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 Interview
with Anders Björkman
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Q. You were one of the first critics of the Estonia investigation. Why?A. I was at sea in the Mediterranean when the accident took place 1994 but could follow the news reports on radio. I was quite shocked having at that time upgraded several roro-passenger ferries and converted a number of other ships into roro-passenger ferries. I wondered why the Estonia had sunk and if it could happen to my ferries. Once ashore I studied everything written in the press about the accident. By chance I was at that time member of a technical committee at the IMO, London, investigating oil tanker accidents and tanker safety in order to develop guidelines to analyse tanker designs. Börje Stenström was the chairman and I met him on Monday 30 October 1994, at 08.30 hrs am, in London, i.e. a month after the accident. I suggested to Stenström to
check the intact stability of the Estonia with water in the superstructure - the ship would have capsized and floated upside down. Stenström went pale and told me that I didn't know what it was all about. Then Stenström never wanted to discuss the accident.
Q. What happened then?
A. I wrote to the Commission suggesting that 2 000 tons of water in the superstructure (on the car deck) of the Estonia would have caused immediate capsize resulting in the ship floating upside down. The Commission never replied. I got a copy of the Part report (April 1995) and noted that the Commission didn't mention anything about stability. I found it strange. I met Stenström several times 1994-1996 but he never wanted to discuss the Estonia, which I also found very strange.
Q. What is your opinion of Stenström?
A. He was of course a qualified naval architect but when we worked with the tanker accidents at the IMO 1992-1996 he once made a very strange thing. Ferries and other ships evidently only sinks, if they are damaged below the waterline, but tankers evidently spill oil, if they are also damaged only above the waterline; in fact it had been found after analysing >250 tanker accidents that 80% of all minor damages to tankers and 50% of all serious accidents to tankers were only located above the waterline, and I suggested that the improved collision protection should be located there. Stenström had previously suggested that we should assume that all oil tanker damages developed below the waterline and could not accept the new statistics presented. Actually Stenström manipulated the meeting record to the effect that the latest statistics disappeared (!). At the next meeting I had to ask Stenström to properly record the correct statistics, which he did. I thought he had made a mistake but in retrospect I think the 'error' was intentional. Stenström was easy to manipulate.
Q. Back to the Estonia. What did you then do?
A. The summer 1996 I collected all the information I had and wrote an article which was published in the largest Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 15 August 1996. It suggested that the Estonia sank due to a leakage below the hull. The reaction of the Commission was amazing: the Commission told Swedish news agency TT that the article was unintelligent and unscientific gibberish by an unreasonable person. After the article was published I got a lot of information from the German group of experts so I wrote another article in Lloyd's List, London, to the same effect published in November 1996. Then more information arrived. It was quite clear that the Commission was not telling the truth. The lies started the same day of the accident. At that time of course all the work of the Commission was secret so it was difficult to prove the lies. At that time Stenström also wrote to me stating he never wanted to hear from me. A couple of months later Stenström died of cancer. It was strange - Stenström was never treated against cancer. He was working till the end. I was very upset about the whole thing so I started to write the book
'Lies and Truths about the M/V Estonia accident'. Then the Final report was published in December 1997 - it was clear that it was a report of lies from A to Z. Nothing was correct. My book was printed in January 1998 and it got good reviews in some technical publications and in one Swedish daily - Finanstidningen. Finanstidningen really pushed my ideas. But the result was disappointing - no real discussion started. But a lot of other parties started to work really hard with various aspects of the accident and the investigation. The difficulty was that everything was falsified by the Swedish government - reports, testimonies, conclusions, etc. Wherever you looked nothing fitted, but it was quite cleverly done. It is described in my latest book
Q. But how is it possible to falsify everything?
A. If you study the work of the Commission 1994-1997 you find that nothing was properly recorded and that the evidence was continuously manipulated and modified to suit the early allegations from 1994. I think no proper investigation was ever done. What the Commission tried to do was to write a completely false investigation report. It was of course difficult or impossible. So they gave up and allowed a 'ghost writer' to complete the fairy tale. It was a collective effort. Nobody was personally responsible for any investigation. It was just a big show.
Q. But a Final report was issued in December 1997.
A. Evidently, but it was not written by the Commission. The Commission met for the last time in March 1997 and stated then that the report was complete and finished, but it was not true. During the summer of 1997 an outside expert of misinformation collected the bits and pieces of the Commission's work and wrote the Final report. Why do I think so? Well, there exists no manuscript of the complete and finished report from March 1997.
Q. Why was this not discovered?
A. The Commission was clever - for three years they repeated over and over again that the bad visor locks caused the accident and that water on the car deck sank the ship and the media splashed these two false statements on the front pages as fact. The public could then not believe anything else. And the falsifications were quite clever: the plot of the accident (
Q. You have suggested several times that the lifesaving equipment and the watertight subdivision of the Estonia were defective.
A. It is obvious. The Estonia had only correct lifesaving equipment for less than 1 200 persons but was certified from for more than 2 100 persons. The Commission only invents the suggestion that the lifesaving equipment was correct. The Estonia was also like a Swiss cheese in the hull - much too many watertight doors in the watertight bulkheads. The Commission cleverly forgets to mention anything about watertight subdivision, watertight doors and bilge pumps.
Q. You met the Estline captain Erich Moik at Stockholm in the autumn 1998.
A. Yes. I went aboard the Regina Baltica to hand out some free copies of my book and I met captain Moik. A very nice person. I liked him a lot. We discussed the matter and agreed that the Estonia sank due to a leak in the hull and captain Moik suggested that it was the starboard stabilizer fin foundation that broke. It is possible.
Q. Do you have other suggestions? You have mentioned problems with the swimming pool?
A. Later I got more info from survivors what happened aboard. There seems to have been one bang, say, about 15-20 minutes before the ship started to heel (at 01.02 hrs), and it could very well have been the stabilizer foundation that broke. Then there were definitely two hard bangs/impact just before 01.00 hrs and then the ship suddenly listed a lot, >30°, to starboard, and then it came back to a stable position at 10-15 degrees list. The origin of these two last bangs/impacts is unknown. The ship may have collided with something. Or the strange swimming pool on deck 0 recessed down into the double bottom started to leak. I have never heard about a ship with a swimming pool in the double bottom but the Estonia had one. It was of course very dangerous, particularly if it was rusty. I think something went wrong with the swimming pool. The final report does not mention the swimming pool at all. The call it a sauna! But it could of course have been an act of sabotage, a crime. The visor had nothing to do with the accident. It was removed afterwards by the Swedish navy.
Q. What is your opinion about the un-dead Estonians?
A. I agree with captain Moik that it is very likely that captain Piht and chief engineer Leiger survived and later were made to disappear. It seems 8-9 Estonian crewmembers were picked up by the Swedish helicopter Y64 at around 02.50 hrs and that another three were picked up by the 'Mariella'. But I have no evidence except the fact that the whole Final report is false from A-Z. Every essential fact in the Final report is either directly false or misleading. You do not write such a report unless you have a very good reason. And Captain Piht and chief engineer Leiger may be that reason - they knew what really happened. I think it is a scandal that no bodies were salvaged from the wreck. But as they say, no bodies, no crime.
Q. What really happened?
A. It is very easy to find out, just ask, e.g. 3/E Margus Treu, Henrik Sillaste and Hannes Kadak. They have stated that they were in and remained in the
Q. But why haven't they told the real story before?
A. They were definitely threatened to keep quiet and to tell another story 1994. The political and economic situation in Estonia was then unstable, most people still behaved as under Soviet times and it was very easy to prepare the foundation of a false investigation, etc., even if it was difficult to write the Final (false) report. Now it seems that most Estonians want to forget the whole Estonia accident, but I believe it is wrong. The independent Estonian republic is soon ten years old - it is time to clean out the skeletons from the early years. The Estonia accident is one such skeleton. It is up to the Estonian people. I myself am mainly interested in safety at sea and to prevent future Estonia accidents. I hope the
