I know this animation is quite slow, but it is supposed to match up with the mayday call. The ship does eventually sink, just watch. If you would like to know more about the MS Estonia, read what is below. ↓ First of all, nobody knows exactly what happened to the Estonia. There are many conspiracy theories about this, but the one I wrote about is the most possible and believable one. I do know about the submarine theory, but I do not completely believe that. On this day, September 28th, 29 years ago, the cruise ferry MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea. The Estonia was originally a ship belonging to Viking Line, named Viking Sally. It was built in Papenburg, Germany in 1980. It was eventually sold to Silja Line and renamed Silja Star, then to Wasa Line and called Wasa King, and finally Estline to be named Estonia. Once the ship was acquired by Estline, it was placed on the Tallinn-Stockholm route. One night, September 27th, 1994, the Estonia left on a night route from Tallinn, Estonia to Stockholm, Sweden during a large storm. Around 1:00 AM, the bow visor, which opened up to let cars go in and out of the ship, was hit by a large wave. The locks failed and the bow visor was ripped off of the ship. This made the car ramp, that is behind the bow visor, open slightly as well. Water came in through the gaps and flooded the car deck. The ship lost all power and rolled to a heavy starboard list, eventually reaching 90˚. This made it impossible to launch any lifeboats. The ship capsized and eventually sank to 80 meters below the sea. Out of the 989 people on board, 852 lost their lives, and 137 survived. The first ships to arrive after the sinking were Viking Mariella, belonging to Viking Line, closely followed by Silja Europa from Silja Line. All of the ships, not including Estonia, that were in the Baltic Sea at the time were Silja Europa, Silja Symphony, Viking Mariella, Viking Isabella, Finnjet, Finn Hansa, Finn Merchant and Westön. The bow visor was lifted from the sea in November 1994 and taken to Hanko, Finland to be investigated, to try to discover the cause of the tragedy. The car ramp was lifted much more recently in July 2023. A law states that nobody is allowed to disturb the wreck of the Estonia, because it is a grave site for all of the victims who died in this tragedy. I'm very sorry for all the people who lost their lives, families of those people, and the survivors who had to witness the sinking of the MS Estonia. I do not know everything about the Estonia, and this is definitely not all there is to know about it. If you would like to learn even more about the Estonia, I'd recommend checking out the Wikipedia page (there are two, one about the ship itself and one about the sinking) along with many other websites. I tried to find as much information as I could about the Estonia, but I'm sure there's still a lot for me to learn and a lot to be discovered.
