[ad_1]
Since “Estonia” collapsed in 1994, myths about its disappearance have increased. Was a submarine involved? A new documentary aims to shed light on the darkness. The truth has been known for a long time.
On the night of September 28, 1994, nothing was as it should be on board the car ferry “Estonia”. In reality, the ship should have left the Estonian capital Tallinn long ago to be in Stockholm on time the next morning. Arrival delays cost money, which Captain Arvo Andresson definitely wanted to avoid. I would try to go faster, but the weather forecast did not bode well.
Strong seas were forecast for the Baltic Sea off the southern coast of Finland. At 19:17, 17 minutes late, the “Estonia” finally set sail. It should never come. Around 1 a.m., the bow visor in front of the car deck broke under the pressure of the stormy sea and the water flowed unhindered into the ferry. 852 people died in the frozen Baltic Sea.
Most of them drowned trapped in the hull of the ship, which turned into a huge steel coffin, only 94 victims were found adrift near the wreck. 137 passengers and crew members survived the disaster. The sinking of the “Estonia” remains the largest shipwreck in post-war European history. In the video above or here view recordings of survivors.
Where did the long crack come from?
It is more than a quarter of a century since the ferry was sunk in floods, but the waves that hit the disaster have not subsided to this day. Numerous conspiracy theories surround the wreck. And since the Discovery Channel TV broadcast last month the documentary “Estonia: The Background That Changes Everything”, a new one has been added. In the documentation, the underwater photos show a huge four meter long crack in the forward wall of the ferry.
The divers discovered the bow hatch of the “Estonia”. (Source: dpa)
For Margus Kurm, former head of an “Estonian” inquiry commission, the situation is clear: only a collision with a submarine could have caused this fatal damage. The outrage is so great that the governments of the disaster-affected states of Estonia, Sweden and Finland issued a joint statement that they now want to finally get to the bottom of the matter, 26 years after the sinking of “Estonia”.
It wouldn’t be the first search for someone to blame for the tragedy. The three states’ first commission of inquiry functioned from 1994 to 1997. According to study results at the time, the disaster was caused by security deficiencies in the hinged bow visor. The hinges were poorly designed, too weak to withstand the pressure of the water in rough seas.
“It no longer fits in the helicopter”
Responsible for the disaster: Meyer Werft in Papenburg, Lower Saxony, where the “Estonia” was launched in 1980. It is a pity that the bolt that connected the hatch to the hull was missing for taking tests. The divers were able to recover it from the wreck, but instead of taking the tests ashore, Börje Stenstörm, a representative of the inquiry commission, threw it overboard into the depths of the Baltic Sea. “It no longer fits in the helicopter,” was his succinct explanation.
Meyer Werft, founded in 1795 on the main Papenburg canal and family owned for seven generations, couldn’t let that sit on its own and assembled its own team of experts in response to the report. Its main focus was the reports of some survivors who had heard blast noises just before the sinking.
The international team studied video recordings made by diving robots from the side of the ship, and indeed found open spots that clearly looked like bomb holes to former British sailor and explosives expert Brian Braidwood. The Hamburg captain, Werner Hummel, even thought he could still make out more packages of unexploded explosives in the hull.
Where did the great pressure come from?
Meyer Werft’s report picked up steam when German television journalist Jutta Rabe and American diver Gregg Bemis launched a secret expedition in 2000, two discrete triangular pieces of metal, about 5 by 15 centimeters in size, from the edge of the alleged bomb holes and recovered three independent ones. Sent to institutes for examination.
All three research institutes agreed: the metal showed structural changes, caused by high pressure, probably an explosion. Around the same time, an Estonian cadet appeared and claims to have overheard a strange radio conversation on the training ship “Linda” on the eve of the accident. The port control wanted to know from “Estonian” officials whether the detector dogs had found a bomb on board the ferry, he said in an interview.
In 2000 a diving expedition to the wreck “Estonia” was carried out. (Source: Lehtikuva Martti Kainulainen / dpa)
The bomb theory almost gained momentum, were it not for the news magazine “Der Spiegel”, which initially participated in the recovery and investigation of the pieces of the side wall, but later withdrew its support, another opinion from the Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing (BAM) would have caught up. The changes in the metal, the BAM experts concluded, were in no way caused by an explosion, but instead witnessed a completely normal antioxidant treatment.
Such traces would emerge if small steel balls were fired at the side of the ship from a short distance of up to 80 meters per second to clean the sheet metal before anti-rust paint can be applied, a routine process on ships.
Pumps or security flaws?
However, that did not end the speculation. On the contrary, it only really accelerated when it became known in 2004 that there were not only people and cars on board the “Estonia”. It had already been noted earlier when checking the loading list that there were inconsistencies. In the belly of the “Estonia” there were boxes that had not been searched at the time of delivery – they were not allowed to be searched.
Now a Swedish customs official revealed what this cargo was all about: In the mid-1990s, it was common practice to transport military electronic devices and weapons from Russia on seemingly harmless civilian passenger ferries across the Baltic Sea. The “Estonia” was also a Trojan horse. An international commission of inquiry was re-created.
Former Estonian Foreign Minister Trimvi Velliste admitted: Yes, he was responsible for these transports, as was Estonian then Prime Minister Mart Laar. Particularly spicy: Velliste was a member of the first commission of inquiry into the sinking of the ferry. A computer simulation should now finally clarify whether there were bombs involved or glaring safety deficiencies. The Hamburg Shipbuilding Research Institute, in cooperation with the Technical University of Hamburg, received the order.
September 29, 1994: A red life raft from the “Estonia” in the open sea. (Source: code ressensbild 69 / dpa)
The research group calculated models and placed them in a virtual basin in which the stormy Baltic Sea of September 28, 1994 wreaked havoc. The result was clear. The bombs would not have been necessary at all to blow up the bow visor. Because the “Estonia” was not actually designed for open sea voyage, it should never have been more than 20 nautical miles from the coast. Furthermore, both the visor and the ramp behind it got stuck when the cars were loaded in Tallinn, and crew members reported that they had to drag mattresses towards the bow to plug the leaks.
Captain’s fatal mistake
As the calculations quickly made clear, breakers over five meters tall easily played with the bow visor in the open sea and tore it off like a toy. At first, the crew did not notice any of the damage: the bow of the ship could not be seen from the bridge. It was only when so much water had entered the now open car deck that the “Estonia” suddenly tilted to one side by 30 degrees did the alarm bells ring. Captain Andresson attempted to turn the ship on its heel towards the wind, hoping that the force of the waves and the wind would straighten the diseased ship.
A fatal mistake, because the centrifugal forces threw the water into the ferry to the lower starboard side, dragging the cars with them and pushing the ship even lower. Soon the ferry was so inclined that there was no escape from the inside, it sucked water through the vents and ultimately slid down at an angle of about 130 degrees.
But how did the four-meter-long crack in the side of the ship, which was featured in the movie “Estonia: the find that changes everything,” come about? Stefan Krüger, who worked on simulation at the Institute for Designing Ships and Ship Safety at TU Hamburg, shrugs off the new speculations at best; for him, it is more the finding that confirms everything.
“The bow visor has been ripped off on the starboard side. A corner of the visor has been drilled into the side of the boat, which is still moving 14 knots,” he explains when asked. “In any case, the crack hardly influences the process that we have reconstructed with the simulation, it is above the waterline.” In fact, video recordings show that the crack opens high up on the side of the ship directly below the letters “Estonia”, inaccessible to any submarine. “Ships still obey the laws of nature,” concludes Krüger, “and not wild theories.”
