The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

[erwinl]

Well the German accident investigators not only took all those photos, it also took away a few square feet of panels from around the damaged side. It sent them to three independent laboratories, one in San Antonio, Texas, and two in Germany. All three independently found traces of explosives on the panels. As the shipbuilders, it is understandable Meyer might be indignant and eager to shore up damage limitation to its reputation. The bow visor was recovered about a mile west of the sunken vessel and the impact of coming loose mean that the top of the 'sealed' ramp was distorted to cause a gap of about one metre allowing sea water to enter.


Here's a riddle for you and and shipping boff Captain Swoop:

The car deck is above sea level, ipso facto, in order to allow transport to RORO. When filled with water, this equates to circa 2,000 cubic metres of water.

The decks below, including cabins, would have consisted of 18,000 cubic metres of air and is completely sealed off from any water leakage.

Question: how does such a vessel sink within 90 minutes?

https://miro.medium.com/max/1071/1*UEDpAanzq_Yol2FIPexmzg.jpeg

It seems you know a lot about this stuff.

What was the metacentric height of the Estonia in original loaded condition and what would the estimated metacentric height be with your 2000 tons of water in the cardeck. More importantly, what would the angle of stability be in that case?
And would a storm be able to push the ship beyond that angle?
The conventional explanation says, it will, but you seem to know it wouldn’t.

 

[Vixen]

It seems you know a lot about this stuff.

What was the metacentric height of the Estonia in original loaded condition and what would the estimated metacentric height be with your 2000 tons of water in the cardeck. More importantly, what would the angle of stability be in that case?
And would a storm be able to push the ship beyond that angle?
The conventional explanation says, it will, but you seem to know it wouldn’t.

Me? I know nothing <shrug>. However, the JAIC did state that the Estonia was seaworthy and properly loaded.

In addition, rough seas are normal at that time of the year. Two other vessels, the Silja Europe and the Viking Mariella were in the region the same night.

No harm in understanding the physics of it all.

 

[theprestige]

Th point being made is that people want to honour their dead. It is all very well saying, let them stay buried at sea, when it may not have been so difficult at the time to recover some of them.

People honor their dead all the time without having a body, for all sorts of commonplace and obvious reasons. Again, the Swedes shouldn't be struggling this hard with such basic concepts.

 

[Vixen]

Here's a practical lesson in calculating 'metacentric height'.

https://www.gopracticals.com/mechanical/fluid-mechanics/determination-of-metacentric-height/

 

[RolandRat]

Well the German accident investigators not only took all those photos, it also took away a few square feet of panels from around the damaged side. It sent them to three independent laboratories, one in San Antonio, Texas, and two in Germany. All three independently found traces of explosives on the panels. As the shipbuilders, it is understandable Meyer might be indignant and eager to shore up damage limitation to its reputation. The bow visor was recovered about a mile west of the sunken vessel and the impact of coming loose mean that the top of the 'sealed' ramp was distorted to cause a gap of about one metre allowing sea water to enter.


Here's a riddle for you and and shipping boff Captain Swoop:

The car deck is above sea level, ipso facto, in order to allow transport to RORO. When filled with water, this equates to circa 2,000 cubic metres of water.

The decks below, including cabins, would have consisted of 18,000 cubic metres of air and is completely sealed off from any water leakage.

Question: how does such a vessel sink within 90 minutes?

https://miro.medium.com/max/1071/1*UEDpAanzq_Yol2FIPexmzg.jpeg

Do you not believe the official report?

 

[llwyd]

Th point being made is that people want to honour their dead. It is all very well saying, let them stay buried at sea, when it may not have been so difficult at the time to recover some of them.

You do know what water does to the corpses? I don't see any point in such a macabre and costly operation, but the relatives' association in Sweden became fixated on that point and it became politically a hot potato there. Estonia and Finland, having witnessed so much worse things in their recent history, were always supporting the sensible option of letting the sea be the graveyard.

And about the cause of the shipwreck there really is nothing to argue. No, no exposives, no bombs, no explosions, no submarines, no mafia, no KGB. The visor broke in the storm and damaged the ramp and the ship sunk. Read the report.

 

[Vixen]

Do you not believe the official report?

I neither believe nor disbelieve it. However, given all the bitter arguments amongst the members of the official accident committee itself, including resignations, and the resignation of the Estonian transport minister and the Estonian head of security in protest of the findings, I think it is prudent to revisit the scene. The fact they are doing so, is a welcome initiative IMV, to put the disputes to rest once and for all.

 

[llwyd]

Here's a riddle for you and and shipping boff Captain Swoop:
--------------------------
Question: how does such a vessel sink within 90 minutes?

I refer you the following sub-sections of the accident report:

12.6 Simulation of flooding and sinking of the vessel
12.6.1 Floating conditions and stability during flooding
12.6.2 Water inflow simulations

 

[erwinl]

Me? I know nothing <shrug>. However, the JAIC did state that the Estonia was seaworthy and properly loaded.

In addition, rough seas are normal at that time of the year. Two other vessels, the Silja Europe and the Viking Mariella were in the region the same night.

No harm in understanding the physics of it all.

Your post did suggest that an extra load of 2000 tons of water on the cardeck would not be enough to sink the ship, because of the hermetically sealed 18000 tons worth of buoyancy in the decks below.
That seemed to be a suggestion born out of knowledge concerning the stabilty of ships.

As it is, it seems you know nothing about this science, am I right?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Well the German accident investigators not only took all those photos, it also took away a few square feet of panels from around the damaged side. It sent them to three independent laboratories, one in San Antonio, Texas, and two in Germany. All three independently found traces of explosives on the panels. As the shipbuilders, it is understandable Meyer might be indignant and eager to shore up damage limitation to its reputation. The bow visor was recovered about a mile west of the sunken vessel and the impact of coming loose mean that the top of the 'sealed' ramp was distorted to cause a gap of about one metre allowing sea water to enter.


Here's a riddle for you and and shipping boff Captain Swoop:

The car deck is above sea level, ipso facto, in order to allow transport to RORO. When filled with water, this equates to circa 2,000 cubic metres of water.

The decks below, including cabins, would have consisted of 18,000 cubic metres of air and is completely sealed off from any water leakage.

Question: how does such a vessel sink within 90 minutes?

https://miro.medium.com/max/1071/1*UEDpAanzq_Yol2FIPexmzg.jpeg

Traces of explosives after all those years on the sea bed?

What explosives were they?

What was found?

Someone is having a laugh.

 

[Andy_Ross]

The car deck is above sea level, ipso facto, in order to allow transport to RORO. When filled with water, this equates to circa 2,000 cubic metres of water.

The decks below, including cabins, would have consisted of 18,000 cubic metres of air and is completely sealed off from any water leakage.

Question: how does such a vessel sink within 90 minutes?

https://miro.medium.com/max/1071/1*UEDpAanzq_Yol2FIPexmzg.jpeg

Waves breaking against a bow with enough force to take off the visor will be putting water on to the car deck. It is not that far above the waterline.
Water entering the bow will cause it to settle lower in the water, as the ship is moving forward this will cause it to drive deeper with each wave and take in more water.

There is a reason I linked to the ship sinking earlier.

How were the lower decks sealed off from the upper decks?
On a passenger ferry there are wide stairways and lots of open passageways.
Cabins are not watertight.

Accommodation decks are single compartments for flooding purposes.

Also if the water was on the decks above the waterline it would tend to make the ship more topheavy and change it's c of g.

It would not need much water on the car deck on a pitching and rolling ship to take it past it's point of recovery.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Me? I know nothing <shrug>. However, the JAIC did state that the Estonia was seaworthy and properly loaded.

In addition, rough seas are normal at that time of the year. Two other vessels, the Silja Europe and the Viking Mariella were in the region the same night.

No harm in understanding the physics of it all.

But they didn't have the bow missing and weren't taking on water.

 

[llwyd]

How were the lower decks sealed off from the upper decks?
On a passenger ferry there are wide stairways and lots of open passageways.
Cabins are not watertight.

Accommodation decks are single compartments for flooding purposes.

Also if the water was on the decks above the waterline it would tend to make the ship more topheavy and change it's c of g.

It would not need much water on the car deck on a pitching and rolling ship to take it past it's point of recovery.

Yeah, water broke through from the car deck. Here is a summary from the accident report:

12.6.1 Floating conditions and stability during flooding

New stability calculations were carried out for the Commission, based on the latest valid inclination test. The calculations confirm that for the loading condition of the accident voyage the ESTONIA satisfied the two-compartment damage stability requirements specified in the SOLAS 1974 Convention. The damage stability requirements concern only the watertight part of the vessel below the bulkhead deck, i.e. below the car deck in this case.

The initial stability of a ro-ro ferry with a large open car deck is extremely sensitive to water ingress to the car deck. Small amounts of water will impair upright stability and cause extensive heel in equilibrium condition.

The ESTONIA`s static stability with various amounts of water on the car deck has also been analysed. Shows static stability curves for increasing amounts of water on the car deck, from 0 to 4,000 t. These curves apply when ship side is intact. The analysis shows that 400 t of water on the car deck will give a static list angle of just over l0° and 1,000 t just over 20° . The additional heel from a sharp turn at 15 knots would be about 3° .

Even though the list developed rapidly; the water on the car deck would not alone be sufficient to make the ship capsize and lose its survivability As long as the hull was intact and watertight below and above the car deck, the residual stability with water on the car deck would not have been significantly changed at large heel angles. The capsize could only have been completed through water entering other areas of the vessel.

According to the hydrostatic calculations, a continuously increasing amount of water on the car deck would make the aft windows of deck 4 the first possible flooding point to other areas. Soon thereafter the windows and the aft entrance doors of deck 5 would also be submerged. A little less than 2,000 t of water on the car deck would be sufficient to bring the first flooding points down to the mean water surface. In this condition the list would be about 35° . The lowest corner of the ramp opening would here be still a little above the mean water surface.

As soon as water was free to enter the accommodation decks all residual stability would be impaired and the ship in practice lost. Without an intact superstructure above deck 4, the largest possible equilibrium heel angle before a complete capsize would be 40° . This condition would be exceeded with about 2,000 t of water on the car deck.

Stability calculations show that the ESTONIA would have had a small positive initial stability if the two sauna compartments and the next compartment aft on deck 0 had been flooded. The stability would have been worst at the initial phases of flooding and would have improved when more water flowed to these three compartments.

The influence of cargo shifting was also investigated in separate studies. Due to the distribution of vehicles on deck, the maximum transverse shifting of cargo centre of gravity could have been of the order of just a few metres. Two metres of cargo shift would have the effect that the progressive flooding of deck 4 started with about 10 % less water on the car deck.

 

[Vixen]

You do know what water does to the corpses? I don't see any point in such a macabre and costly operation, but the relatives' association in Sweden became fixated on that point and it became politically a hot potato there. Estonia and Finland, having witnessed so much worse things in their recent history, were always supporting the sensible option of letting the sea be the graveyard.

And about the cause of the shipwreck there really is nothing to argue. No, no exposives, no bombs, no explosions, no submarines, no mafia, no KGB. The visor broke in the storm and damaged the ramp and the ship sunk. Read the report.

It is true that there is even a World War II Finnish ship sunk in the water and that's where the bodies of the sailors remain. And of course all the churches around the archipelago - even Turku Cathedral - has votive model sailing ships hanging from the rafters, as donated, so this habit could go back to pagan times when seafaring accidents happened all the time and there were no lighthouses. However, be that as it may, the fact is if a loved dies in an accident on public transport, then their nearest and dearest get to request they bring the body home; unlike guys signed up to the military or cruise ship staff who understand that if they die in action in foreign seas or land, that is where their body may lay.

True, our dear Swedish cousins haven't seen any war since circa 1780 when they had a contretemps with the Norwegians, whereas the Finns and the Estonians have had the pesky bear from the east on their necks constantly, so we have to make allowances for their soft gentle ways.

 

[Vixen]

Your post did suggest that an extra load of 2000 tons of water on the cardeck would not be enough to sink the ship, because of the hermetically sealed 18000 tons worth of buoyancy in the decks below.
That seemed to be a suggestion born out of knowledge concerning the stabilty of ships.

As it is, it seems you know nothing about this science, am I right?

I confess I was quoting some guy called Anders Bjorkman, who made this point, who might well be an expert in a ship's centre of gravity and variations thereof.

 

[Vixen]

Traces of explosives after all those years on the sea bed?

What explosives were they?

What was found?

Someone is having a laugh.

It doesn't seem likely the rule-loving Germans - master of engineering - durch vorsprung technik -would simply make all this up, though?

 

[Vixen]

Waves breaking against a bow with enough force to take off the visor will be putting water on to the car deck. It is not that far above the waterline.
Water entering the bow will cause it to settle lower in the water, as the ship is moving forward this will cause it to drive deeper with each wave and take in more water.

There is a reason I linked to the ship sinking earlier.

How were the lower decks sealed off from the upper decks?
On a passenger ferry there are wide stairways and lots of open passageways.
Cabins are not watertight.

Accommodation decks are single compartments for flooding purposes.

Also if the water was on the decks above the waterline it would tend to make the ship more topheavy and change it's c of g.

It would not need much water on the car deck on a pitching and rolling ship to take it past it's point of recovery.

I came across a picture of the ship before it was named M/S Estonia - seems it was capable of navigating with the bow visor up. Of course, occam's razor says the bow visor coming off is the near certain reason it sank. However, more than a few witnesses claimed to have heard two or three bangs circa 1:02am, yet the visor is estimated to have fallen off at 1:16 am about fifteen minutes later. These were witness statements taken at the time, long before any had any theories or knew of any holes in the starboard hull.

 

[erwinl]

I confess I was quoting some guy called Anders Bjorkman, who made this point, who might well be an expert in a ship's centre of gravity and variations thereof.

Anders Bjorkman? Who used to be the user Heiwa here?

You’ve been on his website, where he, still to this day, declares that atomic bombs are hoaxes (now there are some train wrecks of threads in days gone by), man never went to the moon in ‘69. That there were no planes involved in 9/11. And more.
(And you can’t say you didn’t notice this, because he puts it on virtually every page of his ‘website’).

Anyway. You’ve seen all this on his website and decided that this was someone who could be trusted to tell a reasoned story concerning the Estonia?!

What on earth made you decide that?!

 

[Vixen]

Yeah, water broke through from the car deck. Here is a summary from the accident report:

12.6.1 Floating conditions and stability during flooding

New stability calculations were carried out for the Commission, based on the latest valid inclination test. The calculations confirm that for the loading condition of the accident voyage the ESTONIA satisfied the two-compartment damage stability requirements specified in the SOLAS 1974 Convention. The damage stability requirements concern only the watertight part of the vessel below the bulkhead deck, i.e. below the car deck in this case.

The initial stability of a ro-ro ferry with a large open car deck is extremely sensitive to water ingress to the car deck. Small amounts of water will impair upright stability and cause extensive heel in equilibrium condition.

The ESTONIA`s static stability with various amounts of water on the car deck has also been analysed. Shows static stability curves for increasing amounts of water on the car deck, from 0 to 4,000 t. These curves apply when ship side is intact. The analysis shows that 400 t of water on the car deck will give a static list angle of just over l0° and 1,000 t just over 20° . The additional heel from a sharp turn at 15 knots would be about 3° .

Even though the list developed rapidly; the water on the car deck would not alone be sufficient to make the ship capsize and lose its survivability As long as the hull was intact and watertight below and above the car deck, the residual stability with water on the car deck would not have been significantly changed at large heel angles. The capsize could only have been completed through water entering other areas of the vessel.

According to the hydrostatic calculations, a continuously increasing amount of water on the car deck would make the aft windows of deck 4 the first possible flooding point to other areas. Soon thereafter the windows and the aft entrance doors of deck 5 would also be submerged. A little less than 2,000 t of water on the car deck would be sufficient to bring the first flooding points down to the mean water surface. In this condition the list would be about 35° . The lowest corner of the ramp opening would here be still a little above the mean water surface.

As soon as water was free to enter the accommodation decks all residual stability would be impaired and the ship in practice lost. Without an intact superstructure above deck 4, the largest possible equilibrium heel angle before a complete capsize would be 40° . This condition would be exceeded with about 2,000 t of water on the car deck.

Stability calculations show that the ESTONIA would have had a small positive initial stability if the two sauna compartments and the next compartment aft on deck 0 had been flooded. The stability would have been worst at the initial phases of flooding and would have improved when more water flowed to these three compartments.

The influence of cargo shifting was also investigated in separate studies. Due to the distribution of vehicles on deck, the maximum transverse shifting of cargo centre of gravity could have been of the order of just a few metres. Two metres of cargo shift would have the effect that the progressive flooding of deck 4 started with about 10 % less water on the car deck.

What came first, though? The reason the bow visor came off might be the same reason the car deck flooded, i.e., effect-effect, and not necessarily cause and effect.

 

[Vixen]

News Update from Aftonbladet, yesterday:

Previously unknown cracks have been found in Estonia

The mysterious holes in Estonia's hull can now be confirmed.

Two previously unknown cracks have been found in connection with investigations, the Estonian Accident Investigation Board told TT.

The cracks were found during the new investigations that are currently being conducted at Estonia's wreck site.

Jonas Bäckstrand, at the Swedish Accident Investigation Board, confirms that there are new unknown cracks. He says that it is interesting, but "that there is a risk that you over-interpret data before you have the overall picture".

- Therefore, we want to be careful to draw some conclusions before our experts have compiled the data, he says to TT.

The instrument that took the detailed pictures is a Mesotech Scanning Sonar*.

- We are currently conducting a sweep sonar survey, which is called "Mesotech". We are in the middle of it now. There is data in that that could indicate cracks in the ship, but it is a bit early to confirm it yet. We will need to take a closer look at that data before we are finished, says Jonas Bäckstrand.

The instrument's operator, Brian Abbott from the USA, as a world-leading expert on this technology, has had major problems getting to Estonia due to the pandemic. He is now on board the EVA-316 where he has steered the sonar.

*Click on the link to view this "Mesotech".

TS is reporting there are two new cracks found :

The cracks are about 10-15 meters long.

The Estonian Board of Inquiry confirmed the findings to the Swedish news agency TT.

So two new fractures about four times longer than the one found by the German crew.