Mr Zahlér had inspected Estonia at Tallinn the 27 September 1994, the day before the accident together with Mr Sjöblom. Mr Zahlér said that in port (Tallinn) the watertight doors were open, that is to say “the doors got an input signal from the bridge to be kept open”. This was a strange arrangement,
according to Mr Björkman, he says you should not be able to open, or to keep open, watertight doors from the bridge - only to remotely close a locally open door from the bridge. Mr Zahlér thus explained that he tried
locally to close the doors in port, but when any door was closed, “they automatically opened immediately ... we didn’t close the doors from the bridge, as there were persons aboard” T at is the control panel on the bridge was arranged to prevent local closure of the watertight doors Figure 2 shows Estonia’s control panel
for watertight doors. Two deck plans with indication lights red/green - deck 1 with 14 watertight compartments and 11 doors, deck 0 with another 10 or 11 doors (one door is maybe a hatch in the deck?) most of which contravene SOLAS regulations. The panel confirms that several
watertight bulkheads had two or three watertight doors, in contravention of SOLAS regulations. Bottom left on the panel are two buttons/indication lights - the leſt is green. Maybe is it on/off for the
system. Bottom middle are four buttons and/or indication lights probably used for remote opening (the two upper) and for remote closing (the two lower ones). Bottom right is a dimmer and a small button for light bulb control. It is unclear whether it were possible to remotely open and close individual doors. Mr Björkman is convinced that
the defective watertight door system contributed in large part to the Estonia accident, as the ship would never have sunk if the doors were closed. “Maybe some doors were closed at sea before the leakage, some watertight compartments fi lled up and then the doors were opened (!) from the bridge by mistake, when the crew attempted to close all doors, which resulted in two big bangs heard on the ship just prior to the sudden listing”, he writes. He goes on to say that he never made
an attempt to verify this as it is diffi cult to do such a test, but the result would have been a shock wave of water fl ooding the adjacent dry compartment - probably being noticed by some noise or bangs - and then loss of stability, sudden listing due to the great free water surfaces on the inner bottom of several compartments. In response to a letter from a marine
expert (letter 960719) Mr Schager of the Commission answered: “T e watertight doors were closed” at the time of the accident. Asked how this was known Mr
Schager replied by letter 960801 that: “According testimonies the watertight doors were closed during the early events of the accident (at the beginning of the sequence of events)”. Mr Björkman asks: “What is “at the
beginning of the sequence of events, the alleged noise at 00.55hrs or the alleged listing at 01.15 hrs? And who closed them and from where, was it the bridge or locally?” No more clarifi cations were received
from Mr Schager. Nobody from the bridge survived and it was on the bridge that the indicating panel was located. Nobody was in the aſt compartments with many watertight doors. Nobody was on deck 0 forward with three watertight doors. T e 21 survivors from deck 1 observed that the fi ve watertight doors there were open. T e three survivors from the ECR had to pass watertight doors to escape. T us nobody could have confi rmed that all watertight doors were closed. Nevertheless, open watertight doors
do not sink vessels. T ey contribute to a vessels’ sinking when their hulls are damaged. So how did the water enter Estonia’s hull, through hull damage below the waterline, as suggested by Mr Björkman, or via a lost visor at the forward end of the superstructure on top of the hull as the offi cial report claims? A new investigation may clarify the matter. NA
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The Naval Architect September 2010 building for the heaviest duties 35
In-depth
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