The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

[Steve]

Just to clarify, who is the "young pup" that you are claiming was "born in the 1990's", and on what basis are you making that claim?

Is it Andy_Ross, or is it MarkCorrigan?

When you are really old almost everyone is a "young pup".

 

[JayUtah]

I am neither for nor against Rabe.

You specifically endorsed her as a responsible journalist. However, when presented with examples of her journalistic incompetence, you offered favorable assumptions to attempt to salvage her credibility. Despite your claim of agnosticism, you rebuke others for expressing an unflattering opinion of her credibility. You clearly want her to be seen as a reputable source.

...but it is not to do with personality.

Correct. This has nothing to do with personality. You are presenting her as a competent journalist. You are unable to do more than speculate when presented with examples of her incompetence as a journalist.

I respect her going out and doing some shoe work.

Performative acts do not compensate for failing to corroborate key accusations.

Like many good investigative journalists, such as John Pilger, she was driven by the urge to find out more...

And you're still speculating in an effort to rehabilitate her. You have no idea what motivated her.

because we need people who do have the determination to look beyond newspeak...

I'm bringing decades of professional experience to the table, yet you don't seem the least interested.

...which the rest of us may not even find particularly interesting and to report back on what they experienced..

She didn't experience anything that supports her claim that the captain of MS Estonia was shot in the head. As nearly as we can tell, she just made that up. The sine qua non of good journalism is not to wear out shoe leather. It's that the journalist get the correct information from reliable sources by whatever means is appropriate. Rabe didn't do that, therefore it doesn't matter what ocean voyages she may have undertaken for lolz.

 

[JayUtah]

Just to clarify, who is the "young pup" that you are claiming was "born in the 1990's", and on what basis are you making that claim?

Is it Andy_Ross, or is it MarkCorrigan?

I was already a seasoned sailor by 1990.

 

[junkshop]

...So some young pup born in the 1990's reckons he's done more sailing than me. Gimme a break.

Just to clarify, who is the "young pup" that you are claiming was "born in the 1990's", and on what basis are you making that claim?

Is it Andy_Ross, or is it MarkCorrigan?

I am so very annoyed with myself. I missed the obvious, & (contextually, at least) better response. It starts "OK..."

 

[Andy_Ross]

Put it this way. My family has owned an island for as long as I can remember. It does not have a helicopter pad. It does not have an aeroplane runway, It does not have a ferry connection. It is too far out to swim to. Pause for a minute and ask yourself how we access it and how we spend long summer days in and around it. So some young pup born in the 1990's reckons he's done more sailing than me. Gimme a break.

Who was born in the 90s?

I'm 61.
I was aboard ships before I could walk and learned to sail a dinghy when I was about 5.
Not counting my professional career in the RN and my time in the South Atlantic, I have crewed and skippered sailing yachts across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean. I have sailed the North Sea, Channel, Irish Sea and Minches and Sea of Hebrides so often I almost don't need a chart.

My family have had sailing boats as long as I can remember and I am currently joint owner with my brother of a 37ft Moody.

If you want to compare experience or swap sailing stories I'm your man.

 

[Axxman300]

Maybe maybe not. IMV the JAIC is all guess work. They wondered what could have caused the accident and worked backwards.

Oh, please do explain how one should go about conducting an accident investigation without working backward.

Seems like you form a team of experts, some interview surviving crew and passengers, and some look through the relevant paperwork (maintenance logs, inspection reports, cargo and passenger manifests, etc). And in this case you get out to the wreck site to image the wreck with sonar, and DSRVs. Eventually they sent divers down to survey the ship, recover items from inside. And they pulled up the bow visor.

I will also point out that sending divers down into the wreck is dangerous. Thanks to conspiracy nutjobs, they sent more divers down into the wreck. For pretty much no reason.

Thanks to conspiracy loons divers were put into danger to chase a ghost story. Shame on them.

Must have been a storm. Must have been a strong wave that knocked off the bow visor.

It was both. Definitively both. No explosives, no submarines.

Windows on deck four must have smashed because otherwise the water on the car deck would not have been enough to capsize it, etc.,etc.

It only took 18 inches of water to make the ship unstable, and capsize. There is no disputing this fact.

It's the would-could-should-might syndrome all over again. Must have been a fault in the design.

That's what the report said, and the new one will emphasize. Estonia should never have sailed into that storm. Period.

That might be reasonable except the shipbuilders strongly deny it. As you might claim of course they did but Meyer Werft have enough insurance cover and massive reserves on the Balance Sheet to just settle out of court and have done with it. But they did not.

Weird, so you're saying the people who designed and built a ship for river and near-shore transit refuse to accept liability for signing off on their product for use in open ocean. Wonder why they'd be touchy about that.

So let's see both sides of the argument.

No argument, only facts. The ship was never designed to sail in that storm, and the weakest part of it's design led to it sinking. That's it. That's the story. The long list of changes in maritime safety after the disaster underlines the truth in the matter.

 

[JayUtah]

Oh, please do explain how one should go about conducting an accident investigation without working backward.

Specifically, you form hypotheses and test them. You can almost never prove them, but you can frequently conclusively eliminate some of them. Then you soberly evaluate the inductive leaps of the remaining ones and make a choice if you can.

Hypotheses have prior probabilities, regardless of the ignorant beliefs of some in this thread that the only valid investigation would start with a clean sheet of paper and a blindfold. In this case, engineers and operators were already quite familiar with the problems in bow-visor ro-ro ferries and the symptomology of their foundering. It makes sense for that to be the lead hypothesis for MS Estonia. It would be irresponsible to ignore prior probabilities where (as you note) there is considerable cost and risk to obtaining and developing evidence.

What Vixen gets wrong is the notion that this is equivalent to starting with a predetermined conclusion and filtering the data according to how well it supports such a conclusion. As JAIC and subsequent investigations noted, there was a substantial hypothesis set in addition to the lead hypothesis. The competing hypotheses were falsified as far as possible with evidence. The lead hypothesis, however, was not falsified. It's not some gross miscarriage of justice when the macro picture of evidence favors the hypothesis with the greatest prior probability. That's kind of where prior probabilities come from.

How it might have turned out differently is if there had been data to falsify the bow-visor hypothesis. For example, if the bow visor had been found on the wreck fully attached and in good condition, that would tend to falsify the bow-visor hypothesis. Finding irrelevant evidence (e.g., post-wreck holes in the hull) doesn't doom the lead hypothesis. You need falsifying evidence. And there isn't any to falsify the bow-visor hypothesis. Outlier evidence apparently favoring other hypotheses (i.e., rumors that the captain was shot in the head or that the USSR might have been smuggling cesium isotopes) doesn't become dispositive or falsificatory of another simply because the other hypothesis is more exciting than the prosaic one.

The problem here, however, is Vixen simply up and deciding from her Armchair of Ignorance that she knows so much better than professionals what the epistemology of investigation should look like. It's arrogant, rude, and self-serving.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Put it this way. My family has owned an island for as long as I can remember. It does not have a helicopter pad. It does not have an aeroplane runway, It does not have a ferry connection. It is too far out to swim to. Pause for a minute and ask yourself how we access it and how we spend long summer days in and around it. So some young pup born in the 1990's reckons he's done more sailing than me. Gimme a break.

Who are you talking about here?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Who are you talking about here?

Swallows and Amazons?

 

[Steve]

Who are you talking about here?

Herself, it appears. Surprised?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Swallows and Amazons?

African or European amazons?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

African or European amazons?

Not sure, I'd have to see their coconuts.

 

[junkshop]

Come on now, people. This is a very serious and sober social issue and / or current event (that is temporarily residing in the conspiracy theory subforum for administrative purposes).

This is no place for silliness. In this thread we discuss entirely non-silly things, including (but not limited to);

Submarines with tracks

Radioactive contraband melting hinges

The extraordinary rendition of the very ordinary crew of a ferry, for reasons opaque, by forces unspecified

And so on and so forth forever, and ever, and ever...

As I said, this is no place for silliness. Stop that.

 

[The Common Potato]

This is important:

 

[The Common Potato]

Right, back to the second part of this mega-thread.

 

[junkshop]

This is important:

Now thats more like it, an entirely non-silly and well reasoned argument. Not only that, but it is very current, as is this event..

Thank you.

 

[catsmate]

I am entirely objective and have an open mind. I have not yet had an answer to my questions about this case.

Bollocks. You repeatedly cite cranks and debunked nonsense and ignore demonstrated facts that contradict your dogma.

We are talking about Captain Arvo Andresson.

I note, with absolutely no surprise, that you refuse to address the actual post.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Bollocks. You repeatedly cite cranks and debunked nonsense and ignore demonstrated facts that contradict your dogma.
.

Thanks for quoting, otherwise I'd have missed that comedy gold.

 

[Mojo]

I am entirely objective and have an open mind.

Only in the sense that it often appears that your brain has fallen out. Not open enough to accept anything that rebuts your conspiracy theories.

 

[Myriad]

Luck...? Whilst it is useful to understand the general reasons for accidents, reading the above, anyone would think the sudden drowning of up to a thousand people within half an hour was an everyday occurence.

Quite the contrary. Most vessels are not operated in waters they weren't designed to negotiate. Few people (and fewer sane ones) would attempt to paddle a rubber raft around Cape Horn, or steam a Carnival Cruise ship down a class 4 rapids. The pontoon party boats on the lake a mile north of me are never seen in the salt-water bay a mile south from me. The center-console sport-fishers popular on that bay are never seen on the shallow lake. The most capable Mississippi Riverboat would be at high risk steaming between Caribbean Islands, but the most seaworthy ocean ferry wouldn't do very well on the Mississippi either.

Most vessels are not operated in all weather conditions. This is mostly true for pleasure craft (most of those, here in New England, are in storage all winter, for instance) but commercial ships have limitations too. Even a year-round fishing vessel will put into port for a nor'easter, and even the biggest cargo ships will divert around a hurricane. This is especially true when that first factor is in play, i.e. the vessel is less than ideal for the marine environment. When Harbo and Samuelsen rowed the skiff Fox across the Atlantic Ocean in 1896, it was in summertime. (And even so, they ran into a storm and capsized, and barely survived.)

I can't say for certain that most commercial vessels are well maintained. Many are, but many others aren't. As far as I can tell, that's an issue throughout the industry. But the investigation findings regarding the final operating conditions of Estonia, especially the bow mechanisms, show that it was unusually poorly maintained.

Most vessels do not steam with marginal trim (imbalance along the port-starboard axis) conditions. This is known to be extremely hazardous. A list, or a need to max out the trim adjustment system to avoid a list, means the vessel is already on the verge of capsizing. Leaving port in that condition is like setting off in a plane with a known fuel leak ("but it's only a slow leak and the tank's full now").

Most commanders do recognize and take into account that the severity of the effects of wind and wave conditions on the ship depends on the vessel's course and speed. During the age of sail, surviving a storm sometimes required a ship to run downwind, even if that meant going hundreds of miles out of the way (and heaven forfend any lee shore in the path)! In extreme weather conditions even modern vessels must change course or slow down. The weather on the night of the sinking might not have been extreme for the Baltic Sea, but (remember that first factor?) was quite extreme compared to the operating conditions the hull was designed for. Very large Baltic Sea waves travel at about 40 knots, while Estonia steamed at about 20 knots. The bow-on impact would have therefore been about three times faster than a stern impact ((40+20)/(40-20)) and about nine times the kinetic energy compared to a following sea. (If the actual waves were a more ordinary size for the Baltic Sea, then they were also slower than 40 knots so the differential between bow and stern impacts at a 20 knot flank speed was even greater. For instance, ((30+20)/(30-20)) which is a fivefold difference in speed and 25-fold in kinetic energy.

Short of turning around, a 5-knot reduction in speed would have reduced the kinetic energy of the impacts considerably. If the waves were 40 knots, 16% less kinetic energy. If 30 knots, 19% less. The bow faring might have survived the crossing (most likely, to fail some other day if nothing else was done, but that's still a better scenario).

Most ships do have vigilant crews, at least in adverse conditions. Self-preservation is a common concern. The seeming indifference to same among the Estonia crew is to me the single strangest aspect of the disaster.

We do not expect such sinkings every day because like I said, the key here is the accumulation of adverse factors (and, as JayUtah has been expertly pointing out, the concomitant erosion of safety factors). One ship might be in poor repair but operated cautiously. Another might be poorly designed but well maintained. Another might set an aggressive course in bad weather but the alert skipper and eager crew responds expertly to every anomaly and every potential hazard to keep the ship safe. All those ships will almost certainly survive. The problem with Estonia wasn't one thing going wrong, it was everything going (and being done) wrong at the same time.

And while not a daily occurrence, sinking of oceangoing vessels is more than a weekly occurrence, for the reasons JayUtah explained. Most don't drown 1000 people, of course, but that's for many reasons, including the fact that most oceangoing vessels don't carry 1000 people, and most that do have far better passenger safety systems than Estonia did.

[*]The Captain of nearby Silja Europa said the weather was normal for that time of year

So? Snow is normal this time of year in New England, but if you go out driving in it, and you don't take precautions like slowing down and using snow-capable tires, you'll more likely to end up in a ditch (or worse). What's normal doesn't matter, whether your equipment your usage of it are appropriate for the actual conditions does.

[*]The Captains of Viking Mariella (Thoresson) and Silja Europa (Makela) confirmed the three vessels were travelling more or less side by side to Stokholm as per normal

So? Were the other vessels designed to operate in those conditions? Were they in good repair? Did they have proper trim? Were their crews vigilant? If so, they were not subject to the same cumulative risks as Estonia was.

[*]Captains Thoresson and Makela confirm they could see each other.

So? What do their romantic lives have to do with conditions at sea?

[*]Neither of these Captains mention a 'strong wave' or any such 'super wave'

So? If your ship is weak, all waves are strong. It doesn't take a super wave to break fatigued metal. The specific wave that displaced the visor might not have been any larger or stronger than the ten or 100 previous waves. The straw that breaks the camel's back doesn't need to be heavier than the other straws.

[*]On approaching the stricken vessel, Capt Makela said he was shocked to not see any sign of it at all, as would be normal in a sinking ship.

Normal in a sinking ship? What's normal is for a ship not to sink, as you yourself pointed out earlier.

So ascribing sweeping generalisations into a specific case, where we know many of the details, just doesn't succeed in hand waving it away.

It's those details that tell us the ship wasn't designed for the open Baltic Sea, that it was in poor repair, that it was in poor trim, that it steamed at flank speed into the waves without altering course or slowing down, and that the officers and crew acted indifferent not only to the conditions but also to the early signs of things going lethally wrong.