The sinking of the Estonian cruise ship Estonia in 1994, in which 852 people drowned 26 years ago, may have been caused by a collision with a submarine, according to a recent TV documentary.
The makers of the program said they had directed a remotely operated camera-submarine to explore the wreck of the Estonia, and during this, they discovered a previously unknown hole measuring one by four meters in the hull. Their findings were streamed this week in the Discovery documentary “Estonia: The Find That Changes Everything,” in which experts stated that the hole in the hull could only have been caused by an enormous external force.
Only 137 of the 989 people on board the ferry survived when it sank on September 28, 1994, in international waters off the coast of Finland. It remains Europe’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster.
The Foreign Ministers of Estonia, Finland, and Sweden said in a statement that they will jointly assess the new information presented in the documentary. However, Margus Kurm, who at the time led the Estonian government commission that investigated the disaster, already says that a collision with a submarine was “the most likely cause.”
The original investigation into the MS Estonia disaster concluded that the sinking was caused when the ship's bow door was twisted open, allowing water to flood the car deck. The ship was en route to Stockholm from Tallinn when it sank.
Passengers from 17 countries drowned in the disaster, including 501 Swedes and 285 Estonians. Many bodies have not yet been recovered from the wreck, and exploratory diving at the site was banned under an agreement from 1995, signed by the governments of Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. However, the documentary makers reportedly used a ship under German flag to explore the wreck.