Original subtitles

The Estonia was no ordinary accident.

It was a devastating disaster of unseen proportions,

that claimed many lives and left many affected.

In a country like Sweden,

everything must be done to find the truth about such an accident.

There's no room for suspicion of hiding something,

of trying to avoid something, to keep something secret.

The decision made on 15 December, 1994, was like a cold shower.

The macabre idea was to cover the vessel

with a sarcophagus of concrete, which has never happened before, ever.

This was truly a strange decision.

Three million of taxpayers' money will be thrown into the sea.

It makes no sense to cover the vessel with concrete

if it was just a normal accident.

I think its disrespectful to bury people in concrete.

This would never have happened in Norway.

It seemed like they were trying to hide something.

We don't know if this really was an accident.

Why the secrecy?

When a passenger ship in a time of peace,

sailing in neutral waters suffers a shipwreck...

Why all the fuss and secrecy? Why was this necessary?

A law-abiding state must leave no stone unturned

in finding out what really happened.

Let's reel it in, there's a lot of weight on the spool.

The bow visor is slowly coming up to the surface.

The bow visor is upside down and in very bad shape.

The force it was exposed to must have been enormous.

The bow visor was located about two kilometres west of the wreck.

So they changed course after the visor came loose, to avoid water coming in.

How quickly this happened is still unknown.

Now that you know the cause, what further actions will be made?

We need to quickly write a report

with a full technical description of what we were able to determine.

In November 1994, it was known that the bow visor had detached.

Witnesses had seen that the bow visor was gone.

If the bow visor had detached, the locking devices must've failed.

Start now, and let's see if the locking bolts hold.

Our calculations were important in finding out why this happened.

We got it to break.

It was clear from the start what had happened.

Here is the Accident Commission's report.

It describes what happened in the Baltic Sea

on the night of September 28th, 1994.

228 pages describe the official explanation

on why the Baltic Sea ferry sank that stormy night in September 1994.

The answer to the main question,

why the Estonia lost her bow visor and capsized,

will be cleared up.

It took several years to reach these conclusions.

It felt like they were searching

for the answers we already had from the beginning.

The locking devices of the bow visor were too weak.

The ramp was forced open

due to mechanical interference with the bow visor.

When the Joint Accident Investigation Commission report

was released in the autumn of 1997, my reaction was:

"Okay, so that's what happened. I'm no accident investigator."

I couldn't argue with it.

But there were other more qualified experts than myself

who reacted rather quickly. They contacted us

at the Swedish Parliament and said: "This is incorrect."

It contains different maps of different areas and nearby vessels.

They describe the course of the sinking in detail, according to the commission.

"September 27th, 1994, at 7:15 PM: The Estonia departs from Tallinn."

"The boat is about 15 minutes late."

"The weather report on the radio, an hour before departure,

"warned of a storm with 21 m/s winds."

"00:55 AM: The first bang."

"The vessel hits a large wave and a metallic bang from the front is heard."

"01:00 AM: The bow visor's locking mechanism fails."

"Multiple passengers and crew hear an unusual noise for ten minutes."

"The Estonia continues at the current speed."

"01:14 AM: The vessel has no list. The bow visor falls off."

"The loading ramp falls down."

"Large amounts of water rush in, affecting the balance."

"The vessel lists heavily."

"In about one minute,

"the vessel goes from zero to 15 degrees on the starboard side."

"Chief on the bridge tries to correct the situation

"by steering into the wind port side."

"01:20 AM: The engines stop, list is 30 degrees."

"The vessel is taking in 20 tons of water per second."

"01:24 AM: The Estonia radios mayday."

Mayday! Mayday!

"MS Silja Europa responds."

This is Silja Europa. Are you in distress?

"01:25 AM: The list is estimated at more than 40 degrees starboard."

"01:29 AM: 60 degree list."

Silja Europa, Estonia.

"The last radio call from the Estonia is received."

"Really bad, it looks really bad here now",

the third mate, Andres Tammes, calls.

"01:35 AM: The vessel capsizes. 80 degree list."

"01:40 AM: 140 degree list."

"01:50 AM: The Estonia sinks."

"The Estonia sinks and disappears from radars

"about 55 minutes after the first bang."

"The last ones holding onto the hull

"are left in the water or dragged into its depths."

A very detailed report, just not about what happened, unfortunately.

A vessel that size doesn't sink like that, not that fast

without something else causing water to flood the boat.

The investigation quickly concluded

that the bow visor was to blame.

That was the established conclusion

when the Accident Commission started their work.

It took them three years to confirm that conclusion.

This was done without considering witness reports

or other evidence contradicting that conclusion.

This approach is the exact opposite

of how a serious investigation should be carried out.

The Accident Commission didn't conduct

any systematic questioning of the survivors.

I've never been part of any investigation.

You should conduct a maritime inquiry. The witnesses know how

the vessel behaved and sank, and what they saw and didn't see.

I believe the report and investigation do not depict everything that happened.

The only time I was interviewed,

was about a week after the accident, in Sweden.

The police contacted me, and I gave them my statement.

I never spoke to anyone from the Accident Commission.

The interview was conducted over the phone.

No second, third or fourth phone call from the Swedish police.

Reading the protocol now, I can see that it's littered with misunderstandings.

Studying the material, you can for instance see that

one person was considered a witness as he was a crew member.

As a passenger, I was not considered a witness.

Were they not worth considering?

If that's your perception, I believe you're wrong.

The listing began around midnight Swedish time.

But the Accident Commission claimed it was 15 minutes later.

Here I have a unique document from the Estonia.

This is my alarm clock that had stopped.

It's set to Swedish time, and it shows when the listing began.

Because it stopped just after midnight.

That's when it fell to the floor and the battery fell out,

making the clock stop.

I know it was around 12 AM,

because I heard a beep from a digital clock somewhere.

Just after 12 AM there were two really loud bangs.

It felt like we had hit some rocks. That was my immediate thought.

Right after that, my bed tilted.

It immediately tilted this much.

It tilted, and it stayed in that position.

"01:00 AM: The vessel is level."

The listing started very quickly. It went fast.

It was like the bed rose up. I got dressed and tried to open the door.

All my luggage had fallen out.

I checked the floor by the door if there was anything else there,

and I found my alarm clock, which I put in my pocket.

I only did this to open the door so it wouldn't jam, because it opened inwards.

I decided to get dressed and go out to see what had happened.

I walked up the stairs, and the boat began to shake.

I wondered what was going on.

"Many passengers and crew hear a strange sound for about ten minutes."

"The vessel is not listing."

All loose equipment moved across to the starboard side.

Stuff was lying diagonally.

The listing was worsening jerkily.

I knew something wasn't right. This wasn't going to end well.

"The Estonia continues at its current speed."

"The vessel is not listing."

Just as I got up the stairs, the vessel tilted even more.

I grabbed the handrail to hold myself up.

Many were losing their grip and footing and slid to the other end of the boat.

Shortly after that, a drink dispenser came sliding off the wall.

The vessel was tilting so much

that you stood with one foot on the deck and one on the wall.

It was like standing at the bottom of a letter V.

"01:14 AM: The boat is not listing."

I estimate that about five to ten minutes had passed.

Something wasn't adding up.

The survivors put together a timeline that we all agreed on.

We met in Jerstad and went over it together.

We concluded that we all had the same view

on when things had happened.

"Yes, I was here... I was there... I was here..."

It all added up, but didn't match the Accident Commission's report.

So that's why we wanted to take action, and we wrote a letter.

34 of us signed it,

requesting a new investigation.

An Accident Commission is formed to find the cause of an accident.

I'm convinced that this is in the report.

Everything can be criticized, everybody can criticize.

The reason for the accident was quite clear to us.

The Accident Commission's theory on how the Estonia sank, is:

First, the visor fell off the bow.

Then the loading ramp fell down,

and large amounts of water flooded into the open deck.

The Accident Commission's theory is that the water that flooded in, sank the boat.

The bow visor fell off, water came into the car deck, causing the vessel to sink.

The laws of physics state that the boat should have capsized.

When boats rapidly list, air pockets are formed

which provide the boat with buoyancy.

When these types of ships are turned upside down,

they are able to float for quite some time due to the air pockets in the hull.

The big unanswered question regarding the Estonia

is why she didn't tip over completely and float for a long time?

Like the ferry MS Jan Heweliusz did the year before,

when it listed and instantly turned over 180 degrees,

and then floated for days. The Estonia sank in less than an hour.

How did the water get in under the car deck so quickly?

That can't be explained by water only coming in through the car deck.

Some even claim to have seen water under the car deck.

"Nobody ever asked us", they said.

Other than a few who were interviewed.

My cabin was below the car deck.

As I came around the corner,

I saw water rushing in along the bulkhead.

Judging by the amount, I realized straight away

that it was seawater flooding the vessel.

The water I saw as I came out of my cabin, on my way up,

I wondered where it came from.

I couldn't understand why there was water

in the corridor of a boat, below the car deck.

To this day, I don't understand how this could be explained

by the bow visor falling off, when I saw water coming in from the bottom.

And not from the stairs where I ran up, but rushing in along the bulkhead.

Water was coming in from under the cabins,

and not from where I ran up.

Nobody denies that the bow visor has detached.

But that wasn't the cause of the sinking.

On the 28th of September 1994, I was working in Berlin.

I was an investigative journalist working for Spiegel Television.

I got suspicious of the Accident Commission,

the way they acted, their findings and whatever they explained to the media,

by interviewing two key witnesses.

Henrik Sillaste and Tanel Moosaar were technicians working on the Estonia.

They were the last ones to get off the ship, via the chimney.

They were climbing through the chimney, and the water was coming in,

so they got out in the last minute.

We got these two for an interview.

What we wanted to find out, was what they saw.

In the engine room

there was a camera that was still directed towards the car ramp.

They were looking at the camera

up to the moment when the ship had a list of 90 degrees.

They then drew this picture for us.

Could you make a drawing?

They said that this car ramp they saw via a camera from the engine room

it was never open.

Only a little bit of water came in from the sides,

but not enough water to sink the ship.

This completely breaks the Accident Commission's theory.

But if the ramp was never open,

we have to figure out how water could get into the Estonia so that it sunk.

Estonia was built in a German shipyard,

the Meyer shipyard, a very prominent one.

They wanted to defend themselves, so they called in a group of experts.

Naval architects, captains, naval lawyers specializing in naval tasks.

This is the car deck of the Estonia looking from midship and forward.

This is the bow ramp, the centre casing. This is the port side...

They were doing their own calculations and coming up with witness statements.

For instance, statements from people who were staying below the car deck.

There are certain indications that this compartment was filled with water

and under pressure at the time of the starboard list.

The shipyard quickly came to the assumption

that another in-stream of water had happened.

Not via the car deck, but underneath it.

For them, it's relatively clear that there's only one explanation.

There's a hole in the hull on the starboard side on which the ship is lying.

And this hole is probably the main cause of the sinking of the ship.

Because then the sink scenario is in line with what really happened.

After nearly five years of work, the Meyer Shipyard, builders of the Estonia,

released their final report, explaining why the Estonia sank.

The final conclusions are controversial, mildly put.

The Meyer Shipyard claim there were explosive devices on board,

that were detonated during the disaster.

According to the shipyard's experts, explosives were placed on the ship,

which detonated in conjunction with the sinking.

The report says that it is probable that the damage in certain areas

has been caused by explosion.

- This will be in your final report? - Yes, it's all there.

- Who put the explosives there? - I don't know.

The people who did it, wanted to sink the ship.

Werner Hummel stated the explosions were not the main cause,

but sped up the process.

Christer Lindvall, CEO of the Swedish Ship Officers Association.

- You have run Silja Line for ten years? - Yes, correct.

- Do you believe the report? - Regarding the explosions...

I would say it sounds strange.

I always trusted previous investigations by the Meyer Shipyard.

The Chief Prosecutor in Stockholm said the reports

from the Accident Commission

and the Meyer Shipyard are equally credible and probable.

I think it's important to examine the entire vessel.

The vessel is lying on its side, so it's difficult to examine the bottom side,

but as long as these speculations surface, I deem it necessary

that the vessel is investigated by a new accident commission.

I'm sure we have found out the realities and the real circumstances.

All other reasons and theories,

they are not worth considering seriously.

The survey we did was a normal survey,

to see if the ship could be salvaged.

Then you need to know the condition, and that's what we did.

When we did the survey, we flew all over the ship with the ROV.

The condition of the ship, except for the bow section,

the lost bow door and the ramp, was perfect.

The only serious damage that we could see,

was the bow door and the ramp.

During the first dives, they didn't know what they were looking for.

We don't know if the entire vessel was examined

and documented on film.

Images were lost, they can no longer be looked at.

Video footage that for unknown reasons can't be found, it's just disappeared.

Why? Why has documentation disappeared?

What are the reasons for that?

They claim the wreck was examined, but we have yet to see documentation.

There are no reports of an examination, or whether it provided a certain result.

We filmed a lot and thought it was enough,

but we didn't film systematically.

We had no special reason to do that.

We didn't expect to find any damage on the hull.

Our mission was never to investigate the cause of the accident.

But it was very clear what the cause of the accident was.

That's the bow door. The bow door and the ramp. That's it.

Water inside, capsizing. That's it, it's that simple.

With a RORO ship, it's that simple.

You must remember, we are talking about quite difficult issues.

If you don't understand that, you shouldn't stick your nose into it.

They're getting upset for no reason.

They're only reminded of the pain by reopening their wounds.

Is that sensible? I don't know.

It's unfair that most of the people

don't know what happened to their relatives that day.

I can feel it myself.

I lost my parents when I was 21 years old. They died in an accident.

I was extremely interested then in finding out what had happened.

I was very happy in the end to have a grave I could go to and mourn.

I can only imagine what it feels like

to be left on a limb by their own government

without any real explanation.

"The ship sank, your relatives are gone."

"Now be quiet and go on with your life."

That's not the way a government should treat their citizens.

Seminar participants, lecturers, just a quick message for you.

There's a pamphlet in the foyer.

We ask you to please read this.

If you agree with the contents, please sign it.

In 2000, there was a conference about the Estonia case in Stockholm,

held by the relative organization.

I went there to maybe get some new information.

I met this American guy, Gregg Bemis.

I've spent most of my life on the ocean, in it, on it, under it.

I'm also the chairman of two companies.

One is probably the largest commercial diving school in the world.

The other company is an ROV company, Deep Ocean Engineering,

which has made more ROVs of this kind than any other company in the world.

Gregg had lots of experience diving to wrecks,

and was dedicated to make a dive to the Estonia wreck.

Our aim was to find and film the hole that must be in the hull.

We're looking for that famous hole on the bottom of the ship.

That's the simplest way of putting it.

Gregg Bemis and his crew will look for a hole in the hull,

to prove that the detached bow visor was not the only reason the Estonia sank,

as claimed by the Accident Commission.

I think we can find everything we want to find in four days.

Our goal is to find conclusive evidence that a further examination is needed.

What do you think you'll find?

I think we'll find there were other significant reasons why the ship sank,

that don't relate at all to what the JAIC report said.

For the first time in years,

divers are headed down to the wreck of the Estonia.

We had announced this expedition.

When we got there, it was as if there was a fairground happening.

There were press boats all over.

The Finnish and Swedish coast guard were there.

They all tried to convince us not to dive.

One Eagle, what are your intentions?

My intention is to do my job, same as you.

We have to decide how we behave together.

Just to inform you,

according to Swedish law, it is not permitted to dive here.

Seven Baltic nations have signed an agreement

forbidding diving near the wreck.

But the US have not signed the agreement.

The government should join us. They have nothing to lose.

Either their report is confirmed,

or they get confirmation of the fact that further examination is needed.

Unless they have something to hide,

they should be interested in getting more evidence.

During that operation, the Swedish and Finnish coast guard came on board.

It was like in the theatre.

They came up to us, trying to threaten us in front of running cameras.

This is a crime in Sweden.

If you come to Sweden for vacation or something,

you might risk being arrested by the police.

To me, it was unreal. It's international waters.

What we did, was to try to find the truth.

What could a new examination of the starboard side conclude with?

I suppose it could be of value

in terms of disproving the rumours that there's a hole on the starboard side.

Very early in our diving expedition, we tried to find the big hole.

But of course, there was a huge pile of stones and rubble

in that exact place.

We could not remove the stones and rubble.

That would require time and resources, and we didn't have that.

But we found a hole.

- Are you kidding me? - No, this is no joke!

Gregg! We found the hole on the mud line.

It looks very small. They have tried to push sand over it,

but the sand falls into the hole, so the crack is still visible.

It only takes a small one.

But we can't say how big it is. We only see a little bit of it.

That's all we need. That's enough for an investigation. That's all we need.

An American and German collaborative diving expedition claims their footage

shows a so far undiscovered hole in the hull of the Estonia.

But after examining the footage in a TV studio in Tallinn today,

representatives of the Finnish Accident Commission struck back.

If there was a hole there, the sand wouldn't behave like that.

It would get sucked into the hole. It's impossible that there's a hole there.

Swedish experts say that the reported hole is a bluff.

Clearly, they didn't find a hole.

They knew what they were looking for, but didn't find a hole.

He has failed in his mission.

He said he would prove there's a hole, and that he'd show us the hole exists.

He has not done that, so it's time to say goodbye to Mr Bemis.

You have failed in your mission, so you are no longer of interest.

I don't believe in the Accident Commission's final conclusion.

The whole time, it has been impossible for me to believe...

...that the vessel had to be covered in concrete

if it was just a normal accident.

There had to be another reason.

I moved to Estonia in 1995.

A Finnish lawyer came to see me,

who worked for the shipyard that built the Estonia.

Obviously, they were looking for possible explanations

that proved they weren't to blame for the accident.

They had read the report. I told them my story.

And they asked many questions.

But the one question I couldn't forget,

that seemed to be very important...

They asked me if what I saw in the water, could have been a submarine.

Just after midnight, there were two really loud bangs.

It sounded like the vessel was ploughing through ice.

I raced straight up the stairs.

I think it only took me a few seconds to get...

From when I heard the strange noises in my cabin and until I got up...

It must have taken me less than a minute

to reach the upper deck of the vessel.

When I got outside, I didn't see anyone else.

Where I was standing, there was no one.

I was clearly one of the first ones to make it up there.

While I was standing there, I looked out to sea, I looked down,

and I saw something strange in the water.

I saw something white that was several metres long.

And it was moving towards the left.

This thing was moving.

I've never served in the military.

I have no idea what a submarine looks like under water.

The water was dark.

I have no idea if a submarine can appear brighter than the water,

but the vessel must have hit something.

What else could explain the noises I heard,

which sounded like the vessel was ploughing through ice,

when I was downstairs where you can hear everything that hits the vessel?

When dealing with big stories like this, you have to be careful.

You have to be careful of what you write and report, and not to speculate.

When you go online to find out why the Estonia sank,

you find all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Some completely wild and improbable.

That it was an Arab operation, the Israelis did it,

it was a drug smuggling operation gone wrong.

It makes it difficult for journalists, because when you write or ask about it,

you get lumped in with the other conspiracy theorists out there.

Nobody knows what to believe.

But after 21 years investigating the sinking of the Estonia,

here's what I know is true:

The Estonia was used in a smuggling operation

which brought vital secrets from Russia to the West.

It's about the Russian mafia, smuggling and other criminal activities.

It was a combined operation involving MI6,

Estonian intelligence and Swedish intelligence.

There were two clear and specific warnings from the Russians to the West.

"We know you're running a smuggling operation via the ferry Estonia."

"You need to stop, or else..."

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