I have no clue what Bildt said within hours of accident, but I do know that your reporting is not accurate. So whatever it was, it wasn't what you claim it to be.
I notice that you don't give a reference to Lehtola saying that the bow visor faile on the day one.
Because there is none.
Prove me wrong. Show where Lehtola said that on Day One. I dare and double-dare you. Prove me wrong.
The guys are still in the hospital when they are being filmed.
They were interviewed because the TV crew interviewed a lot of people and they were surviving crew members. Then their interview was chosen to news broadcast because they were the only interviewed survivors that knew anything concrete about what happened to the ship.
You are trying to get us believe that in the few hours after the accident Bildt had time to come up with a fake story, coach it to someone who then flew to Turku to find surviving crew members, find Sillaste and Kadak in the hospital, somehow convince them to lie to the cameras, and teach the story to them. Yeah, right. Sounds sensible.
So not being a six foot tall blonde übermensch is a strike against Sillaste's credibility? I wonder if he is actually one of those beasts in the fields that populated Estonia before the Germans came there to civilize them. (Note to onlookers: that's how Vixen described medieval Estonians a few years ago in another thread: "living like beast in the fields." )
Lehtola certainly does say this on Day One, as reported in 30.9.1994 Helsingin Sanomat, the day after his first press release:
Estonia, which was travelling from Tallinn to Stockholm, sank early on Wednesday in the waters of Uto. Investigators suspect that the cause of the accident was the betrayal of the ship's bow gate. According to Research Commissioner Kari Lehtola, something has happened to the gate. "People's observations are vague, but there are." According to Lehtola, it is possible that both the visor and the bow gate have failed. According to experts, five to ten waves are enough to throw so much water on an open car deck that the ship capsizes.
HS: "
Estonian haaksirikon uhreja saattaa olla yli 900 Kukaan ei tiedä tarkkaan, kuinka monta matkustajaa laivassa oli Turman tutkijat epäilevät uppoamisen syyksi keulaportin pettämistäPenttinen Antti
30.9.1994 2:00"
If you recall, Bildt did, via the Swedish Marine Administration order all bow visors to be inspected on Day One and indeed, Silja Europa's was said to be defective. This was very clever crisis management as the world's press then concentrated on a
Herald of Free Enterprise scenario and Sillaste was wheeled out, together with a schoolboy-aged-looking Kadak to push the 'water on the car deck' line (as though only wave impact could have made the visor vulnerable).
As for your other comments, not only are they desparate and utterly laughable (note: Estonian, Treu is at least 1.86m, so much for the hilarious claim it is racist to describe someone as 1.60m). The point being made was that a lowly third or fourth engineer was being presented as an expert as to the cause of a disaster in which one thousand died, when not only was he on Deck 0 the whole time, he only saw a vague monitor picture of water seeping in through the sides of a
closed car ramp, and who claims he didn't leave the ship until 0130 and by climbing up the funnel straight into the sea, yet was fully survival suited and had his wallet, passport and warm clothing, ready to join Kadak, Treu and Linde, having also been on the upper deck handing out life jackets and 'calming people down'. He claims to have been on deck 0 fixing some passenger toilets and somehow ended up in the Engine
Control Room with Kadak and Treu 'up to their knees in water' (so he told Dagens Nyheter). I would suggest we cannot give much credibility to what Sillaste says, as Linde says he was on the life raft at 0120, even as Tammes was making a Mayday call.
As for you other claim, it really is a low blow. You have deliberately mispresented and misquoted my by quoting something I said on a History thread and out of context. Kindly supply the full context instead trying to make out I am somehow anti-Estonian, bearing in mind that when the Crusades took place, they were the Teutonic Knights (= what we today call German) whose aim was to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land and who then set out to convert pagans in Northern Europe to Christianity. They were aa military organisation of warrior monks whose Goddess of War was Mary, and they even named the region they set up in current day Latvia and Estonia after her (
Terra Mariana), so yes, they did indeed as a matter of fact perceive the Estonians and the Finns as pagans that needed to be converted. The las in Europe. The Estonians are the Finns distant cousins and linguists have even claimed Estonians are responsible for the notorious Turku dialect, having once shared a similar language some 2,500 years ago. Of course, today, Estonian and Finnish are not mutually understandable, albeit one can recognise many words and postpositions. However, Estonian has a strong low German influence and some Russian loan words and thus, it is no longer similarly constructed as the highly inflected Finnish language. So your claim it is racist to say the Crusaders looked down on the heathen masses of the 'last north Europeans' is scurrilous and misleading, as Finns, too were seen as bear meat, berry, herring and mushroom eaters, huddled around their saunas, practising polyandry and cannibalism (why not? Let's think the worst!).
By the way, you said Harkatie did not exist.
This is for you.
