The Outlaw Sea by William Langewiesche

Author:William Langewiesche
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429954594
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Five

THE OCEAN’S WAY

There was civilization on the Estonia for real, until the ocean seized control. The ship left Tallinn only fifteen or thirty minutes late, and for the first several hours, as dusk turned to night, it moved through sheltered coastal waters, striving to catch up with its schedule. Those on deck would have seen gray forested islands creeping by to the north, and to the south, the long, industrial shoreline of Tallinn giving way to a low coast, darkening as it faded into the night. Gentle swells rolled in from the west, indicating the sea’s unease, but their significance was probably apparent only to the crew, who had received storm warnings for the open ocean ahead but had not spread the news. There were various forecasts, and they tended to agree: an intense low-pressure system near Oslo was moving quickly to the east and was expected to drag rain and strong winds across the route, stirring up waves occasionally as high as twenty feet. Such conditions were rare for the area, occurring only a few times every fall and winter, but for ferries of this size they were not considered severe. Surviving crew members later claimed that a special effort was made on the car deck to lash the trucks down securely—exemplary behavior which, if it occurred, probably had more to do with concern about vehicle damage claims than concern for the safety of the ship. No other preparations were made. The crew’s main concern was to arrive in Stockholm on time, at 9:00 the following morning.

As evidenced by their subsequent handling of the ship, the captain and his deck officers considered the Estonia to be seaworthy and stout. Moreover, they had fresh paperwork to prove it. That very afternoon in Tallinn a group of Estonian shipping inspectors, receiving on-the-job training from a couple of their Swedish counterparts, had performed an extensive port state control inspection of the ship, and in the end, using a crudely modified Swedish form, they had submitted a list of only minor discrepancies, essentially giving the Estonia high grades for its condition. The Swedish instructors were less impressed, and later stated for the record that they had noticed a disconcerting lack of respect for issues related to seaworthiness—hatches left open on the car deck, worn rubber seals on the bow visor, a certain nonchalance by some of the deck officers—but nothing that could have justified detaining the ship in port. Safety came first, of course. But off the record, it was inconceivable anyway that the Estonians would permit a group of port inspectors to interfere with this symbol of national progress. In the minds of sailors, port inspectors are mere bureaucrats in disguise. And once at sea, the Estonia was run as if nature itself had no right to slow it down.

That night the ship knifed ahead at 19 knots, with all four main engines fully throttled up to their combined output of 23,500 horsepower, driving the hull relentlessly into the accumulating seas. The vessel’s motion was at first barely noticeable to the passengers.

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