#ms estonia

[torillatavataan]

28 September 2024 marks 30 years since the sinking of the MS Estonia

MS Estonia sank on Wednesday, 28 September 1994 as the ship was crossing the Baltic Sea, en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden.

The sinking was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It is one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a European ship, after the Titanic in 1912 and the Empress of Ireland in 1914. It is the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have occurred in European waters, with 852 (out of 989) lives lost.

Image source

[historyfiles]

Children's 'Estonia' Memorial: the MS Estonia was a cruise ferry which was built in 1979-1980 in the German shipyard, Meyer Werft, in Papenburg, and which sank in 1994 in the Baltic Sea in one of the worst maritime disasters of the twentieth century.

[itsyveinthesky]

To this day one of the best pieces of journalism was the 2004 account of the sinking of the MS Estonia. Europe's worst maritime disaster after WW2. It was written by William Langewiesche, who wrote and is still writing incredible stuff and I urge everyone to check out his contributions to The Atlantic, Haarper's Bazaar and Vanity Fair.

Langewiesche is one of the best disaster writers out there and his articles are always a must-read.

His theory about MH370 is probably one of the most compelling and complete that I've read. He also wrote a great article about the mid-air collision of a Boeing 737 and a Legacy 600 over the Amazon.

And I think his article about the El Faro's sinking is kind of a sister to his MS Estonia article, though it was due to different reasons.

The only drawback is most of these links go to paygate locations. But they're great writing, and well worth figuring out a way to get to them.

Now finally here is the link to:

A Sea Story

[torillatavataan]

To put it further into perspective, 68% of the people on Titanic died. On Estonia, 86% of the people onboard died.

September 28th 1994

To all those lost at MS Estonia

To the family members left behind

To the survivors

You are not forgotten. You will always be remembered.

[chaoshiki]

Progression of the events that went down during my yttdtalia interactive game from last year. I've been wanting to do this for a while and now I finally found the energy to lock in lmao

It happened on Twitter, every day people would choose a character to die as the lore slowly unrevealed itself through player's interactions

More details here!

[cawthedwal]

was doodling

[omegapausestuck]

Well She's coming along quite nicely WAIT WHAT'S THAT COMING ON THE LEFT

[torillatavataan]

The statistics you shared are factual and correct. I don't think anyone is arguing that. What people are taking issue with is the tag "women and children first (to die)". Yes, this, too, is statistically true. Women and children are less likely to survive and in the case of Estonia also, men were more likely to survive, but it wasn't deliberate.

You compared MS Estonia to SS Arctic, where men did leave women and children to die by rushing to the lifeboats. Nothing like this happened on Estonia, although, yes, there was some looting and fighting over lifejackets reported. With that comparison, how do you expect people to interpret your tag? The fact that you compare these two accidents indicates that you do not know what happened to Estonia and how quickly it all happened.

Even if it's true that:

not much has changed since the days of the sinking of the S.S. Arctic in 1854

MS Estonia is not an appropriate example. In the case of Estonia, every second mattered. Making the choice of running left instead of right either saved your life or doomed you. The fact that as many as 137 people survived is incredible.

The Estonia was nothing like the Titanic, for example, which took nearly three hours to sink and had time to arrange an evacuation. The Estonia sank within an hour and was completely sideways within about 15-20 minutes from the moment it began listing. There was never time for a proper evacuation.

MS Estonia sank because its bow visor was completely ripped off during a stormy night in September on the Baltic Sea. This means that the front of the ship was completely open. Water rushed into the car deck and the added freely moving weight caused the ship to rapidly list and sink.

Here is the timeline with approximate timings:

1:00 A wave hits the bow doors, causing a loud bang. Lights indicate the bow visor is closed, so no further visual inspection is done, but this is likely when the bow visor's hinge broke.

1:05 - 1.10 Passengers and crew report unusual metallic bangs from the hull. This was likely the bow visor banging against the hull as it was now loose.

1:15 The bow visor breaks off, tearing open the loading ramp. The ship almost immediately lists about 15 degrees as water pours into the car deck.

1:20 A public address of an alarm is made (quiet and unclear, the hostess making the public address was likely confused and scared), followed by an internal alarm for the crew to prepare the lifeboats. Water starts getting in from cabin windows and the massive windows on deck 6.

1:22 The first Mayday call is made. Listing reportedly 20-30 degrees, but suspected to have been more than that already. At this point, navigating through the ship is already extremely difficult for those onboard and the ship has lost power.

1:29 MS Estonia sends its final message: "Really bad. It looks really bad right now."

1:30 The right side of the ship is now completely submerged, the ship is lying sideways.

1:30 - 1:42 The ship has rolled over 90 degrees. Survivors reported walking on the bottom of the ship on the bow side of the ship as it sank stern first.

1:42 MS Estonia disappears from the radar for the first time.

1:50 MS Estonia disappears from the radar for the final time.

2:12 The first ship (Mariella) arrives at the scene, confirming that Estonia is nowhere to be seen.

3:05 First rescue helicopter arrives.

Here is the sinking visualised:

Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers.

The crew have safety training the passengers simply do not have, so it's not surprising. In addition to basic safety training, they have training specific to their own vessel. They also tend to know the vessel well and would know the quickest or safest way out and where the liferafts and lifejackets are located.

The Finnish Wikipedia article tells me that 43 crew members survived. I skimmed through this Finnish article about each survivor to see that the surviving crew members included people like mechanics, a chef, a bartender, dancers, a tax-free worker etc.

The crew on duty on the command bridge died. They called for help until their final moments and managed to give their location despite the blackout (meaning either they got power back or somebody lowered themselves down to the other side of the bridge to be able to give the coordinates). You can hear alarms, items falling, and water rushing in the background of the emergency communications they made.

When the first ship Mariella arrived at the scene, they were surprised that they could not see Estonia. The captain of Silja Europa leading the rescue operation even thought the ship might be somewhere else (conversation from video timestamp 14:50) because it was so unbelievable to them that it would have gone completely underwater so quickly. Earlier he is shocked to hear that there may be people in the water (video timestamp 12:23).

This was not an isolated case

Obviously no, but Estonia listed heavily and it sunk very fast (and by the time it sunk, it was upside down). In Estonia's case, the chances of survival for nearly everyone were slim to none from the get-go. It happened at night and the night was stormy, so there weren't even that many people out and about partying like normally on the upper decks from where it was quicker to get out. Most passengers were sleeping or trying to sleep in their cabins. Any families with children were almost certainly in the cabins.

When the ship suddenly listed, anything that wasn't bolted to the floor went flying. People fell off their beds. Some people in the communal areas got crushed or pinned down by heavy falling items. One survivor, who was at a bar, said sofas and the bar table fell across the room. Many were immediately injured (survivors reported seeing badly injured and dead or unconscious people), meaning they had no chance to get out.

People also got locked inside their cabins because falling and shifting items prevented the doors from opening.

In your other response, you asked:

What has, being "the physically strongest", to do with surviving a ship wreck?

Something that gets repeated in the stories of the survivors is how physically tasking it was to get out. Survivors saw people not having the strength to keep climbing and/or holding on while trying to get out through the stairwell (a very physical and difficult task when the ship is listing, made harder by having dozens of other people around you).

People fell to their deaths in the stairwell because the handrail gave away from the weight of people trying to pull themselves up and out. One survivor recounted that a man was pulling people up through a door from the stairs and that those who failed to hold onto his hand plummeted to their deaths.

To escape through the stairwell (or in some cases cabin windows), people needed to have a lot of arm and grip strength. The same was later required for getting onto the liferafts in the water.

There were hundreds of people. About 700 people never made it out. Unless you were at the front of the masses, you had practically no chance of getting out, especially once the lights went out and you were still inside. It is estimated that people had about 10-20 minutes to get out, which might seem like a long time, but that's the amount of time it took until it was practically impossible to get out. During those 10-20 minutes, each passing second made it harder to get out as the ship kept listing and more water poured in and people got more panicked.

People who got into the water also didn't face great odds. The water temperature was +10 C. Hypothermia gets both men and women in these kinds of temperatures. There were waves as tall as 6 metres with high winds of 20 metres per second on average with gusts of up to 28 meters per second. Just trying to swim to a liferaft was an exhausting task and you still had to get on. Some people drowned because they lost consciousness by hitting the water (either thrown off the ship or by jumping themselves), getting hit by something in the water, or getting thrown against the hull. It is also possible that some people were sucked back inside the ship through the windows.

None of the Estonia's lifeboats could be launched because the ship had capsized. It was floating on its side, rapidly sinking. The lifeboats thankfully did float after the ship went down and some people managed to get in or hold onto them. There were also thankfully liferafts and lifejackets.

Many of the people who got to the liferafts in the water were unable to pull themselves in or hold on long enough for someone to help them in. Water this cold will very quickly make your hands go numb, making it very difficult to keep holding onto something. Some of the liferafts capsized, too, the wind ripped their tent-like roofs and they were filled with water, again lowering the odds of people's survival. Some rafts had enough water in them that passing out meant you could have drowned. People died of hypothermia on the rafts while waiting to be rescued.

Because of the weather conditions, the ships that arrived to help could not deploy their own boats to pick up the survivors. All they could initially do was to throw more liferafts and lifejackets into the sea. Only 34 people were rescued by the ships. The other 104 people were saved by helicopters and by the time they arrived, about a third of those who managed to get out of the Estonia had already died of hypothermia or drowned. Still, one single helicopter that opted to risk landing on a ship instead of going back ashore rescued 44 people which is more than the ships combined.

the majority of women just so happen to collectively being bad at making good desicions* (*small decision such as getting dressed meant that some did not make it out.)

This is just silly and not what was implied. Men had to make this kind of decisions, too. One survivor interviewed on the Finnish news right after said he was with a friend. He told his friend they needed to get out quickly. He himself immediately began to make his way out. His friend evidently hesitated. The friend never made it out.

Deciding to put on some clothes on its own is not a bad decision. There were people escaping in nothing but underwear (one survivor said there was a young woman wearing just underwear on the same liferaft who died before they were rescued) and this was September on the Baltic Sea. It was cold outside. Not even the crew initially believed the ship would sink. But in this specific case taking those extra seconds to dress was often enough to cost them their lives.

According to survivors, some people were silent in shock and did not immediately or at all start running like they did, and others went into panic. But people did help or tried to help each other. For example, an off-duty captain who did not survive was seen handing lifejackets. People also tried to throw lifejackets to those still inside.

One survivor said she decided to leave the cabin when the first banging was heard. Her sister and two friends decided to stay in the cabin and did not survive. Many other survivors had also decided to leave their cabins either out of curiosity or caution when the bangs were heard.

So yes, even a small decision contributed to people's survival.

Or we can ignore our personal feelings on the matter and impliment better safety procedures for emergencies so that next time the numbers, look better

Like with any accident, what happened to Estonia led to better and improved safety regulations, especially for the design of ferries and liferafts.

How would you improve the chances of women and children specifically surviving what happened to Estonia?

Again, I'm not arguing that the statistics are wrong. They are not. But in the specific case of Estonia, the odds were bad for everyone. Lack of physical strength certainly contributed to women, children, and the elderly having a smaller chance of survival, but ultimately quick reaction, physical strength, and sheer luck all contributed to survival. Implying that women and children died because of men (which seems like your intention because of your tag combined with the comparison with SS Arctic) is at least a little ignorant.

(you can find all survivor stories referred from the Finnish article linked earlier, plus one story from this Estonian article)

The Estonia sank on 28 September 1994

With 852 victims, it is to date the worst shipping accident in post-war European history.

The cause of the accident was the bow visor opening in the storm.

STATISTICS:

Young people, and especially young men, survived the accident to a greater extent than the other passengers.

485 of the 989 people on board were women (49%),

BUT only 26 of the 137 survivors were women (19%).

While 26 (43%) of the 60 young men aged 20 to 24 on board were able to save themselves,

only 4 of a total of 40 (10%) women of the same age managed to do so.

Of the 15 children (under 15 years of age), only one boy survived.

The losses were particularly high among the 301 people aged 55 or over. Of these, only 7 were able to save themselves, including 5 under 65 and none over 75.

Meaning, not much has changed since the days of the sinking of the S.S. Arctic in 1854

[torillatavataan]

This video discusses some of the conspiracy theories related to the sinking of MS Estonia. However, more importantly, the first half does an excellent job at explaining how incredibly difficult it is to escape a capsizing ship.

[angsttronaut]

do you ever read something that's very well written, and also regret reading it A Lot

[thelittleliechtensteiner]

Hey ms. Lichtenstein how are you? Do you have any clue about where and when the next world meeting us going to be?

Sincerely: Estonia

Hello, Estonia!

I'm doing great, however I don't know anything about the meeting yet..

[cbk1000]

I'm back on my the-ocean-terrifies-me-so-naturally-I'm-gonna-read-about-maritime-disasters bullshit, and I have decided to rate some of the shipwrecks I have read about by how personally terrifying they are to me. Note these are not rated in terms of loss of life/objectively worst, these ratings are simply based on how much they scare the shit out of me. I'm going to use a scale of 1-5, with 1 being, 'I guess if I absolutely had to be on a shipwreck this would be maybe the less terrible of absolutely horrific options' and 5 being, 'Absolutely the fuck not.' Putting under a cut for length and for any people who are normal and don't want to read about horrible maritime disasters.

Titanic 2/5: Let’s start with the most famous. I'm not going to add a summary for this one because literally everyone knows at least the basics. Why does it only get a 2/5 when there was such a huge death toll and not enough lifeboats? Because the ship took hours to sink, I'm middle-class and a woman, and therefore probably would have been a second class passenger, and of the 95 second class female passengers, 83 survived. I like those odds. The ship also went down on an even keel and didn't list much till the end, which, as you'll see later on, is not a courtesy the ocean affords many of these disasters. However, it was pitch black and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and even if you were one of the lucky ones who got a lifeboat, you were in a tiny little boat on the vast black early morning expanse of the Atlantic, with no idea of when or if rescue would come, and that sure is a lot of nope.

Empress of Ireland 5/5: The Empress of Ireland is not nearly as well-known internationally, but it is often referred to as Canada's Titanic. She was an ocean liner that sank in 1914 near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River after colliding with a Norwegian collier in thick fog. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died. Why does this get a 5/5? Because it sank in only 14 minutes, all the lights went out only a few minutes after the collision, and, to top it off, it happened early in the morning when pretty much all the passengers were sleeping, and on the first night of the voyage, before safety drills, so most of the passengers were unfamiliar with the layout of the ship. The list was also so severe, so quickly, that the port lifeboats couldn't be launched. If you were on a lower deck, you probably drowned almost immediately. If you were on an upper deck, you had minutes to navigate a pitch black ship whose layout you were unfamiliar with to get to the top, where you might not even get a lifeboat because half of them were out of commission. A salvage operation was commenced shortly after the sinking, and salvage divers found that many desperate passengers had tried to escape through their potholes and got stuck, and their bodies were seen hanging out the portholes. No. No. NO. I would have told the company to get their own fucking safe and booked it the fuck out of there.

Andrea Doria 4/5: The Andrea Doria was a luxury transatlantic ocean liner that sank in 1956 after colliding with the passenger liner Stockholm in fog off the coast of Nantucket. Only 51 people died, 46 from Doria, and 5 on Stockholm. The ship began to list severely immediately, rendering many of the lifeboats useless. However, the ship took 11 hours to sink, giving rescuers plenty of time to evacuate passengers. Almost all those who died did so as a result of the initial collision and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So why is this rated so highly? Because hundreds of passengers were left clinging to the decks of a severely listing ships for hours, wondering if the ship would roll over at any moment. I read accounts of people lying flat and taking off their shoes so they could grip the deck with their toes as well. I don't want to be cock teased with whether or not I'm going to die, Atlantic Ocean, either kill me or don't.

MS Estonia 4/5: There are some conspiracy theories for this one regarding what really caused the sinking, so I'm just going to recount what official investigations found. The MS Estonia was a ferry that sank in stormy weather, in 1994 in the Baltic Sea enroute to Stockholm, Sweden, due to poor cargo distribution which cause the ship to list, and a faulty bow door that separated from the ship and pulled the ramp askew. This caused water to flood in and rapidly worsened the list that was already present. 852 of 989 onboard died. It sank in the middle of the night, and many passengers were trapped in the ship, and even some of those who made it to the lifeboats died of hypothermia. Survivors reported hearing multiple bangs on the ship (hence the conspiracy theories about explosions or a collision really causing the sinking). So, you're on a ship in the middle of stormy seas, you're hearing bangs, and either you're trapped and fucked, or you get to go out on a lifeboat (i.e. bath toy) in the middle of the night in a storm in the Baltic Sea. It's a no from me.

MV Doña Paz 5/5: The MV Doña Paz was a ferry that sank in 1987 on its way to Manila after a collision with an oil tanker. It was extremely overcrowded, with an estimated extra 2,000 passengers who were not on the manifest. An estimated 4,385 people died, with only 26 survivors. The oil tanker caught on fire, which then spread to the Doña Paz. Survivors reported that the lights went out just minutes after the collision, there were no life vests to be found, and the crew were running about in a panic. The fire rapidly spread onboard, prompting many people to dive into the oily water...which was also on fire. Oh, and it was shark-infested. And filled with the charred bodies of their fellow passengers. Most of the survivors sustained burns. So, here were your options: burn to death; drown; burn and then drown; burn, but get pulled out of the water by rescuers, along with only two dozen other people out of the thousands who were aboard. -1000000/10 do not recommend this maritime disaster holy Jesus.

[pvppy-flesh]

HAPPY 2014!! HERES A RAMBLE ON FIREWORKS!!

watching people argue about fireworks is so stupid

i personally dislike them because i am autistic, own a dog and am very concious about climate change n shit and my god

why are you so angry about people saying they dont want private firework use, why are you yelling at SUPERMARKET managers for their store not selling them, why are you sending death threats to people, why are you so angry about people not liking private firework use??

it damages the world around you, you shoot them the minute they get sold and then shoot them till like february, its loud and scares animals and people, the smell is horrible, you dont or cant clean up your firework trash, i get it its pretty but you wont die for not shooting fireworks

in a comment section i have seen people say theyre disgusted by people against fireworks and how they absolutely will not migrate to switzerland because they dont,,, sell fireworks?? why are they so important to you? what do they do for you? why are you so fucking angry?? i get it theyre pretty but theres too many cons to pros

theres many people, animals and more who are negativly affected by fireworks

people with PTSD, people with ASD, children, animals who dont understand the noise, get the rockets shot at them, get the other stuff thrown at them, eat the thrash, breathe in the chemicals, get hurt in any way shape or form, in many towns people throw the firecrackers at other people too! (i was almost a victim of this a bit too ofthen) fires get started, the firecrackers get thrown into apartments and hurt people on accident and on purpose

especially in bigger cities like berlin many fireworkers have said silvester//new years is one of the most stressful times of the year for them and hell it is for me too and im not a firefighter i just get really stressed by all the noise and the smells, especially since theyll MASS BUY fireworks and then shoot them for months after silvester

sorry for the short continuisly repetative ramble i am very pissed at my neighbours because i need to blast the TV to watch my MS estonia docu, that getting said i hope you enjoyed 2013 <3

[mariacallous]

Estonia's Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, has told the BBC that Russia's Vladimir Putin is "afraid" of a war with Nato.

The leader of Estonia, which borders Russia, warned that while Putin is good at "sowing fear", his threats must also be taken seriously.

Ms Kallas added that Nato countries do not want to go to war with Russia either.

She has previously called on European countries to bolster support for Ukraine, warning that war could expand "very fast in Europe, so no country is left untouched" if Vladimir Putin wins.

[solrosan]

30 years since MS Estonia sank. Damn.