The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[Andy_Ross]

Does the ancillary stuff even matter? There is literally no evidence of a submarine.

A 1500 ton sub hitting the side of a ship like Estonia certainly wouldn't have made it stop in the water whatever one of the passengers claimed.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Not the same type of impact puncture as shown on the Estonia.

That is entirely the point. Your picture does not look like impact damage at all.

 

[Andy_Ross]

But was the bow missing? Eyewitness, Paul Barney saw it clearly as it went down.

How would Carl Bildt know it was missing within hours of the accident? Pure misinformation.

All the evidence shows the bow visor was the cause.

Did it fall off by coincidence just as the submarine rammed it or the russian spies blew a hole in the hull?

 

[Andy_Ross]

If it had a damaged ventilator, was it seaworthy in the first place? In addition, it was not a passenger ship it was:

wiki

In addition, it seems to have encountered sudden hurricane-like conditions, which possibly created a perilous whirl pool, causing huge waves to land down on top of it in its eye.

It wasn't damaged when it sailed.

It didn't encounter 'sudden hurricane-like conditions'
It had been weather routed to avoid the worst and had been hove-to for many hours to ride out the storm, it was what it was designed for.

WHat is your evidence for a 'perilous whirl pool'?


Is there any point in you asking for examples of ships sinking more quickly or in similar circumstances when you find a way to dismiss every example given?

 

[Andy_Ross]

So what? Is it really like-for-like? Collisions can cause any kind of damage. Just because one example of damage from collision doesn't look anything like that of HMS Diomede, doesn't mean anything. It all depends on the numerous vectors, such as speed, direction, force (as in weight), shape.

You are showing a 'bows on' impact, which is similar to a head-on car crash, and not at all the same as, say a submarine crashing from the bottom or the side. For example, a car being crashed head on will feature damage very different from one rammed as it is pulling out into oncoming traffic.

collision damage has certain characteristics though. The damage you show to the Estonia looks like a tearing fracture caused by stress on the shifting hull.

 

[Vixen]

For someone who claims no expertise of maritime matters and no training or expertise in forensic engineering, you rely an awful lot on your "expert" opinion of things like this. Your arrogance in the face of your admitted ignorance is truly astounding.

I've personally seen greater damage to ships just from ordinary hogging. You simply don't know what you're talking about.

Arguing from anecdote? That is the same kind of argument that runs, 'I know someone who smoked 40 cigarettes a day from age eleven and lived to 99;, as though to prove 'smoking does not cause lung cancer'.

Your having seen 'worse' damage than that of the Estonia is of no substance to the claim 'was it hit by a sub or not?' one way or the other.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Citations, please of these 'lots of ships', the criterion being it must have been faster than the 35" of the Estonia.

What's the point? you would just dismiss them as being different.

 

[Steve]

It wasn't damaged when it sailed.

It didn't encounter 'sudden hurricane-like conditions'
It had been weather routed to avoid the worst and had been hove-to for many hours to ride out the storm, it was what it was designed for.

WHat is your evidence for a 'perilous whirl pool'?


Is there any point in you asking for examples of ships sinking more quickly or in similar circumstances when you find a way to dismiss every example given?

Maybe I'm getting the hang of this. So let me try.

Hurricanes rotate. This storm was "hurricane-like" so it rotated. Rotating air makes the water below it rotate. Ergo "perilous whirl pool". I am sure that some eye witness evidence will be soon presented that the ferry was moving in a revolving direction immediately before it suddenly stopped.

How did I do?

Or perhaps this is just another total non sequitur pulled from where the sun don't shine.

 

[Vixen]

I'm not seeing a mystery here.

The bow ramp was damaged, water poured in, and the ship sank. I've lived my entire life next to the ocean. Boats with small mechanical issues find themselves in trouble all the time, and if that boat out in a storm it almost always goes under. Makes no difference if it's a squid boat or a destroyer. If a key part of the water-tight structure has a problem the sea will grab onto it with both hands. Bolts pop, tie-downs fail, unsecured hatches beat themselves until they cannot close.

The Estonia's ramp failed, and like the USS Indianapolis whose bow was blown off by the first torpedo, a big hole in the front of the ship is a bad thing.

As folks in the US desert south west are reminded, 2 feet of moving water is all it takes to turn your car into a boat, and with the pitching sea combined with rising sea water the automobiles would have shifted, and made it impossible to keep the trim.

Oh, and for fun, the Titanic didn't capsize, and it took forever for the Bismarck to sink even with all of those torpedo hits (because warships are not ferries).

That only holds water (pun intended) if indeed the sole cause of the accident was the bow visor pulling off the car ramp. Even then, the behaviour of the vessel (Archimedes Priniciple) is that it should first capsize and then turn belly up, without sinking.

 

[Vixen]

This is what actually happened. The Russian President of the time, Thanos, realised Sweden was smuggling the Infinity Stones away using the ferry. Thanos knew this because he saw trucks loading up the ferry in the middle of the night. These trucks were completely blacked out apart from a sign on the side that said "SUPER SEKRET SWEDISH MILITARY".

Thanos sent his henchman, Antman, to board the ferry to retrieve the stones. Now the Swedes were not stupid, they had their top agent onboard, Captain Sweden. Captain Sweden dazzled Antman with his super blonde perm then bombarded him with ABBA's Dancing Queen on a continuous loop. Captain Sweden raced to retrieve the stones so he could ferry (get it?) them away on Bruce Wayne's submarine that was following. Antman realising he couldn't stop Captain Sweden, reduced himself in size and pushed out the bolts holding the bow doors secure. The resulting flooding sank the ferry.

The Swedes realising they had to contain the power of the stones, encased the wreck in concrete.

This all fact. I know it's fact because some guy told me.

It's as good an explanation as 'the visor fell off due to a few strong waves'.

 

[Vixen]

If the ship came to a halt it must have hit something head on that was large enough to arrest it's motion.
Do you know the inertial of a ship the size of a ferry?
Why would a glancing blow to the beam from a sub of around 1000, to 1500 tons stop a ship?

If it hit anything head on the damage would be to the bow and the bulb below the waterline.

A 1500 ton sub would not have stopped it and likely would have been sunk.

So you are saying the survivors had a Loftus-style 'false memory', each independently of the other. A collision with something doesn't mean it has to come to a grinding halt, it could be something as simple as a sleeping policeman in the road to make your car slow down by throwing an obstacle in the way making it seem to momentarily halt.

 

[Vixen]

The Pommern in 1916. Torpedoed by one, possibly two, torpedoes and sunk in somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds. Not a single survivor.
Yes there were some explosions, but as you included the Britannic, this is only fair.

Aside from this one. Ore carriers in WWII had a reputation of going down so fast after even a single torpedo hit, that quite often the crew opted to sleep on deck, in order to get even the slightest change of getting of the ship, before it vanished beneath the waves.

For serious business.
See this collision between two Carnival cruise ships. (time code 44 seconds)

It's only a glancing collision and neither ship was in any danger of sinking.

But! The damage we see there, is like nothing, what you've shown us to be suspicious on the Estonia. Not above and not below the waterline there.

See also Captain_Swoop's examples of how a hull after a collision would look like.

What are your thoughts about that?

So once again we have confirmation, this time from erwinl, that ships which sank fast were either torpedoed or collided into.

Yet the claim is, the Estonia's hull was intact yet followed the pattern of a collided ship, which would explain the speed of sinking. However, this was not even considered when Bildt announced the same day as the sinking that it was the bow visor's fault, when no-one had even yet located the wreck.

And despite being torpedoed by the Brits in the Battle of Jutland, well, well, well, Pommern managed to stay afloat for twenty minutes:

At 3:10 on the morning of 1 June, Pommern was torpedoed by the British destroyer Onslaught. At least one torpedo, and possibly a second, struck the ship, detonating one of the 17 cm ammunition magazines.[39] A tremendous explosion broke the ship in half. The stern capsized and remained afloat for at least 20 minutes with her propellers jutting into the air.

wiki

Yet the Estonia sank took just fifteen minutes longer to sink, despite not having had one or two torpedoes slicing it in half nor igniting an explosion!


NB: the Pommern is not included in the table of fastest sinking ships as it was a dreadnought battleship and not a passenger ship.

The carnival cruise ships which collided didn't sink at all which proves their hulls were not breached and they were able to carry on sailing.

 

[erwinl]

So once again we have confirmation, this time from erwinl, that ships which sank fast were either torpedoed or collided into.

Yet the claim is, the Estonia's hull was intact yet followed the pattern of a collided ship, which would explain the speed of sinking. However, this was not even considered when Bildt announced the same day as the sinking that it was the bow visor's fault, when no-one had even yet located the wreck.

And despite being torpedoed by the Brits in the Battle of Jutland, well, well, well, it managed to stay afloat for twenty minutes:

wiki

Yet the Estonia sank took just fifteen minutes longer to sink, despite not having had one or two torpedoes slicing it in half nor igniting an explosion!


NB: the Pommern is not included in the table of fastest sinking ships as it was a dreadnought battleship and not a passenger ship.

The carnival cruise ships which collided didn't sink at all which proves their hulls were not breached and they were able to carry on sailing.

I cannot help but notice, that you use an awful lot of words, but do not answer the question I asked.

Ps. The Pommern was not a dreadnought battleship.

 

[JayUtah]

...points surely to whose submarine it might have been.

That does absolutely nothing to address the physical evidence.

I dare say it was an accident, but it should have come clean instead of insulting people's intelligence.

Claiming a submarine collided with Estonia is not intelligent.

 

[Vixen]

Does the ancillary stuff even matter? There is literally no evidence of a submarine.

A hole in the hull is quite literal I would have thought.

 

[Vixen]

It wasn't intact, the bow was missing.

It was not missing when it sank as a survivor saw it plainly.

 

[Steve]

A hole in the hull is quite literal I would have thought.

Literally not evidence of a submarine.

 

[Vixen]

The Independent Fact Group don't buy into the submarine thing though, right?

Citation, please.

 

[Vixen]

If a ship is on the bottom it has sunk unless you have your own definition of the word.

It wasn't on the bottom, it remained on its side.

 

[Steve]

It was not missing when it sank as a survivor saw it plainly.

One survivor claims this.