Documentary Casts Doubt on Official Finding in 1994 Ferry Disaster
After the Estonia sank in a storm off Finland, investigators said that a bow door had been bashed in by heavy seas. But a new series has raised disturbing fresh details.
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An undated photograph of the Estonia ferry. The sinking of the vessel, which killed 852 people, is one of Europe’s worst maritime disasters.
By Thomas Erdbrink
Sept. 30, 2020
Evidence collected by two documentary filmmakers is challenging the official explanation of how 852 people died in the 1994 sinking of a ferry in the Baltic Sea, one of Europe’s greatest maritime disasters.
The oceangoing passenger and car ferry, the Estonia, was en route from the Estonian capital, Tallinn, to Stockholm when it was stricken and sank rapidly in stormy seas. An official investigation found that its bow door had been ripped off by the heavy seas, flooding the car deck. The ship went down in less than an hour, with only 137 survivors.
A subsequent investigation in 2008 said that the ship had been traveling too fast in the surging waters and that the crew, while trying to save the ship, made the critical mistake of turning it and causing it to capsize.
But the five-episode documentary, which started streaming online in Scandinavia and Finland on Monday, draws a different and far darker conclusion: The filmmakers found a previously unrecorded gash in the hull of the ship about 13 feet long and four feet wide.
The conclusion of experts cited in the documentary was that the ferry had been struck by what was probably a slowly moving but extremely heavy object, causing it to sink.
Bodies of victims of the disaster were transferred to land in 1994. The Estonia went down in less than an hour, with only 137 survivors.
In a joint statement released on Monday, the governments of Estonia, Finland and Sweden said they would investigate the claim, which comes after years of complaints by families of the victims and survivors over the lack of a proper inquiry.
After the tragedy, the decision was made not to salvage the Estonia and give the victims a land burial, but instead to leave the ship on the seabed with the bodies interred inside. The Swedish authorities then planned to entomb the ferry in an underwater mausoleum by covering the wreck in a 12-inch layer of concrete, but the plan was abandoned after families of the victims objected.
Instead, the area where the ship lies about 260 feet beneath the waves was declared a sea grave, which prohibited further exploration of the wreckage. Violators of that order risk a two-year prison term.
For Henrik Evertsson and Bendik Mondal, the two leaders of the team that made the Discovery Networks documentary, that presented a problem.
After interviewing survivors and collecting evidence for the documentary, “Estonia: The Find That Changes Everything,” they say they found several serious inconsistencies in the official investigation.
“The first thing that really hit us was the fact that, in the final official report, the surviving witnesses had not been interviewed thoroughly,” Mr. Evertsson, who is from Sweden, said in a telephone interview.
After piecing things together, a different scenario emerged, he said. “Everything started with a big bang, not one that you hear, but one that everyone felt.”
In the documentary, a Norwegian maritime expert concluded that the Estonia had been hit by an object with a mass of 1,000 to 5,000 tons, moving at a relatively low speed, about three to 10 kilometers an hour. “It can also be that it weighed less and traveled faster,” Mr. Evertsson said. “It created heavy damage.”
Well aware of the penalty they might face, Mr. Evertsson and Mr. Mondal decided to go ahead and use a remotely operated underwater camera to map out the entire hull of the ship.
“We felt as journalists that we were obliged to see if there was a hole in the ship, after researching and hearing all witness accounts and taking into account the speed the Estonia went down with,” Mr. Evertsson said.
They decided not to enter the vessel to avoid disturbing any remains. “But we methodically scanned the hull of the ship,” Mr. Evertsson said. “At some point, on the starboard side, the hull just suddenly ended, and there was a massive gap.”
A Norwegian maritime expert concluded that the Estonia had been hit by an object with a mass of 1,000 to 5,000 tons.Credit...
“There was a long and relatively narrow hole compared to the length,” he continued, “with one piece of cracked steel pushed inwards into the ship and another part bending out.”
Another expert interviewed in the documentary said that were no indications of an explosion, a theory that was offered after it was reported that the ferry had been carrying military equipment.
One survivor, Carl Eric Reintamm, said that he had seen a large white object in the water next to the ferry, testimony that experts interviewed for the show said had not been taken into account before.
Documentary Casts Doubt on Official Finding in 1994 Ferry Disaster - The New York Times
The documentary makers did not speculate further about what the object may have been, leaving that for future, official investigations. But they have succeeded in raising strong doubts.
“I believe the truth is something other than what people have been told until now,” Mr. Reintamm said.
Documentary Casts Doubt on Official Finding in 1994 Ferry Disaster - The New York Times
