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

[Andy_Ross]

The ECR was on the aft port side. The Estonia was stricken on the starboard side.

What does that have to do with it? the control room could be anywhere. The engine room and machinery space occupies a large portion of the lower deck. If it flooded it would be enough to take the ship down.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Different witness statements claim that AB watchman Linde was told by a bridge officer to notify the lady at reception on Deck 5 to issue an alarm. Linde claims he merely went there to ask her to open the car deck doors.


You decide which version is probably the true one.

I note the significant absence of the word "fire" from your response. There was no fire alarm. There was no reason to activate a fire suppressing sprinkler system. The water Sillaste saw pouring in on both sides of the ramp to its full height was indeed water coming from the other side of the ramp and not from a sprinkler system inside the car deck. It also helpfully indicates both the high water level on the outside of the ramp at the time he saw it and that there was not a good seal around the ramp.

Perhaps someone can tell me: Was the ramp designed to be watertight when closed? Clearly the bow visor was intended to be sealed but was the ramp a secondary seal or not?

 

[Andy_Ross]

I note the significant absence of the word "fire" from your response. There was no fire alarm. There was no reason to activate a fire suppressing sprinkler system. The water Sillaste saw pouring in on both sides of the ramp to its full height was indeed water coming from the other side of the ramp and not from a sprinkler system inside the car deck. It also helpfully indicates both the high water level on the outside of the ramp at the time he saw it and that there was not a good seal around the ramp.

Perhaps someone can tell me: Was the ramp designed to be watertight when closed? Clearly the bow visor was intended to be sealed but was the ramp a secondary seal or not?

It is addressed in chapters 15 which is just about the ramp and visor attachment strength and design https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt15.html

and Chapter 18 which is about the ramp requirement to be a Collision Bulkhead. https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt18.html

On the Estonia the ramp did not meet the requirements for SOLAS regulations regarding collision bulkheads. Sweden and Finland had domestic legislation in place and an inspection regime that allowed none compliance.

In short, it should have been watertight, at the time of the sinking it wasn't and it didn't meet the requirements laid down in legislation anyway.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

How can some guy somewhere on the ship, not even on the bridge with no view of the navigation panels and controls, possibly know the cause of the disaster?

Once again you appear to be confusing an eyewitness with an expert witness. The recollections of an eyewitness are not claims to have expert insight into the cause of the disaster. This is a simple concept.

It's ironic how you have turned, in this interminable thread, from initially scolding others for disrespecting the reported claims of survivors to casting doubt on them yourself.

 

[junkshop]

Heh. I saw that on a German youtube news clip and immediately thought of you and your 'window smashing on a ferry'.


BTW that ferry in Hamburg was a river ferry and merely a local passenger ferry, rather like the horrid 'Uberboats' now commuting between Greenwich and Woolwich on the Thames (although I feel sure those have got reinforced windows).

Source? Citation? Proper reference? IMV?

...

 

[Vixen]

Why do you use the EFD as the source for the witness statements rather than the actual report itself?

The JAIC is the default template to compare and contrast against.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If AB Seaman Linde felt a thrust that almost made him fall to the car deck floor, as a heavy pitch hit the bow, and he then made his way to the bridge, he reckons circa 1245-ish, why would he be told to request a Mr Skylight alarm before the bow visor supposedly fell off at 0115, before any mass ingress of water could have happened?

That depends on how you define a "mass ingress". Why do you assume the visor had to detach entirely before a dangerous amount of water could come in around the ramp?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Simultaneoulsy once the Atlantic lock supposedly broke off. The contraption had three locks, two actuator arms and the car ramp six to eight locks, hinges, bolts, bushings, etc: all of which either deformed or broke off 'all at once', according to the JAIC report.

No. It's long past time you actually read the report and began describing what it says with a modicum of accuracy.

This ain't it.

 

[Vixen]

That depends on how you define a "mass ingress". Why do you assume the visor had to detach entirely before a dangerous amount of water could come in around the ramp?

Its detachment was supposedly what brought the car ramp down as they shared the same casing.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It is addressed in chapters 15 which is just about the ramp and visor attachment strength and design https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt15.html

and Chapter 18 which is about the ramp requirement to be a Collision Bulkhead. https://onse.fi/estonia/chapt18.html

On the Estonia the ramp did not meet the requirements for SOLAS regulations regarding collision bulkheads. Sweden and Finland had domestic legislation in place and an inspection regime that allowed none compliance.

In short, it should have been watertight, at the time of the sinking it wasn't and it didn't meet the requirements laid down in legislation anyway.

Right, thanks. So the ramp, if undamaged, should have been watertight. In other words even if there was water on the outside of it, there might at worst have been water seeping (sic) through the seal rather than fountaining out from both sides as Sillaste described.

 

[Marras]

Citation please of where it says Piht drowned in the accident.

How about you give a citation that JAIC had an access to Piht's testimony?

Piht was on ship. Piht is not in the official survivor list. He didn't survive.

The reports of being seeing him on the news are explained by the clip that I dug out from youtube that completely matches with what Piht's wife told Moik told her: people walking from abulance to hospital while wearing grey blankets on their shoulders.

The first person in the clip looks vaguely like Piht: similar body shape and similar hair color. The people who thought they saw Piht saw that guy and mistook him for the captain.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Its detachment was supposedly what brought the car ramp down as they shared the same casing.

Whereas, before that moment, its breaking loose and hanging from the top of the ramp while being repeatedly slammed by the waves is what began to bend and break the ramp and its locks.

As you certainly know already. I mean, you have at least read this thread if not the report. (Says the guy who couldn't remember if he'd read that the ramp was supposed to be watertight. Yeah, I do irony too sometimes.)

 

[Andy_Ross]

Once again you appear to be confusing an eyewitness with an expert witness. The recollections of an eyewitness are not claims to have expert insight into the cause of the disaster. This is a simple concept.

It's ironic how you have turned, in this interminable thread, from initially scolding others for disrespecting the reported claims of survivors to casting doubt on them yourself.

Vixen has done that from the start with witness accounts that go against her conspiracy.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The JAIC is the default template to compare and contrast against.

If you are going to use material from the report why don't you use the actual report rather than a conspiracy web site?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Right, thanks. So the ramp, if undamaged, should have been watertight. In other words even if there was water on the outside of it, there might at worst have been water seeping (sic) through the seal rather than fountaining out from both sides as Sillaste described.

There shouldn't have been any water coming past it if it was in good condition. It didn't however meet the requirements to be considered a proper collision bulkhead.

 

[JayUtah]

I never claimed any special expertise.

Then stop trying to be the teacher.

The numbers required for calculating the Estonia's metacentric height and its righting leverage are very simple. Just follow the formulae!

No, you've just seen a simplification of the problem and, having done that, presume you can teach others. When you tried to restate that "very simple" solution in your own words, you stumbled over basic concepts like lines and points. And when I asked you to extend your "knowledge" to a condition not covered in the simplification, you simply ignored it.

Not only are you not an expert in ship stability, you're not even a competent student.

Why people try to pretend that 'oh, the Estonia accident is far too difficult for the ordinary person to understand' strikes me as pure intellectual snobbery, when it should be easy enough to explain it to the public in simple layman terms.

No. The world does not suddenly become simple just because it would be convenient for you if it were so.

The need to publish hundreds of pages of calculations and bow visor sepcifications, together with wave impact diagrams, is simply a form of browbeating.

No, it's a proper engineering rationale for the conclusion drawn, written by engineers for other engineers. How many times do you have to be reminded that you are not expert or competent in the various fields that you pretend to instruct others in, and that you criticize in ignorance?

 

[JayUtah]

Logical fallacy #1001 ridicule.

Ridicule is not a logical fallacy.

 

[JayUtah]

Simultaneoulsy once the Atlantic lock supposedly broke off. The contraption had three locks, two actuator arms and the car ramp six to eight locks, hinges, bolts, bushings, etc: all of which either deformed or broke off 'all at once', according to the JAIC report.

No, that's not how any failure sequence works. You have a habit of reading things into the JAIC report that are simply not there.

 

[JayUtah]

The JAIC version of rate of water and volume of same ingression is now considered to be incorrect, as commissioned via VINNOVA.

I addressed this at length the last time you brought it up. What was my answer?

 

[Marras]

I never claimed any special expertise. However, I know how frightened people are of numbers and scary-looking formulae, and that is fine by me as I have made a good living dealing with people's number fears by doing it for them.

You may not have claimed expertise, but you have implied competence. And you don't have that, as evidenced by your hanging paper analogy.

I'm not afraid of numbers. However, I have done enough mathematical modeling (though in areas that are not related to physics) that I realize that I need to understand how a model works before I can get usable data out of it. Each model has the area where it can be applied and if you try to use it outside it, you'll get wrong answers. If you treat models as black boxes you get a garbage in - garbage out situation.

I have studied enough mathematics to know that I could study ship stability to be able to give useful comments about that if I wanted to do it. But I'm not interested enough to spend the effort. It's been over 20 years since I last solved a differential equation and I don't want to spend the time to relearn doing that, it took enough hours the first time.

So, I freely admit that I'm not competent enough on ship stability to comment on JAIC findings.

The numbers required for calculating the Estonia's metacentric height and its righting leverage are very simple. Just follow the formulae!

And if you just plug the numbers in the simplest formula while ignoring the effect of water coming in, you'll get garbage out.

Why people try to pretend that 'oh, the Estonia accident is far too difficult for the ordinary person to understand' strikes me as pure intellectual snobbery, when it should be easy enough to explain it to the public in simple layman terms.

It is easy to explain in pure layman terms, that has been done many times in this thread. However, people like you don't believe it. And when it's demonstrated that physics agrees with the layman terms, that's snobbery and browbeating.

The need to publish hundreds of pages of calculations and bow visor sepcifications, together with wave impact diagrams, is simply a form of browbeating.

Yup. They shouldn't have used mathematics and physics to show that the scenario that they propose in the report is possible. They should have concluded that Estonia sunk because Russian smugglers opened the bow gate and visor while KGB blew the visor off and a Russian submarine torpedoed the ship that just hit a WWII mine and a Swedish submarine at the same time.