Europe's worst shipwreck: What happened to the MS Estonia?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The MS Estonia sank into the icy Baltic Sea in 1994, descending alongside the evidence of what happened that fateful night where 852 people died. Nearly twenty-six years later the shipwreck still sits on a shallow sea bed and new evidence has raised questions about what caused it to go down.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today and get one month free at: thetimes.co.uk/storiesofourtimes.
Guests:
- Paul Barney - A Briton who was on board the MS Estonia when it capsized and sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994.
- Henrik Evertsson - Documentary filmmaker and journalist prosecuted for investigating the sinking of the MS Estonia.
- Matthew Campbell - Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times, was working in Moscow when the MS Estonia sank.
Host: David Aaronovitch.
Clips used: discovery+. You can watch the full series of Estonia. It is available now on discovery+.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times. To enjoy unlimited digital access to all our journalism subscribe here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Everyone knows about the SS Titanic, but what do you know about the MS Estonia? |
| 0:25.2 | One twenty-four this morning the ferry boat Estonia suddenly sank into the icy waters of the |
| 0:30.8 | Baltic Sea. As helicopters again scanned the Baltic, empty life vests evidence they were in the right. |
| 0:37.0 | One of the worst disasters to his country in modern time. |
| 0:40.0 | Suffering from severe hypothermia, after hours spent in the darkness and the cold |
| 0:45.2 | fall. I've given up hope now of finding anyone else alive. The car ferret sailing overnight between Tannin and Stockholm went down on September 27th, 1994. |
| 0:58.0 | 852 people, mostly Swedes and Estonians, died. It was the worst peacetime maritime disaster in |
| 1:06.0 | European waters. For a quarter of a century the wreck and its dead have been undisturbed. |
| 1:11.7 | But now, after an illegal dive by a Swedish documentary filmmaker |
| 1:16.5 | to the site of the crash, all kinds of questions are being asked about that fatal night. |
| 1:22.0 | It's 852 souls lost in this very tragic disaster. |
| 1:27.0 | And I think it's very important that we find exactly what happened at night. |
| 1:32.0 | You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:35.3 | I'm David Aronovitch. |
| 1:36.9 | Today, what happened to the MS Estonia? Estonia. |
| 1:49.0 | I'm Matthew Campbell and I'm the Sunday Times Foreign Features Editor. Matthew was working in Moscow when the Estonia sank. |
| 1:52.0 | He remembers it well. |
| 1:54.1 | From the very beginning it was the story about the ferry setting off from |
| 1:59.9 | Tarlin in Estonia on the way to Stockholm. It's a 15-hour journey and halfway across, you know, sinking very quickly. |
| 2:08.8 | And at the time it was very quickly established that it was something to do with malfunctioning doors on the bow. |
| 2:18.0 | In other words, this is a car ferry, giant great thing, with cabins for up to 2,000 people and the car deck you know it's a |
| 2:27.8 | roll-on-roll-off ferry so it's got this ramp that goes up when all the cars are loaded and can come down again afterwards and then they drive down the ramp. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.