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Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part V

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Captain_Swoop said:
But his first duty was to the safety of the ship. If he disregarded that and plowed on to meet his 'performance measures' he was not a competent man to be captain of a ship.
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But isn't that circular reasoning? The ship was involved in a sudden mysterious sinking, with strange communications blackouts for the duration, therefore, it must be the fault of the captain? The crew are entirely faultless on the other hand, even though Sillaste and Treu don't seem to have informed the bridge they were 'up to their knees in water' in the ECR.


Yes, the buck stops with the Captain but the JAIC don't blame the Captain. They do not make any effort to tell us, the people, what happened to the Captain.

If it was sabotage, then whilst it should have been Andresson's duty to guard against such a thing, he may not have had an awful lot of control over the situation.
 
Vixen said:
According to the JAIC the Atlantic lock failed first (when one wonders whether it was ever even locked at all, or even particularly needed)
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You don't know what you're talking about. The bottom lock was by far the most critical lock. It was the lock which directly opposed the top hinges. If you knew anything about the physics of rotational forces/torques, you'd know you were wrong. But you don't know anything about it, do you?



and this caused the other two locks, virtually at the same time, to also fail. Think about it. The two upper locks were not dependent on the bottom lock other than marginally (re bearing tension). When one wheel comes off a wagon, not all the other wheels come off the same time or even nanoseconds after. Yet the JAIC are asking us all to suspend credulity and just believe.
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Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. Once the bottom lock failed, it immediately allowed the visor to pull against the side locks with forces for which those side locks were never designed. Ordinarily the bottom lock would have prevented those side locks from forces related to motion around the pivots. But with the bottom lock failed, the visor was now transferring those forces solely to the side locks. And that's why the side locks would have failed pretty shortly after the bottom lock failed.

From that point, the visor was pivoting freely around the two top hinges. And every time the ship rode up on the swell, the visor slammed down against the bow skirting around where the bottom lock had once mated the visor to the ship. Those repeated impacts caused the top hinges to experience repeated shocks for which they too had never been designed. Eventually - after several minutes, the hinges failed as well. And thus the bow visor detached fully from the ship.


You have no idea about the science involved here, and you're way, way out of your depth. Those of us with the proper understanding of the relevant physics can instantly see that a) the JAIC explanation makes perfect sense, and is entirely consistent with all of the available evidence, and b) your musings are unscientific claptrap. Please stop talking about things you clearly know little or nothing about.
 
Vixen said:
Let's imagine for argument's sake 'wave impact' caused the bow visor to fall off. The JAIC affirm it was the bottom lock that failed first, then the port and then the starboard.

An independent expert mechanical engineer specialist who has written literally hundreds of papers on machine tools, nuts and bolts, probably one of the foremost experts in Europe (not up to your standards, of course), Dr-Ing Hans-Werner Hoffmeister then of Hamburg Technical University caried out his own tests, as appointed by Meyer Werft, the shipbuilders of the vessel, and his wholly scientific results (= which means they are replicable under the same conditions) showed that in fact, the weakest link was the starboard locks, nuts and bolts, then the port and last of all, the bottom lock, and this is the sequence they would have failed had such a hypothetical force was exerted on the bow visor.
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Gosh. Dr Hoffmeister (not "Dr-Ing Hoffmeister", unless you want to write your post in German for a German audience) gets more and more world-class expert every time you mention him!

We all know what really happened with the bow visor. Dr Hoffmeister's evaluations do nothing whatsoever to change that. His frame of reference was very narrow (perhaps deliberately, given his paymaster....), and his sequence of events is far more improbable than the one that actually took place (if the top pivots and the bottom lock are still intact and viable, there's effectively almost no force going through the side locks - for reasons that are immediately obvious to anyone who understands the mechanics and physics here).

Whereas if when the bottom lock - the one lock out of the three that was repeatedly being placed under load as the ship ploughed through the swell - failed first, that would have set in motion a logical sequential failure of all the other visor attachment points: first (and quickly) the side locks, then (after several minutes of hard percussive impacts of the visor) the top hinges.
 
Vixen said:
Oh dear. A totally illiterate interpretation of the laws of physics. Whilst the metal was indeed corroded, cracked and fatigued (cf Hoffmeister), under such conditions, the Atlantic lock would not have failed first as it was not the weakest or most stressed. Secondly, it was normal for that vessel to journey with up to 100 tonnes of sea water swishing about inside the bow visor due to a gap in the starboard side. There is a red mattress and various blankets and towels visible in the videos of the car ramp, which the JAIC dismisses as having come loose from a clothes storage. You and it fail to even ask why would such a storage space be by the car ramp, if not to be used for anything other than to plug the incoming seawater and rain? What other use would such a storage facility have on a car deck?

In addition, the only way water to enter the superstructure pre-capsize would be through the upper pipes situated along the middle of the ship and middle stairwell. If the ship was listing to starboards, then the water is accumulating to the right not the centre and as it leant towards stern you can then visualise the water level would be towards aft and starboards. It doesn't go anywhere near the centre of the ship for such slow flooding to occur, as happened with Oceanos. So, to get the necessary amount of water to ingress the vessel, the JAIC has to feed us the totally implausible scenario of it floating at 90° without fully capsizing - when we know that within seconds of a ship passing its angle of stability (nearer 40°, when the engines cut out as a result) it should overturn completely (as did the Oceanos after 18 hours of starboard list at about 30°, before it passed the point of no return and capsized within nine minutes completely).


But you believe it floated on its superstructure of twenty minutes whilst the windows and inner dividers broke - again the waves - even though the reinforced glass is designed to withstand wind speeds of 41m/s.

How can "seawater gushed into the open vehicle deck, and started finding its way (via gravity) to all the decks below" when it was at a 90° angle??? The water via gravity would descend to the starboard walls, not the lower decks!!!
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BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

(The remainder of your post is arrant nonsense, and not worthy of a response.)
 
Vixen said:
According to the JAIC the Atlantic lock failed first (when one wonders whether it was ever even locked at all, or even particularly needed) and this caused the other two locks, virtually at the same time, to also fail. Think about it.
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I have, and unlike you I am qualified to think accordingly. A sequence of failure is entirely different than simultaneous failure.

When one wheel comes off a wagon, not all the other wheels come off the same time or even nanoseconds after. Yet the JAIC are asking us all to suspend credulity and just believe.
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No, you're just trying to think intuitively rather than analytically.
 
Vixen said:
An independent expert mechanical engineer specialist who has written literally hundreds of papers on machine tools, nuts and bolts
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But who used rather rudimentary techniques to address this particular problem.

probably one of the foremost experts in Europe (not up to your standards, of course)...
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Nope. He is a manufacturing-methods expert. That requires very little in the way of finite element analysis. At the same time he was writing his report, I was doing actual FEM analysis for forensic science.

I have addressed at length Hoffmeister's findings. But you ignored it, probably because you're not competent to do so.
 
Vixen said:
The utterly ridiculous assertion that the Lusitania was sunk because it ran on time.
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You didn't explain why it was ridiculous. Walther Schwieger was a competent mariner who knew Lusitania's schedule and the constraints imposed on it by the tides at the recipient port. Lusitania was sunk in large part because she was predictable. And she was predictable because she was beholden to the tides. How is that ridiculous?
 
JayUtah said:
I have, and unlike you I am qualified to think accordingly. A sequence of failure is entirely different than simultaneous failure.



No, you're just trying to think intuitively rather than analytically.
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Indeed.

If Vixen is searching for homespun analogies, she could do worse than consider a classic line of dominoes standing on their ends, with around half a domino length between each of them.

The end result of the first domino being tipped over is that all the dominoes end up lying on the floor. But they didn't all fall onto the floor at the same time. Rather, the motion of the first domino falling caused the second domino to fall, and that second domino's falling caused the third domino to fall, and so on.

In other words, a sequential failure. Exactly what happened in the case of the three locks and two hinges on the bow visor of the Estonia.

Vixen's repeated attempts to claim that the JAIC's (and our) position is predicated on "all the locks and hinges failing at the same time" is as fatuous as it is utterly incorrect.


ETA: Perhaps an even more appropriate analogy for our case would be when you get a letter with a "tear-off" section at the bottom (usually for something that you fill in with information, then tear off and return to the sender).

Those tear-off sections have numerous small perforations at the join - meaning therefore the two sections of the paper are held together by numerous small paper joints (in-between the holes).

If you were to try to grab the whole sheet of paper by the top and bottom and attempt to pull away the lower section at the perforation point in one go (i.e. by applying a force entirely perpendicular to the joint line, attempting to break all the paper joints in a single instance), it would be very difficult and would require a lot of force to achieve.

Instead, what you obviously do is start at one end of the joint line, and gently start pulling the lower section away from the upper section. As the first paper joint fails under load, the second paper joint immediately takes up that load force. It in turn fails, whereupon the third paper joint experiences the load and fails in turn. And so on, one paper joint at a time, until all the paper joints are broken and the lower section comes entirely free from the top section. I would wager that everyone in this thread has ample experience of having performed this task.

What's happened there is a perfect example of sequential failure. And it's pretty analogous to the sequential failure of the locks and pivots on the Estonia's bow visor.
 
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Vixen said:
But isn't that circular reasoning? The ship was involved in a sudden mysterious sinking, with strange communications blackouts for the duration, therefore, it must be the fault of the captain? The crew are entirely faultless on the other hand, even though Sillaste and Treu don't seem to have informed the bridge they were 'up to their knees in water' in the ECR.

Yes, the buck stops with the Captain but the JAIC don't blame the Captain. They do not make any effort to tell us, the people, what happened to the Captain.

If it was sabotage, then whilst it should have been Andresson's duty to guard against such a thing, he may not have had an awful lot of control over the situation.
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There was no communications blackout.

You don't know that the bridge wasn't informed.

There is plenty of blame to spread around those that contributed to the sinking. Forging in to a gale at excessive speed, failing to properly investigate strange sounds and water ingress and even sailing a ship known to have problems with the visor leaking are the contributions made by the captain.

What happened to him? He went down with his ship and drowned.
 
Vixen said:
Whoa! I didn't say Andresson's contract 'gave him no choice', but the fact is he wasn't being paid the USD equivalent of $3,000 pcm without all kinds of perfomance measures thrown in.
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But you admit you are unable to product the contract in question. How can you be sure what the provisions were?
 
JayUtah said:
You didn't explain why it was ridiculous. Walther Schwieger was a competent mariner who knew Lusitania's schedule and the constraints imposed on it by the tides at the recipient port. Lusitania was sunk in large part because she was predictable. And she was predictable because she was beholden to the tides. How is that ridiculous?
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I'd have thought that was obvious: it is "ridiculous" because you hold a different position on the cause of the Estonia disaster
 
Vixen said:
But isn't that circular reasoning?
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No. Circular reasoning is something entirely different from a captain being first and foremost responsible for the safety of his ship. What did you think was circular about that?

The ship was involved in a sudden mysterious sinking
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It's not really a mystery. Sorry to disappoint.
with strange communications blackouts for the duration
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No.
therefore, it must be the fault of the captain? The crew are entirely faultless on the other hand, even though Sillaste and Treu don't seem to have informed the bridge they were 'up to their knees in water' in the ECR.
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Don't seem to = there is no evidence either way. You're guessing about that. And who claimed the crew were faultless?

Yes, the buck stops with the Captain but the JAIC don't blame the Captain. They do not make any effort to tell us, the people, what happened to the Captain.
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They were not making a movie. They had a job. They did it.

If it was sabotage, then whilst it should have been Andresson's duty to guard against such a thing, he may not have had an awful lot of control over the situation.
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It wasn't.
 
Vixen said:
The utterly ridiculous assertion that the Lusitania was sunk because it ran on time.
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From Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston, p. 178:

In fact, Turner had another reason for reducing speed, apart from the fog. He was planning to steam through the final stretch of the Irish Sea in darkness, timing his arrival at the Mersey bar to catch the tide in the early hours. He then intended to sail straight over the bar without waiting for a pilot, to avoid delaying in waters known to be infested with submarines. High tide at the Mersey bar was 6:53 A.M., giving him a window of opportunity of some five hours.​

There is some debate about how actively Schwieger was searching for the Lusitania, as he did not survive the war, and the German government attempted to downplay the extent to which the ship had been specifically targeted, due to the international condemnation of the sinking. But the fact remains that if Turner had not reduced speed when he did, he would not have encountered U-20.
 
SpitfireIX said:
From Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston, p. 178:

In fact, Turner had another reason for reducing speed, apart from the fog. He was planning to steam through the final stretch of the Irish Sea in darkness, timing his arrival at the Mersey bar to catch the tide in the early hours. He then intended to sail straight over the bar without waiting for a pilot, to avoid delaying in waters known to be infested with submarines. High tide at the Mersey bar was 6:53 A.M., giving him a window of opportunity of some five hours.​

There is some debate about how actively Schwieger was searching for the Lusitania, as he did not survive the war, and the German government attempted to downplay the extent to which the ship had been specifically targeted, due to the international condemnation of the sinking. But the fact remains that if Turner had not reduced speed when he did, he would not have encountered U-20.
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He may still have encountered the U-boat though. If he had arrived off the tide there would have been delay anyway due to the tide, which was the point of the original post.
 
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SpitfireIX said:
From Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston, p. 178:

In fact, Turner had another reason for reducing speed, apart from the fog. He was planning to steam through the final stretch of the Irish Sea in darkness, timing his arrival at the Mersey bar to catch the tide in the early hours. He then intended to sail straight over the bar without waiting for a pilot, to avoid delaying in waters known to be infested with submarines. High tide at the Mersey bar was 6:53 A.M., giving him a window of opportunity of some five hours.​

There is some debate about how actively Schwieger was searching for the Lusitania, as he did not survive the war, and the German government attempted to downplay the extent to which the ship had been specifically targeted, due to the international condemnation of the sinking. But the fact remains that if Turner had not reduced speed when he did, he would not have encountered U-20.
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Well, not to take the thread into murky waters.....(pun intended)....but:

Turner was somewhat caught between a rock and a hard place. Either he'd have had to dawdle close to the Mersey Bar (which was an obvious targeting point for German submarines, since by definition every ship departing or arriving Liverpool has to negotiate that relatively narrow passage), or - as he did do - he'd have had to dawdle when passing round the South coast of Ireland (which was also a U-Boot hotspot, since most ships on the Liverpool - US East coast routes elected to sail quite tight to the coast: it was optimal from a shortest-route perspective, and it also meant that you could close off at least some of the threat because it it was unlikely to come from the coast side).

I think Turner's big mistake - knowing the tide limitations in Liverpool, and knowing the prevailing weather and his probable sailing timings - was that he didn't slow down well before he reached Ireland. He'd have been far harder to find in the open North Atlantic 200nm or so from Ireland. Then he could have sped straight round the bottom of Ireland, straight across the Irish Sea, over the Mersey Bar and into Liverpool.

But anyhoo.........


(And JayUtah's point still stands, obviously: Turner played a (partially unwitting) role in the demise of the Lusitania, because he enabled the Germans to predict where he was likely to be and when (the Germans also knew the times of the favourable tides of course). He placed his ship in danger as a result, just as the captains of the Estonia placed their ship in danger by sailing too fast, at around a 30-degree inclination to an oncoming high swell.)
 
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