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

[JayUtah]

Your claim that Captain Esa Mäkelä, of the Ship in Command HM Silja, on scene at the Estonia accident was a no-nothing was mean spirited and betrayed an unwarranted contempt towards someone who was a master of his craft. In Finland, to be a captain, you DO need to know about ship architecture and in fact every aspect of the ship.

I did not call Mäkelä a crackpot. Anders Björkman is the crackpot you keep relying upon for the claim that it is a scientific certainty that any ship that passes its critical roll angle must then inevitably turn turtle.

Yes, ship captains understand shipbuilding, but not ship sinking. That's the purview of us forensic engineers who develop and use the flooding models to determine, based on observations, what happened in an accident. I'm not surprised that Capt. Mäkelä was surprised to see MS Estonia as he did. He did not investigate the accident, collect data, or in any other way inform himself of the factors that would have enabled him to give a better informed opinion. It was a knee-jerk judgment, and we take it as such. The problem is that you are trying to hold this out as an inviolable expert opinion of what should have happened. I, not you, am the one being charitable to the captain.

 

[Vixen]

This doesn't even come close to answering my question. You present a model of stability that introduced a righting moment. If your model is what governed the orientation of the Costa Concordia during the 40 minutes when it was floating free in the water, please explain why the righting moment did not manifest itself. You claim to be competent in the physics of ship stability. Put up or shut up.

Here is what wikipedia says about the Costa Concordia:

On 13 January 2012 at 21:45, Costa Concordia struck a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the eastern shore of Isola del Giglio. This tore open a 50 m (160 ft) gash on the port side of her hull, which soon flooded parts of the engine room, cutting power from the engines and ship services. As water flooded in and the ship listed, she drifted back towards the island and grounded near shore, then rolled onto her starboard side, lying in an unsteady position on a rocky underwater ledge.

A poster said, what about the Costa Concordia? It floated on its side didn't it?

As you know, in the case of Costa Concordia, it was a straightforward case of the hull being breached by a rock - hence flooding the engine room - and ending up beached.

No mystery there at all.

In the case of the Estonia the JAIC said the hull was intact. The speed of sinking was 'guessed' at by computer modelling along the lines of IF X m³ of seawater cascaded into the car deck at X m/s then this might have caused all the windows on one side to smash because obvs more water than that would be needed to capsize and sink it...

However, if the hull WAS breached, that puts a different complexion on the whole matter.

 

[Vixen]

You're asking pointed questions from a position of ignorance. You're not simply curious. You don't have any actual interest in where evidence leads.



You are not qualified to conduct such an investigation, nor qualified to determine whether any prior or current investigation has been done properly.

You fancy yourself to be some kind of armchair detective, highly skilled at holding powerful interests accountable. But you do not have the proper skills or understanding. You're just blowing smoke. You're co-opting conspiracy theories to compensate for your ignorance and pretending no one notices.

You are projecting again. I have never said I fancy [my]self to be some kind of armchair detective, highly skilled at holding powerful interests accountable.

 

[GlennB]

Bjorkman has a masters in ship architecture. You might hate his guts but he does understand the workings of a passenger ferry and how it is constructed.

Björkman claims that nuclear explosions are impossible (among many other lunatic ideas). It's really best if you don't look to him to support any argument you might make.

Oh, and who says he has this "Masters"? Björkman?

 

[Vixen]

He is not your source.



I call people crackpots who exhibit clearly crackpot behavior.



Björkman is an obvious crackpot. He was fired from his job for claiming qualifications he does not have.

You claim you're qualified enough to know that Björkman's claims regarding MS Estonia are valid engineering. Yet you can't answer even the simplest questions regarding the pertinent science.



A Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.

A new poster has arrived in this thread, and you launched into all your previously discussed and debunked topics as if the previous 400 pages had not taken place.



Straw man. I do not oppose further or ongoing investigations into any engineering accident. In fact, I enjoy participating in as many as are offered to me. However, your premise for bringing this up is your belief that the original investigation should be disregarded because it was part of a conspiracy to cover up the "real" cause of the Estonia accident. You have demonstrated that you don't know what you're talking about when attempting to defend those claims of conspiracy.

Roger Ramjets seemed to be under the impression that this thread is about some obscure abstract philosophical issue, such as does God exist, or is there such a thing as the paranormal. I simply explained to him that it is a straightforward current news item that does not require belief or disbelief in whether there is a reinvestigation of the Estonia accident going on. You might not like that I am interested in this issue, being local news to me, but there is nothing I can do about your apparent insecurity about my being interested in this subject.

 

[Vixen]

Your claims have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked over the previous several hundred pages of this thread. It has changed neither your claims nor the methods you use to attempt to support them. You lack the skill and understanding to support your claims, and the willingness to learn about them.

No, they have not been debunked as the reinvestigation is still ongoing.

 

[Vixen]

Perhaps I missed the post where such a declaration was made. Without such reference this is just another Straw Man.





Yes, the conspiracy promotors' crutch for their own lack of pertinent evidence. It is still a Straw Man, as no competent expert complains about being asked a serious question. The noted Straw Man is used as an attempt to deflect from the FACT that those legitimate questions ARE answered. So, when those who pose them either don't like or understand the valid answers, and have no justifiable response, they resort to that logical fallacy.





Agreed. Anyone can make a claim about anything. As previously discussed, providing genuine evidence to corroborate that claim, and others regarding a matter of physics, is the crucial ingredient missing in Vixen's boasts.

See the post I was answering. Axxman said in the case of the Titanic there were witnesses to the fact it hit an iceberg. That is what I was referring to when I said Estonia, too, had witnesses.

 

[Steve]

You are projecting again. I have never said I fancy [my]self to be some kind of armchair detective, highly skilled at holding powerful interests accountable.

Why do you persist in denying statements or claims that no one here has made?

But I agree that you certainly do not have those capabilities.

 

[JayUtah]

You are projecting again. I have never said I fancy [my]self to be some kind of armchair detective, highly skilled at holding powerful interests accountable.

I didn’t say you said it. It’s a conclusion I drew about you from observing your behavior in this forum.

 

[MBDK]

See the post I was answering. Axxman said in the case of the Titanic there were witnesses to the fact it hit an iceberg. That is what I was referring to when I said Estonia, too, had witnesses.

This is an example of your inability to comprehend a logical process and coherent sequencing of argument. Axxman300's point being the witnesses viewed the definitive initiating cause of the disaster. As far as has been evidenced, no one witnessed that regarding the Estonia, so your comment is irrelevantly out-of-context to the point.

 

[JayUtah]

Roger Ramjets seemed to be under the impression that this thread is about some obscure abstract philosophical issue, such as does God exist, or is there such a thing as the paranormal.

Quite the opposite. He is drawing a correct distinction between lingering questions that might intrigue a new generation of engineers or ship operations, and the crazy ideas you've been proposing. Many of your conspiracy theories are absurd on their face and do not hold interest for legitimate investigators.

I simply explained to him that it is a straightforward current news item that does not require belief or disbelief in whether there is a reinvestigation of the Estonia accident going on.

The news items you straw-man are straightforward. The wacky conspiracy theories you've spent the bulk of this thread trying to defend are not. They are laughably incompetent, and you are not competent to defend them. Those were what Rojer Ramjet was clearly pointing to.

You might not like that I am interested in this issue, being local news to me, but there is nothing I can do about your apparent insecurity about my being interested in this subject.

Exactly how am I "insecure?" You're spouting nonsense in a skeptics forum, some of whose regulars happen to be professionally qualified in the fields that pertain to your claims. Pointing out the idiocy in your claims (including your insinuations of expertise) is the height of security for me. I know you're wrong. You're in my world now, and you're wearing clown shoes.

 

[JayUtah]

No, they have not been debunked as the reinvestigation is still ongoing.

Again you're conflating the legitimate interest in further understanding of the accident with the wacky conspiracy theories that occupy the vast bulk of your effort at this forum. Your conspiracy theories have been thoroughly debunked.

As for the legitimate investigation :— The new investigation is content that it has discovered the root cause of the hole Evertsson saw, and it's the explanation that was initially the most likely and straightforward. And we probably could have saved ourselves the trouble had Evertsson not withheld important information. No, it wasn't a stealth submarine or a spy fishing trawler.

The new investigation has found that the ship was not sufficiently built or maintained for sailing in heavy open-ocean sea conditions. This is what we experienced engineers have always believed. No magic explosives to blow off the visor. No waste cesium to melt the ramp.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Vixen, why are you continuing to lie about what others are saying? Why must you persist in building strawmen?

Why are you attempting to use the noted lunatic, fraud and fantasist Anders Bjorkman as a source again? Don't you remember that those with experience both with him and with the things he is claiming expertise in ripped him apart?

Are you genuinely forgetting that this conversation can be looked up to demonstrate that you're lying about what others have said or are you just hoping no one will notice?

 

[Axxman300]

AIUI the Concordia wasn't out at open sea and the captain abandoned ship. From what I recall, had it been out at open sea, it would have been a massive disaster.

Had it been in deeper water, the Concordia wouldn't have hit the rocks.

Reminds me the Oakland Raider, who witnessed an airport pickup truck bump into one of the team plane's engine, and uttered the infamous words, "Good thing we weren't in the air when that truck hit us."

 

[Vixen]

Had it been in deeper water, the Concordia wouldn't have hit the rocks.

Reminds me the Oakland Raider, who witnessed an airport pickup truck bump into one of the team plane's engine, and uttered the infamous words, "Good thing we weren't in the air when that truck hit us."

Touché.

 

[JayUtah]

As you know, in the case of Costa Concordia, it was a straightforward case of the hull being breached by a rock - hence flooding the engine room - and ending up beached.

Correct. The ultimate problem was that there was water where there wasn't supposed to be water. In terms of buoyancy, that's why any ship sinks. In terms of stability, that's why there's no righting moment. The center of gravity is no longer fixed; it changes depending on flooding. And it changes in a way that the righting moment is nulled in different orientations, not just when the ship is visibly upright. This is why we throw out the intact-hull model as soon as flooding enters the picture.

And this is why Björkman's claims don't hold water, so to speak. The claim that a ship must turn turtle once it rolls past a critical angle is based on the observation that the righting moment reverses. That doesn't occur when the righting moment has been nulled by a shifting center of gravity due to flooding. And there are other reasons, but you've resisted every effort I've made to help you learn them.

It wasn't the hole in the hull that doomed Costa Concordia. It was all that water being where it's not supposed to be. The hole was merely the medium of trespass. It's flooding that matters, not the circumstances of how flooding occurred. That's why we can cut holes in ship hulls when they're in dry dock. The hole per se is not dangerous. Water ingress is per se dangerous.

In the case of the Estonia the JAIC said the hull was intact.
[...]
However, if the hull WAS breached, that puts a different complexion on the whole matter.

No. Breaching the hull is not a requirement—if by that you mean a hole below the waterline. It's the flooding that alters the ship stability equation, not the circumstances that caused the ship to flood. You may remember the USS Lafayette, formerly the ocean liner SS Normandie. Her hull was completely intact too, but that didn't stop all the water from the firehoses trying to put out her fire from creating a heeling moment. There have even been cases of ships developing an unresisted heeling moment simply due to heavy rainfall. The question is not whether there's a hole in the hull. The question is whether flooding is a significant term in the center-of-gravity reckoning.

The JAIC is correct to say MS Estonia's hull was intact. It was, until it slammed into the sea floor. There were no holes below the nominal waterline. That doesn't mean it hadn't taken on significant amounts of water, and that this rampant and increasing flooding wasn't dominating the stability calculation. It doesn't matter whether the water gets in through the stairwells and downpipes, through a hole in the hull, or through a missing bow section. It's the presence of the water that matters, not the flooding mechanism.

 

[JayUtah]

Had it been in deeper water, the Concordia wouldn't have hit the rocks.

But we can only speculate what would have happened had the ship not fetched up again. What we do know is that for 40 minutes the ship was in a stable starboard list of roughly 20º.

Vixen has inched (that's ″, not ′) closer to the proposition that it's the water inside the hull that alters the ship's dynamic stability in that case, often such that no righting moment occurs. And if there's no righting moment, then it can't reverse. That means the insistence that the ship should inevitably have turned turtle is not valid physics.

She's still stuck on the notion that water that comes in through a hole in the hull somehow has different mass properties than water coming in through an open bow visor or through stairwells and downpipes. But since she argues that the laws of gravity somehow behave differently underwater, maybe this all makes sense somehow in her head.

As far as roll stability goes, it doesn't matter whether there's 50 meters or 5,000 meters of water underneath you. For those 40 minutes, Costa Concordia wasn't governed by the misplaced physics that Björkman and Vixen are using to set their expectations for MS Estonia, nor the physics of a grounded vessel. She was floating free and clear, subject only to gravity (including that acting on the water in her hull), wave action, and the buoyant geometry of her submerged bits. She neither righted itself nor turned turtle; the righting moment (operating either in forward or reverse) did not exist. Ditto MS Estonia.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Vixen, do you believe that gravity operates differently underwater?

 

[Axxman300]

According to BBC News 17 May re the intricate scans, what exactly happened to the Titanic has not been finalised.

Bad news, they've had a good idea of what happened to Titanic since the summer on 1912. What these fantastic scans give us is a clear image of the wreck, and hopefully the debris field for the first time in it's entirety. There are commercial dive operations every summer on Titanic, the wreck has been under yearly observation since the Cameron movie.

What these cans will never show is the precise damage from the iceberg. That part of the hull is under 30 to 60 feet of mud, and well out of view.

It is all very well your reprimanding a dead man for going too fast but that falls into the area of speculation. Why was he going too fast? What was the hurry?

I recommend reading a hardback book once in a while. Or you can wander into any of the dozens of Titanic messageboards on the internet.

There is no speculation. The conversation between Ismay and Smith was overheard. White Star wanted to set a record. And when you look at the pictures taken the next day by and of Carpathia, you can see all the ice floating in the area. The hows and whys of the sinking are technical exercises, and are relevant to engineers, and marine safety experts, and ners like me. But they don't alter the fact that Titanic struck an iceberg and sank.

There were 137 survivors of the Estonia, a large number of them crew. Almost one half of the survivors said they heard a bang, a couple of bangs, judders or both BEFORE the violent list to starboard, after which the vessel righted itself momentarily, allowing a frantic ten-minute interval during which people raced to the safety of the upper decks. These are independent witness testimonies as taken down by the police immediately after their rescue. A couple of witnesses in the lower deck in the hull, beneath the car deck saw water rising from below, not trickling down from above. A coupke of independent witnesses saw military vehicles loading at the last minute, delaying departure by ten to fifteen minutes.

And?

In my previous post I contrasted the testimonies of the Titanic and Estonia survivors. Had you bothered to read it, you understand my point that the Titanic survivors were mixed on weather the ship broke in two, something not confirmed until 1985. I pointed out that the Titanic passengers knew the ship was sinking, and watched the boat go down from lifeboats in a flat calm sea. The contrast between their experience and that of the Estonia is stark. Estonia's passengers did not know the ship was in trouble until it began to list. They quickly found themselves in the water, in stormy seas, in freezing temperatures. The fact that the Titanic survivors saw different things under mostly an ideal situation should clue a reasonable person into how unreliable eye witness testimony in dire situations can be.

So it is not correct that there were no witnesses to the Estonia disaster.

Which I never said.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Every one of my assertions has been backed up with a reputable source.

Like Christopher Bollyn?