September 28, 1994. Tallinn, Estonia.
I woke up from the sound of the phone ringing in the hallway. Rousing from a deep slumber, I opened one eye to peek at the radio alarm clock.
6 a.m.
"Argh! Who the hell calls at this hour?"
At my side, Erik groaned before he turned around and went back to sleep.
“Hello?” I said into the receiver, my voice still grainy. “This is Kristi”
“It’s Tiiu.”
“Yes?” Tiiu was one of my employees, and also a distant relative. An annoyingly cheerful person. But not today. Her voice sounded hollow.
I heard a sob. “The ferry sank,” she said.
“What?” A cold shiver enveloped me. I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I had just heard.
“The ferry sank,” Tiiu repeated, “It’s on the Finnish text-TV news.”
“No. Noooooo.” I gasped, tears running down my cheeks. This couldn’t be true.
By now, Erik was by my side. “What happened?”
“The ferry sank,” I said.
It was a ferry that ran between Estonia and Sweden. A ship my parents had boarded the night before.
I don’t remember anything else, just turning on the TV. In those early days of Estonian re-independence, before the internet, programming on TV didn’t start until later. Estonian TV didn’t have the service, but there was a text-only newsreel on Finnish TV with the latest news. Given Tallinn is close to the Finnish border, and the languages are closely related, we had access to the Finnish TV channels.
“M/S Estonia sank around 1:50 a.m. this morning in the Baltic Sea, in the international waters between Sweden, Estonia and Finland, with 989 people on board. Eight people have been rescued. Two other ferries, Mariella and Isabella, responded to the Mayday call and are at the site together with emergency helicopters scouring the waters. The rescue operation is complicated by the stormy weather: wind up to 25 m/s [56 mph] and waves over 6 m [20 ft] high. The outlook is dire.”
Eight people. But Mum and dad could be among them, right?
We stared at the screen. As the news scrolled by, we saw that more and more people were rescued. Ten. Then sixteen. Then twenty-five. Thirty. A sliver of hope rose within me. They would be okay. They had to survive. I couldn’t imagine a life without mum and dad. They were so alive, they couldn’t be just…gone.
But the weather outside, a leaden sky and a fierce wind that rustled the trees in the park below, made any rescues seem impossible.
My baby Benjamin, a German Shepherd mix puppy, crawled into my lap and licked away my tears. I must have had breakfast. But I don’t remember.
“You have to call your sister,” Erik said. “I’ll bring you over to her place before I go to work.”
My sister Anne-Pii and I spent the day at her kitchen table, in front of the radio, listening to updates. Every now and then, the announcer would read through a list of survivor’s names. We learned that each survivor would state their own name to confirm their identity, so the list was accurate. The list grew longer and longer as the hours passed, but mum and dad’s names never came up.
“What do we do about Tiina?” Our other sister lived in Australia. “Let’s wait,” we agreed. “Let’s call once we know mum and dad are safe.”
I have no recollection of Anne-Pii’s sons, one-month-old Kaarel and nearly two-year-old Siimon, although they must have been there. Nor do I remember Benjamin, although I must have taken him out for walks during the day. I just remember sitting at that small, square kitchen table, the beige table cloth, and the transistor radio.
Once he finished work, Erik picked me up and drove me home. In the living room, the radio was playing, and cheerful voice announced “Voice of America!” before reading all sorts of news that had nothing to do with a ferry sinking and hundreds of people drowning and my life falling into pieces. I was disgusted with them. How could they be so clueless? And heartless?
The storm raged all day. On the TV news channels, they showed emergency helicopters circling above a ferocious sea, throwing rescue slings to water-filled octagonal rafts, where people in in orange life jackets huddled on top of one another. Some sat up, clearly still alive, while others were lifeless. The waves rose high, throwing the rafts hither and yon. The bottom of an overfull raft broke as a helicopter tried to lift it, and many of the those inside were lost to the sea. Here and there, among the waves, you could see spots of orange: the life jackets of people submerged in the icy cold sea. After more than twelve hours in sub-zero water, there was no chance they could still be alive.
It was getting darker outside. Soon, the helicopters would have to give up their search for the night. Mum and dad’s names had still not appeared on any of the lists of survivors.
But, surely, my parents had made it onto a deserted island somewhere? The Finnish archipelago consisted of a smattering of tiny islands. Maybe mum and dad had broken into a summerhouse on a cliff somewhere. They could be safe, but unable to contact anyone, if there was no landline. Hopefully, they had made a fire to stay warm. Perhaps there was cans of soup in the kitchen. Or pasta.
It's funny how your imagination runs riot when you hang onto hope.
“I’m going to basketball practice,” Erik said, shrugging on his coat.
“Don’t go!” I pleaded. Wailed. “Don’t leave me alone. I need you here. Please stay with me.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t take it. This situation. It’s too difficult for me. But, hey, I bought you a bottle of cognac. And I’ll be back before midnight.”
The door slammed behind him.
I was alone with my grief. Alone with my amazing puppy Benjamin who didn’t leave my side for a second.
A month or so later, we received a call that my parents bodies had been found. At least they had made it out of the ship. Dad was always practical, he would have known that something was wrong as soon as the ship tilted to one side and didn’t swing back. He would have insisted they get out. They were both wearing life jackets. Who knows if they had even reached a life raft. Maybe the raft had capsized. Or perhaps they had been tossed around in the stormy waves for hours. What we do know is that their bodies were picked up in the afternoon, by separate helicopters, and that my dad was killed by internal injuries, but my mum drowned.
Out of 989 passengers and staff, only 137 survived. Another 95 made it out of the ferry—like my parents—but were later found dead. 757 people are still missing to this day. The Swedish government initially promised to raise the ship, bringing peace to all the loved ones, but later took it back and instead wanted to bury it under gravel. The families of the deceased protested and now it’s uncovered but determined a sacred grave site.
There are a lot of controversies around this “accident.” The ship’s captain, Avo Piht, was listed among the survivors, and even captured by a news camera as he was being rescued, and his former colleagues in Germany called his wife to tell her he was safe. But the captain was later declared missing, and an Interpol search ensued. Twin sisters Hannika and Hannely Veide who worked as dancers on the ship also disappeared after being rescued and confirmed to be alive. A friend of a friend received her husband’s body in a casket, but when she opened the lid, she found someone else’s corpse inside. The Estonian head of the investigation resigned because he refused to sign off on the false incident report that the Swedish and Finns wanted him to sign.
Theories of what could have happened include a high tech soviet military weapon transport loaded onto the passenger ferry. Or the Russians being upset about Estonia’s success as an independent country, and therefore sending missiles to sink the ship and bring bad PR to Estonia.
Whatever happened, the truth was definitely covered up by the authorities.
A former classmate of mine, Carl Eric Lantee, is one of the survivors. He said the government never interviewed the survivors in depth. On the night of the “accident,” he heard two loud bangs, like explosions, and saw water coming into the lower deck, something that wouldn’t be possible according to the official version of the incident. He also saw something dark in the water that he believes could have been a submarine. Other investigations into the case also claim to have found traces of explosives and bent metal that points to a bomb going off.
While this all happened thirty years ago, it feels like yesterday. Losing my parents changed my life (and my sisters’ lives, too, of course). It changed who I am and how I look at life. I try to enjoy life, knowing it can end abruptly. Anytime I don’t hear from a loved one for a few hours, I think they died. And I still can’t overnight on a ferry.
Oh Kristi, it must have taken a lot out of you to write this. It made me very sad and then very angry reading more about the cover up. Siim and Piia were kindest and gentlest people. I miss them very much. Love to you. Kalle