Sunken ferry investigation: official report still holds

The Estonian and Swedish accident investigation boards say a research expedition earlier this year to the wreck of a ferry that sank into the Baltic Sea over 27 years ago hasn’t provided new evidence contradicting the official accident investigation report

The Estonian and Swedish accident investigation boards said Tuesday that a research expedition earlier this year to the wreck of a ferry that sank in the Baltic Sea 27 years ago hasn’t provided new evidence contradicting the official accident investigation report.

In one of Europe’s deadliest peacetime maritime disasters, the M/S Estonia — en route from Estonia's capital, Tallinn, to Stockholm in Sweden — sank in heavy seas on Sept. 28, 1994, killing 852 people, most of them Swedes and Estonians.

Only 137 people on board the ferry survived. The fate of the vessel has sparked several conspiracy theories, including that it collided with a submarine or that its alleged sensitive military cargo played a part in the sinking.

The 1997 official joint investigation by Estonia, Finland and Sweden concluded that the ferry sank when its bow door locks failed in a storm. That separated the bow door from the vessel, opening up the ramp to the car deck and causing extensive flooding of the decks, eventually sinking the vessel in just some 30 minutes from the initial distress call.

However others had questioned this amid increasing evidence that there was a large hole in the ferry.

Presenting the preliminary results of a dive by underwater robots in July, Rene Arikas, head of the Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau, said the dive revealed that the wreck does have a hole, about 22 meters long and four meters high. The wreck is resting on a slope on the seabed and its original position has changed over the years due to changes in the seabed, making the hole and other damage more visible, he said.

Despite this, he stressed that researchers currently have no evidence proving the official report on the sinking to be incorrect.

New underwater surveys are scheduled in March-April when visibility is considered the best, Arikas said.

Jonas Backstrand, deputy director general of Sweden's Accident Investigation Board, said researchers were surprised to find the seabed to be substantially rocky, and this could well be the reason for the hole.

“We don’t know how this damage (to the vessel) occurred,” Backstrand said, but it was likely when the vessel fell onto the rocky seabed. More investigation is needed, he said.

A separate, privately funded expedition commissioned by relatives of the victims of the M/S Estonia conducted a dive in September. Initial results of that dive are expected to be published early next year.

The wreck lies on the seabed some 80 meters (265 feet) below the surface in international waters off a Finnish island, and is considered a graveyard, which gives the area protection under the law.