Today marks the 30 year anniversary of one of the deadliest maritime tragedies in European history – M/S Estonia, on voyage from Tallinn to Stockholm, sank at the stormy Baltic Sea on the night of 28.September, 1994, taking the lives of 852 people.

The accident is still shrouded in mystery with many questions unanswered.

https://estonianworld.com/security/the-sinking-of-ms-estonia-30-years-of-unanswered-questions/

Have you heard of it? (People from Estonia, Finland and Sweden obviously do not need to reply to this)

How has this been covered in the media in your country, if it's mentioned at all?


24 comments

  1. Living “next door” to sweden , having swedish tv.. and there also norwegians on the ship. Accident happening just 4 years after Scandinavian Star tragedy in Norway which was the greatest ferry-disaster/tragedy in norway (post ww2). Just like Estonia, Scandinavian Star is also shrouded in mystery with trying to blaming a danish truck driver (that died in the fire) for making the ship into fire. Shady stuff going on with insurance, money etc.. . Hence quite much coverage in norwegian news about Estonia.

  2. I remember it, though I wasn’t in Europe when it happened,so don’t know what the media reaction was in Italy at that time.

    I haven’t seen any references to it here now or for a long time though,I don’t think it’s an event that many Italians know anything about at all

  4. This was actually sort off confirmed to be a covered up ARMS transfer from former soviet states to the west

  5. I have heard of it. Since it was a long time ago I don’t remember the details, but it was covered extensively in the media with reportages, witness reports, some technical explanations to the slide that didn’t close properly etc.

  6. It was covered extensively in Norway at the time. I was only nine years old, but I remember well how much attention it got. If I remember correctly it left such an impression on me that I was a little uncomfortable on ferries for a while.

  7. I was vaguely aware of it until a video popped up on my yt feed the other week. I was pretty surprised how weirdly the Swedish officials handled it (what with wanting to cover the shipwreck in some sort of gravel sarcophagus and so on) because either it was shady and a cover up, or the handling made it appear as such. In any case, i’m happy we’re landlocked here.

  8. It was all over the UK news at the time.

    The more “interesting” theories about what happened don’t have the same popular traction in the UK as those about, say, the Grassy Knoll, the death of Diana, 5G masts, Covid etc. Perhaps because we had the Herald of Free Enterprise where there was no conspiracy theory.

  9. It was well reported in the UK, especially after previous disasters such as Zebrugge which had similarities.

  10. Yes, I’ve read about it, in fact, there are some audio recordings from that night on YouTube that I’ve listened to, quite eerie. I have no idea if it was reported by the media (I wasn’t born yet), but it certainly wasn’t breaking news, since it happened during the Yugoslav wars.

  11. Just to give a scale on how fast it happened and how many was involved.

    If everyone stood ready by the lifeboats the moment of the accident, and had time until the ship disappeared from radar (listing at 90°); they would need to fill the lifeboats with 1 person every 3 seconds.

    In reality; the early-warning system had been destroyed, and they did not notice anything until 10 minutes later. 20 minutes after that, the ship listed 60°. So if everyone stood ready, they would need to evacuate 1 person per second.

  12. I’m from the Netherlands and I’ve always been very interested in European History but I’ve never heard of this event.

  13. I used to be scared if the ferries in the Baltic because of M/S Estonia. IIRC the sinking had something to do with the design of the front?

  14. It was extensively reported in UK, and there was a documentary tv programme a couple of years later. We British are a maritime nation and we felt the loss.

  16. I lived that time next to the hospital in Turku where they brought the survivors. I woke up to the nonstop sound of helicopters flying low over our house. They were massive helicopters from the Finnish and Swedish armies, and I will never forget the noise. It felt surreal that while looking out from your window you could see a major news story happening live.

    I even traveled on MS Estonia when it was Viking Sally. I never liked the ship; it was too labyrinthine and not cozy at all. It’s easy to understand why so few people were able to escape to the deck when it sank.

  17. I had never heard of it until just a few days ago when I preparing to travel to Tallinn for the first time and my mum mentioned briefly that a terrible disaster had occurred some years ago. It’s strange because I have heard people mention the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster many times but never the Estonia.

  18. If you’re up for it, read this story pieced together from official reports and the accounts of survivors: https://web.archive.org/web/20120910155031/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/

    If you’re not up for it I don’t blame you:

    >Survival that night was a very tight race, and savagely simple. People who started early and moved fast had some chance of winning. People who started late or hesitated for any reason had no chance at all. Action paid. Contemplation did not. The mere act of getting dressed was enough to condemn people to death, and although many of those who escaped to the water succumbed to the cold, most of the ultimate winners endured the ordeal completely naked or in their underwear. The survivors all seem to have grasped the nature of this race, the first stage of which involved getting outside to the Deck 7 promenade without delay. There was no God to turn to for mercy. There was no government to provide order. Civilization was ancient history, Europe a faint and faraway place. Inside the ship, as the heel increased, even the most primitive social organization, the human chain, crumbled apart. Love only slowed people down. A pitiless clock was running. The ocean was completely in control.

  19. A couple of things I’d like to say as a Finn:

    There’s a relatively new tv series about it, which was made with Estonian, Finnish and Swedish actors, and I remember one of the actors saying how eye-opening it was to hear how differently things were reported in each country. I don’t know the detail behind this statement, but it makes me curious.

    Interestingly, out of the 137 people rescued from the sea, 44 were rescued by the Finnish border guard Super Puma helicopter OH-HVG, while the total number of helicopters involved was 26.

  20. I only heard about it very recently in a Dutch television programme and have since then read a lot about it. It surprised me I hadn’t heard about it before, because I’ve read a lot about other maritime tragedies.

    Coincidentally, it seems the NPO (Dutch public broadcasting services) are airing a tv series about it. No idea if it is good, but I will be having a look at the first episode later today. 

  21. Pretty sure they have a documentary about it. So everyone that watches the dedicated planecrash/sinking ship channel of his country knows about it.

  22. Never knew about it , til a few weeks back when a tv show was about a guy who survived and wanted to thank a specific person that helped him survive. They found him and they met.

  23. From what I recall it was in the news 30 years ago, but I’ve not seen any mention of it being 30 years ago in the news these (past) days.

  24. I don’t remember hearing about this sinking at the time (I was 15 back then). I remeber MF Jan Heweliusz (a Polish ferry that sank in Januray of 1993).

    I’ve learned about M/S Estonia few years ago, from a video on Plainly Difficult channel on YT.

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