The Fifth Woman, Or Sinking Ferry Redux

Stu put up a post a couple of days ago about a ferry sinking off Zanzibar. At the time I was just starting on The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell, and one of the first things that comes up in this book is the sinking of the ferry MS Estonia just ouside of Tallin, Estonia, back in 1994. I remember reading about the Estonia disaster when it happened. In particular there was an article in a hydraulic engineering magazine about a new kind of lock for sea doors. Unfortunately, there were no pictures of the MS Estonia, so it was very hard to visualize what went wrong. Now, however, with the wide reach of the internet, we have pictures at our beck and call. Even the Wikipedia article has one, though it's not very good. This one is better.

From the Wikipedia article: "The bow visor was under-designed for the conditions Estonia was operating in (the ferry was designed for coastal waters, not open regions like the Baltic Sea)..."

I had imagined the doors to be big slabs fitted to the sides of bow. Being as the whole bow is the door, I can see how repeated pounding by the waves could have easily stressed the latches to the breaking point. They would, after all be hitting the door up and back, the same direction it would move when opening. Not a good idea for rough seas.

Update April 2015: Reading about deep sea diving, I came across another very similar ferry disaster from just a few years earlier. This was the sinking of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 just outside of port in Belgium.

Update January 2018. When daring duaghter went to Africa a few years ago she took a ferry to Zanzibar, possibly the same one. Count my blessings.

Update December 2019 removed some extraneous html format tags.