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

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These two statements are not the same:*

It is generally accepted that a list of more than 60º degrees will cause a cruise ship to capsize completely...

real-world experience and naval architecture show that a cruise ship can roll to almost 60-degrees before it’s in danger of capsizing, and can ride out 50-foot seas without danger of sinking.

cruise arabia com




*Even when disregarding the incorrect notation in the first one.
 
It is your prerogative to believe that the car deck door/ramp swung open and shut like a barn door on a windy day whilst it sank. Perhaps ask yourself this question. How come people who accidently drive into a river or get swept away by sudden floods - as happens in US hurricanes or Japanese tsunamis - don't just simply open their car door and escape?

I'll leave it to you to find your own answer.


Well, most people aren't driving their cars sideways a long ways across waters where the forces of just that could collapse said door, not intended to be exposed thusly because there was a bow at one time, internally. Heck, why even need the bow door if the car ramp could endure the pounding seas?


I'll leave it to you figure out how your analogy just sucks.
 
Vixen said:
Is the issue of the Estonia closed as you claim?

Estonia's bow visor was already salvaged in 1994, not long after the disaster occurred. But the bow ramp, which was behind the visor, remains at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Discussions have been held as to whether the bow ramp should also be salvaged as it is considered an important piece of the puzzle in the sequence of events in the sinking. And now the government has added 25 million kroner following a request from the National Accident Commission to carry out the work.

Damage to the ramp
The dives are being procured, says Jonas Bäckstrand, and the idea is that they will take place during the early summer.

There is some damage to the ramp that they want to examine, among other things they have been able to see marks in the ramp in the shape of a triangle in photographs that correspond well with how it hit the front car deck.
aftonbladet

Now, one might wonder why you stopped quoting the article at exactly that point.

Lets also include the next couple of sentence in the same article, still quotes from Jonas Bäckstrand - the chair of the investigation.

Aftonbladet said:
– Det stärker hypotesen om hur förlisningen gått till. Sedan har den i övrigt slitits loss från sina förankringar, säger Bäckstrand.

Man har även kunnat se skador på låsanordningar till rampen. Rampen ligger lös vilket gör att den också är förhållandevis enkel att bärga.

Syftet med att ta upp den på land är att få en bättre överblick samt möjlighet att filma den del av skrovet som rampen nu täcker.

Det finns ingen anledning att tro att bärgningen skulle ge haverikommissionen en annan bild av händelseförloppet än den man tidigare slagit fast, enligt Bäckstrand. MS Estonia var inte sjövärdig, enligt en analys från haverikommissionerna i Sverige och Estland av faktauppgifter som finns i 1997 års JAIC-rapport.

My translation:

- It strengthens the hypothesis about how the sinking happened. Since then, it has also been torn free from where it was attached, says Bäckstrand.

It has also been possible to see damages to the locking devices for the ramp. The ramp is loose, which means that it is also relatively easy to salvage.

The purpose of taking it up on land is to get a better overview and the opportunity to film the part of the hull that the ramp now covers.

There is no reason to believe that the salvage would give the accident commission a different picture of the course of events than the one previously established, according to Bäckstrand. MS Estonia was not seaworthy, according to an analysis by the accident commissions in Sweden and Estonia of facts contained in the 1997 JAIC report.
 
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It is generally accepted that a list of more than 60º degrees will cause a cruise ship to capsize completely, so it is unlikely to have happened at 90 degrees when capsize was certain
No. I reject your made up rule. Do you remember admonishing us to respect what the survivors described?

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52923754082_1393d220cd_z.jpg[/qimg]



The two Estonians at the car ramp



As you can see, the car ramp door would need to be reasonably shut for it to be accessible to someone climbing down it.

As you can see, a list just past 90° would cause gravity to pull the unrestrained ramp closed.

Gravity would also operate 80 to 90 metres down on the sea bed. With the wreck lying on its side at an angle beyond 90 degrees the ramp would naturally hang in a closed position. Or "firmly" closed as you put it for some reason.
 
No. I reject your made up rule. Do you remember admonishing us to respect what the survivors described?



As you can see, a list just past 90° would cause gravity to pull the unrestrained ramp closed.

Gravity would also operate 80 to 90 metres down on the sea bed. With the wreck lying on its side at an angle beyond 90 degrees the ramp would naturally hang in a closed position. Or "firmly" closed as you put it for some reason.


What about negative gravity?
 
Now, one might wonder why you stopped quoting the article at exactly that point.

Lets also include the next couple of sentence in the same article, still quotes from Jonas Bäckstrand - the chair of the investigation.



My translation:

That is because it is against the rules to quote more than a couple of paragraphs.

Facts are all. It is good the ramp door is being salvaged.
 
Well, dearie me!

Weird beliefs of the general public


• When a vessel capsizes, it floats around on its side.

• A strong wave can cause a reinforced steel bow visor to just simply fall off.

• The bow visor falling off meant that the cast iron door of the car deck also opened.

• This opening was enough to cause instant flooding of the car deck and the ship to sink within thirty-five minutes.

• Notwithstanding the car deck ramp-style door opening to let in a huge torrent of water, it then shut all by itself, sufficiently enough to enable two Estonian athletes to climb down it. ‘I can’t see any contradiction here!’

• The ship capsized because the car deck was full of water yet at the same time the car ramp door was still shut whilst at 70 degrees list. ‘The water must have entered by osmosis.’

• Capsize being certain by laws of buoyancy, the Estonia didn’t capsize but sank immediately, stern first, to land on its side; ‘This is quite normal. I’ve never heard of a vessel turtling – it doesn’t happen! The Captain of the Commander Ship in Charge HM Silja doesn’t know what he is talking about when he said he was expecting to see the ship floating upside down’.

• The list, at 45 degrees, was enough for water to flood in via the car deck, and at the same time, smash all of the windows on the higher decks and enter the electrics and ventilators via the central corridor, as the seawater also managed to smash down the sealed locked car deck doors. ‘Who cares if Kurm’s photography tells a different story of these doors still being firmly shut!’

• The car ramp door, having swung open after the bow visor was hit by a wave, miraculously - at 70 degrees list - was again shut to enable two survivors to climb down it. ‘The door swung open and shut, there was no water pressure, but…erm…er…gravity… that is why.’

• The cast iron reinforced car ramp, once submerged, had the amazing ability to carry on swinging open and shut like a barn door in a gale.

• A passenger cruise ferry has little to no natural buoyancy, so of course, a little splash of water on an upper deck will cause it to immediately sink.

• A passenger ship with water entering the car deck above water level will suffer exactly the same fate as a ship struck by three torpedoes from a submarine and sink as quickly, just like MV Wilhelm Gustloff in WWII!

• You are not allowed to use primes to indicate time because ‘I just looked up Grammarly so there’.

• ‘Merriam-Webster says US rules of notation override British ones.’

• KANNAD406 Epirbs auto-activated ‘have to be switched on by the crew when the ship starts sinking’.

• If you jump into a swimming pool or other body of water in your normal clothes, you will immediately sink because clothes make you ultra-heavy. ‘Oh dear, I had no idea that clothes in water have no particular weight, actually! I must start a thread ridiculing this fact’.
 
Are you sure about that?

cruise arabia com

Wow. You found a non-technical article which aims to reassure potential cruise passengers that modern cruise ships, despite looking so tall they can't be stable, are not unsafe compared to older ocean liners. And you took its remark that these cruise ships can roll "to almost 60 degrees without risk of capsizing" as being a general rule for all ships, that rolling beyond a critical 60 degrees a ship will not stop but continue to roll over.

I not only reject your made up rule, I grab it firmly by the lapels so I can more emphatically laugh right in its stupid face.
 
It is your prerogative to believe that the car deck door/ramp swung open and shut like a barn door on a windy day whilst it sank. Perhaps ask yourself this question. How come people who accidently drive into a river or get swept away by sudden floods - as happens in US hurricanes or Japanese tsunamis - don't just simply open their car door and escape?

I'll leave it to you to find your own answer.


Odd. But odd is getting to be the norm with you. What in particular is odd regarding your post? Throughout ALL the pages and posts in this thread, I have never stated any position regarding the actual events that occurred when the Estonia sank, let alone indicated any belief one way or the other regarding the car door/ramp. In my last post, I merely agreed with the assessment that you are notoriously poor at your understanding of basic physics, and provided a terse factual elaboration as to why your quip regarding gravity is fundamentally incorrect. Why you chose to Straw Man my post in such an irrelevant manner as you did should concern you.
 
A damaged and 'trying to capsize' ship will float when in equilibrium, bouancy-wise. The air - which will bubble through the water above it - will be trapped at some stage - if the vessel is to remain 'not sunk'. It may totally turn-turtle - or it may not.
 
Odd. But odd is getting to be the norm with you. What in particular is odd regarding your post? Throughout ALL the pages and posts in this thread, I have never stated any position regarding the actual events that occurred when the Estonia sank, let alone indicated any belief one way or the other regarding the car door/ramp. In my last post, I merely agreed with the assessment that you are notoriously poor at your understanding of basic physics, and provided a terse factual elaboration as to why your quip regarding gravity is fundamentally incorrect. Why you chose to Straw Man my post in such an irrelevant manner as you did should concern you.

Do you not think it 'odd' that for someone who professes to be somewhat of a boffin that you should have raced to back up a poster who claimed that the cast iron ramp would have swung open and shut whilst sinking or sunk*? I would have thought objectivity should be sovereign for someone claiming to be a boff.

*The most likely reason the ramp door is now fully off is because early exploration underwater by various different groups over time wrenched the thing open, rather than banging open and shut of its own accord.
 
When the ramp is recovered, one thing it will be possible to establish without doubt is that the ramp is not a piece of cast iron.

I mean it's already perfectly obvious that like the rest of the ship it will be made of rolled steel plate, cut and welded. But since the "cast iron ramp" seems to be a theme for today's cavalcade of wrongness, it's bugged me enough to comment.
 
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