have the recordings of channel 16.

 

[abaddon]

The fact people thought it important to locate the WPIRB's from Day One indicates they were not such an unimportant facet as people like to make out (oh, they didn't matter anyway). They should matter to a decent investigator.

"WPIRBS"? Really?

And they were located on Oct. 2. At sea. By two separate fishing vessels. One each in case you couldn't work that out. And they were not activated.

Early reports are of great use to an historian. It used to be the case one had to rely on verse by Homer, Virgil, or the oral tradition of the Icelandic Sagas, or even diaries written by people such as Samuel Pepys for an insight into days of yore.

Seriously? Sorry, you cannot rehabilitate your CT that way. Record keeping, tracking, technology have all move on a bit since then, don't you think?

Don't dismiss early news reports. I've notice from HS, Henrik Sillaste, has been brought into the story very quickly, from Day One, a lowly fourth or third engineer. All he saw was water seeping in at the sides of the car ramp on a monitor screen and already we see the intelligence services in operation (who often double up as journalists) purveying the cause of the disaster the bow visor, before it had even been recovered and nobody saw it fall off.

Oh, come off it. First or early reports are always iffy about any event.

Why? Surely it takes longer than one day and from hearing one person who really didn't see anything definitive - maybe a clue, sure - as being proof that what happened was a The Herald of Free Enterprise Mark II?

Irrelevant. HOFE would have sunk in deeper water. Are you simply claiming that HOFE should not have stopped sinking? Instead it should have sunk beyond the sea bottom? Would that make it a "subterranean" ferry?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

The fact people thought it important to locate the WPIRB's from Day One indicates they were not such an unimportant facet as people like to make out (oh, they didn't matter anyway). They should matter to a decent investigator.

You're twisting what people said again. What happened to the ship's emergency beacons was of course an important matter to resolve because their signal was never received and it was potentially very significant if they had failed to operate for some reason. That is an entirely separate matter from whether they could have assisted with the rescue of the victims in this disaster (and, as we have discussed several times, they would not realistically have helped).

Early reports are of great use to an historian. It used to be the case one had to rely on verse by Homer, Virgil, or the oral tradition of the Icelandic Sagas, or even diaries written by people such as Samuel Pepys for an insight into days of yore.

Don't dismiss early news reports. I've notice from HS, Henrik Sillaste, has been brought into the story very quickly, from Day One, a lowly fourth or third engineer. All he saw was water seeping in at the sides of the car ramp on a monitor screen and already we see the intelligence services in operation (who often double up as journalists) purveying the cause of the disaster the bow visor, before it had even been recovered and nobody saw it fall off.

Why? Surely it takes longer than one day and from hearing one person who really didn't see anything definitive - maybe a clue, sure - as being proof that what happened was a The Herald of Free Enterprise Mark II?

I really can't see what point this rambling stuff is trying to make. You exhort us not to dismiss early news reports. Unless they're from "lowly" witnesses. Or maybe if the news reporters are actually intelligence agents in disguise. And anyway, early reports are too early to rely on. But don't dismiss early news reports.

 

[BazBear]

The fact people thought it important to locate the WPIRB's from Day One indicates they were not such an unimportant facet as people like to make out (oh, they didn't matter anyway).

No one has said they were unimportant, only that their activation or non-activation - manual activation - made no difference as to how quickly the rescue effort began. Of course, you know that, and that's why you have to mischaracterize what people have been saying.

Early reports are of great use to an historian. It used to be the case one had to rely on verse by Homer, Virgil, or the oral tradition of the Icelandic Sagas, or even diaries written by people such as Samuel Pepys for an insight into days of yore.

Don't dismiss early news reports. I've notice from HS, Henrik Sillaste, has been brought into the story very quickly, from Day One, a lowly fourth or third engineer. All he saw was water seeping in at the sides of the car ramp on a monitor screen and already we see the intelligence services in operation (who often double up as journalists) purveying the cause of the disaster the bow visor, before it had even been recovered and nobody saw it fall off.

Why? Surely it takes longer than one day and from hearing one person who really didn't see anything definitive - maybe a clue, sure - as being proof that what happened was a The Herald of Free Enterprise Mark II?

You do like strawmen, don't you? The early reports are not being simply dismissed out of hand. But again, you know that, so yet again you're disingenuously trying to discredit your critics arguments. All in the hope of somehow rehabilitating your failed conspiracy mash-up quasi-narrative I suspect.

 

[Vixen]

As has been explained 3o miles in those conditions and using a low power hand held radio is pushing the practical limit for a VHF transmission from a ship

So what about 2182? Or the NMT mobile phones? Arlanda Airport (air traffic controllers!) all without radio communications for the duration of the sinking. OK, so it might be due to 'the storm' or natural events. However, the JAIC didn't bother investigating this. It just claimed a snafu with MRCC Turku but how were Turku to know Stockholm did not get any communications. It is Catch-22 is it not? Are you claiming none of the senior officers on the bridge had an NMT device. That it was down to the third and fourth officers, hanging on to a lopsided desk and using a walkie-talkie designed for in-ship communication. In any case, Herma managed to find the coordinates so it must have been lit up on their navigation system, even if it was a 'blackout' (as described by Ainsalu to Europa).


Cue response: "Oh well, two ships a week sink" <shrug>.

 

[Vixen]

It was important to find the buoys because no transmission was picked up from either of them.
I was important to find out if this was because of some fault on the buoys.
If they had both been activated but not worked it would have had important ramifications for all the other buoys of the same type in use on other ships.

When they were recovered it was found that they had not been activated, that was the reason no transmission was picked up.
When turned on they worked correctly and a transmission was detected.

This lack of activation was considered important enough for the IMO through SOLAS regulations to make automatic activation buoys mandatory to avoid a similar situation in the future.

Koivisto, marine electronics expert for the JAIC, said they had not been tuned by the ship's electricians when they came back from inspection. The hydrostatic release unit obviously worked as the containers were empty, unless they had never been installed in the first place, or removed.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Koivisto, marine electronics expert for the JAIC, said they had not been tuned by the ship's electricians when they came back from inspection. The hydrostatic release unit obviously worked as the containers were empty, unless they had never been installed in the first place, or removed.

Have you yet asked a Finn to explain to you what the nuance of the word you translate as "tuned" is? Because your wish for it to mean the same as "tuned" does in English usage is still at odds with the plain fact that the users do not have any such access to the workings of the devices.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

So what about 2182? Or the NMT mobile phones? Arlanda Airport (air traffic controllers!) all without radio communications for the duration of the sinking. OK, so it might be due to 'the storm' or natural events. However, the JAIC didn't bother investigating this. ...

The storm turned me into a newt. The JAIC didn't investigate that either.

I got better.

 

[abaddon]

Koivisto, marine electronics expert for the JAIC, said they had not been tuned by the ship's electricians when they came back from inspection. The hydrostatic release unit obviously worked as the containers were empty, unless they had never been installed in the first place, or removed.

Then he is an idiot. EPIRBs are not "tunable". If Koivisto is actually claiming that the ships electricians had to "tune" the EPIRBs, then he clearly has no clue what he is talking about. If you believe that garbage that he spouts, then I leave it to everyone else to draw their own conclusions.

 

[Vixen]

We know there was no "blackout". We have the recordings of channel 16.

From Helsingin Sanomat: the VHF mayday call should have picked up as far away as Gothenberg. As stated, Stockholm, just 220km away, did not receive any communication whatsoever, or relay, and they rang MRCC Turku at 0157 (hello? nine minutes after Estonia was on the seabed) to enquire if something was going on. Only at 0202 did the official rescue start from Sweden.

Although the route sounds complicated, the message runs in a matter of seconds. Estonia's alarm was raised by a VHF phone, the most common radio device in Baltic Traffic. The VHF message comes to the marine rescue centre from all over the Baltic Sea, as a network of remotely controlled base stations has been built for the maritime rescue centres of Turku, Helsinki and Vaasa for the emergency channel. A similar network collects messages from the outer sea to the swedish maritime rescue centres in Härnösand, Stockholm and Gothenburg.

HS 9.10.1994

 

[Vixen]

"WPIRBS"? Really?

And they were located on Oct. 2. At sea. By two separate fishing vessels. One each in case you couldn't work that out. And they were not activated.

Seriously? Sorry, you cannot rehabilitate your CT that way. Record keeping, tracking, technology have all move on a bit since then, don't you think?

Oh, come off it. First or early reports are always iffy about any event.

Irrelevant. HOFE would have sunk in deeper water. Are you simply claiming that HOFE should not have stopped sinking? Instead it should have sunk beyond the sea bottom? Would that make it a "subterranean" ferry?

From HS

TALLINN - Satellite passenger buoys (EPIRBs) on the Estonian passenger ferry have been found, the Estonian Ministry of Transport announced on Monday. Experts are now investigating why the buoys were not operating at the time of the accident. The radio transmitters in the buoys should have automatically reported the exact position of the vessel via satellites after being submerged. The satellite buoys were found as early as Saturday and were transported to the Estonian Maritime Administration. The Estonian news agency's EEA telegram did not mention where the buoys were found (STT).
13.12.1994

https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000003390961.html


Again, on 28.1.1995, HS reported that they were automatically-activated EPIRB's and should have automatically signalled on coming to the surface.

Estonia's emergency buoys had forgotten about the tuning

Tukkimäki Paavo

28.1.1995 2:00

The two emergency stalls of the car ship Estonia did not send a signal to rescuers because they were not tuned on board. The emergency buoys came to the surface properly as the ship sank.

The International Commission of Inquiry into the accident has investigated the operation of emergency buoys stranded off the coast of Estonia. The buoy batteries were in full reserve, but they could not send anything untuned," says Commissioner Kari Lehtola .

The Commission concluded its two-day meeting on Friday in Helsinki.
The so-called EPIRB emergency buoys had recently been maintained and were placed in place in accordance with the rules. However, during the setting phase, the activation of the buoys was forgotten: the protective cover must be opened and the switch turned on.
The activation of the emergency buoy was one of estonia's tasks for radio electricians, of which there were two on board. The investigation is still ongoing, but the Commission has consulted the radio electrician in this matter, said Asser Koivisto, an expert member of the Commission.

The purpose of the emergency buoy is to send the location of the sunken ship and to inform the searchers of the name of the ship.

ibid

They were operational and although seemingly successfully released into the sea by the hydrostatic release unit, they failed to give off the signal as they were supposed to, as automatically-activated EPIRB's. As they are only released under up to four metres - two fathoms - of water, it is obvious they are not 'manual-activation-only' [although all such buoys can be]. That is simple common sense. The claim they 'operated as they were designed to' is an absurd one.

TALLINN - Car Ferry The Estonian EPIRB satellite buoys were operational, although for some reason the message they sent automatically did not progress to the alarm system. Estonian and Finnish experts tested buoys detached from sunken Estonia on Tuesday at the icebreaker Tarmo. According to Estonian radio, the buoys sent a four-hour radio message that should arrive via satellite at the ground station. Next, we want to investigate the operation of the ground stations to find out where the auto-triggered alarm message disappeared. Satellite alerts in the Baltic Sea area will be received at Bodö, Norway, which will transmit the information to the nearest maritime rescue center. Satellite alerts in the Baltic Sea may also be printed in Falmouth, England, or Toulouse, France. In connection with the Estonian accident, the absence of a satellite alarm was puzzling. The buoys were later found stranded off the coast of Estonia. JORMA ROTKO
25.1.1995

HS

Clear now?

 

[abaddon]

So what about 2182?

Responded

Or the NMT mobile phones?

Responded.

Arlanda Airport (air traffic controllers!) all without radio communications for the duration of the sinking.

Baloney. Different band. Of course, you didn't know that. What is the frequency of channel 16? What is the frequency of airband? You clearly don't know. You claim to be an accountant, don't you? Do the numbers.

OK, so it might be due to 'the storm' or natural events. However, the JAIC didn't bother investigating this.

Because it would be pointless.

It just claimed a snafu with MRCC Turku but how were Turku to know Stockholm did not get any communications.

For short, we call it "SYN-ACK". In terms you might grok that basically means the discipline of saying "hello" and in the event one does not receive a return "hello", one knows that one cannot rely that the message has been received at all. One of the criticicisms of Europa and Mariella was that they did not follow that discipline. Which they didn't in fairness. The radio traffic was a bit sloppy. That said, they did what they could with the situation in front of them.

It is Catch-22 is it not?

Nope. Not when one understands how the systems work.

Are you claiming none of the senior officers on the bridge had an NMT device.

Are you claiming they had them and declined to use them? Are you claiming that Europa and Mariella didn't either?

That it was down to the third and fourth officers, hanging on to a lopsided desk and using a walkie-talkie designed for in-ship communication.

If that is all they had to hand, then yes. And apparently it was all they literally had to hand.

In any case, Herma managed to find the coordinates so it must have been lit up on their navigation system, even if it was a 'blackout' (as described by Ainsalu to Europa).

What? On channel 16 that you claim was blocked? On that channel? Have you a foggiest clue what an open carrier means? Or a busted PTT is? Heck, in the Ch16 recordings one can actually hear wonky PTTs from Mariella. And other vessels.

Cue response: "Oh well, two ships a week sink" <shrug>.

Wrong. The regulations about EPIRBs were changed on foot of the Estonia sinking. You have been told this over and over.

 

[Here_to_learn]

From Helsingin Sanomat: the VHF mayday call should have picked up as far away as Gothenberg. As stated, Stockholm, just 220km away, did not receive any communication whatsoever, or relay, and they rang MRCC Turku at 0157 (hello? nine minutes after Estonia was on the seabed) to enquire if something was going on. Only at 0202 did the official rescue start from Sweden.

HS 9.10.1994

Oh, come on. I've explained this so many times.

It is even explained in your post. There is a "...network of remote controlled...". So when you say "as far away as Gothenberg" [SIC] you are totally wrong. The distance to the central has no relevance, only the distance to the transmitting antenna.

Take a look at this map: https://stockholmradio.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/VHF-Kartan_2021.pdf
(Note, it's the offical map for Stockholm Radio, that controls the VHF transmitters).

You can see that Svenska Högarna is the closest tower on the Swedish side.

You can also see the expected distance that they cover as a table on the right, and as a circle. To each circle, you add the distance that the ships antenna height adds. That table is in the top center of the map. So for example a small boat would have an antenna height of 2 meters, so we can add 3 nautical miles (NM) to the distance.

With a large ship, and full size antenna at 30meters, you can add 12NM.


For Svenska Högarna, that is 15NM for the tower + 12NM for the ship. A total of 27 NM. The distance from M/S Estonia is about 123 km, or 66NM.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Koivisto, marine electronics expert for the JAIC, said they had not been tuned by the ship's electricians when they came back from inspection. The hydrostatic release unit obviously worked as the containers were empty, unless they had never been installed in the first place, or removed.

There was nothing to 'tune'
They are sealed units that are set up at the factory.
There is nothing that can be done by anyone on the ship to 'tune' them.
When they were turned on they worked as they should, their transmission was picked up and lasted for over 4 hours as designed.

Whatever Koivisto is saying is either being mistranslated somewhere or he is wrong,.

 

[Andy_Ross]

From HS

TALLINN - Satellite passenger buoys (EPIRBs) on the Estonian passenger ferry have been found, the Estonian Ministry of Transport announced on Monday. Experts are now investigating why the buoys were not operating at the time of the accident. The radio transmitters in the buoys should have automatically reported the exact position of the vessel via satellites after being submerged. The satellite buoys were found as early as Saturday and were transported to the Estonian Maritime Administration. The Estonian news agency's EEA telegram did not mention where the buoys were found (STT).
13.12.1994
https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000003390961.html


Again, on 28.1.1995, HS reported that they were automatically-activated EPIRB's and should have automatically signalled on coming to the surface.


ibid

They were operational and although seemingly successfully released into the sea by the hydrostatic release unit, they failed to give off the signal as they were supposed to, as automatically-activated EPIRB's. As they are only released under up to four metres - two fathoms - of water, it is obvious they are not 'manual-activation-only' [although all such buoys can be]. That is simple common sense. The claim they 'operated as they were designed to' is an absurd one.

HS

Clear now?

They give an automatic distress signal when turned on and continue to transmit it until the batteries are depleted.
the two buoys on the ship were of a model that was not an automatically activated unit.

How would the newspaper on the day of the sinking know what model of buoy the ship was equipped with?
They were not recovered until days later when they were found to be switched off. They were not automatic buoys.
THey worked as they should when they were tested.