As maritime safety experts investigate what caused the Baltic ferry
Estonia to list and sink, killing more than than 900, George Hume looks
back at an almost parallel tragedy which cost the lives of a ship's crew
of teenage boys.
THE four-masted barque Pamir had sailed the world's oceans for more
than half-a-century, weathered many storms, and always fetched safely
home to port. But just before midday on September 21, 1957, on passage
from Buenos Aires to Hamburg with a cargo of grain, the Pamir heeled
right over on her port side, her masts in the water and half the
lifeboats crushed.
Her teenage crew literally slid into the icy waters of the Atlantic
down the perpendicular wall that had, moments before, been the ship's
deck. In all, 86 were on board -- only six survived. Forty-six of those
who drowned were teenagers, cadets training in sail for a lifetime in
the merchant service.
Lessons learned from the tragedy -- about the need to make it
impossible for cargo to shift, about breaching sea water running
unhindered across lower decks -- are likely to get a fresh airing when a
board of inquiry sits to determine just why an apparently well-found
vessel, the pride of Estonia's national fleet, should suddenly have
turned on her side and gone down with such tragic loss of life. Already
there is talk of an unrealistically relaxed attitude on the part of ship
operators and the travelling public towards safety.
The ferry Estonia sank in bad weather: the Pamir foundered in the
winds of hurricane Carrie. But both ships had dealt with similar
conditions before and come through unscathed. Attention is being
directed at the integrity of the Estonia's bow doors and whether they
may have let in thousands of tonnes of sea water which then gave the
ship its fatal list. After the loss of the Pamir the focus was on the
cargo of loose grain which, with exactly the same effect as sea water,
turned the steel-hulled barque on its side.
For more than a century Britain's Merchant Shipping Act has required
that grain be carried in sacks and that ''shifting'' or baffle boards be
used. But as everyone who has driven their car through the open maw of a
roll-on roll-off ferry knows, there is no equivalent to the baffle
boards demanded on grain carriers. If sea water enters the ferry in any
quantity it may go where it wills and a list, once at 30 degrees, will
be exacerbated by trucks breaking loose from their shackles and plunging
down the sloping deck to frustrate any possibility of the ship's
recovery.
The Pamir was not a British ship. Registered in Lubeck in Germany, her
master, crew and cadets were German. Just six years before her loss, her
owners had spent #200,000 rebuilding and re-equipping the vessel which,
grim irony, in its early years had its home waters where the Estonia
sank.
The board of inquiry into the loss of the Pamir, in force-9 winds, 600
miles south-west of the Azores, blamed her master for the disaster. He
was not among the survivors. The inquiry found that the 4000-tonne cargo
of loose grain had shifted. Evidence to this was that even when all 12
sails still set had been cut free and carried away by the hurricane the
ship still did not come upright. So acute was the list that sea water
entered the hull and the Pamir then lay over to such an extent that her
masts were in the water.
The crew, the youngest of whom was just 16, were unable to hold on to
the top rail and either fell down the wall-like deck and into the sea or
were caught in the rigging and went down with the ship. The disaster,
said the inquiry report, need not have happened, and added that in the
circumstances a milder storm could have capsized the Pamir. In an
11-point list of ''lessons to be learned'' from the loss the need was
emphasised for more bulkheads to be fitted to ships to prevent cargo
shifting.
Bad ballasting -- 400 tonnes of grain were used instead of water which
would have added a further 300 tonnes to the ship's stability -- and the
''very unsatisfactory'' weight of canvas carried, said the Lubeck
inquiry, caused the ship's centre of gravity to be high and to shift
dangerously when the Pamir heeled over. If water ballast had been
carried in the lower tanks the Pamir's list would not have been more
than 20 degrees and the ship would have survived.
Almost 40 years on and multi-decked ro-ro ferries have, inherently, a
centre of gravity higher than conventional vessels, with the weight of
cars and trucks carried on decks generally above the water line --
access to these decks at little more than sea level. Prior to sailing on
her ill-fated voyage, an examination of the Estonia is said to have
found faulty seals on the forward loading doors.
Notwithstanding that, and in foul weather, the Estonia sailed. Now she
lies 30 fathoms deep. Was there no premonition of disaster? The boys of
the Pamir had to trim the cargo of loose grain that was poured into the
hold of their ship -- all 3780 tonnes of it. They did it with shovels
but without masks and the dust rose. One lad, after long hours working
the grain that was to cost him his life, wrote to his parents to
describe his day, stepped ashore for the last time and posted his
letter. It had been, he wrote, ''murderous work''.
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