Private expedition to dive into wreck of ferry that sank 27 years ago

Helsinki - The vessel sank in heavy seas on Sept. 28, 1994, killing 852 people. Only 138 passengers survived

A privately-funded expedition, commissioned by relatives of the victims of the M/S Estonia ferry that sank into the Baltic Sea nearly 27 years ago, will dive into the vessel’s wreckage this month.

It’s the latest attempt to gain more insight into one of Europe’s worst peacetime maritime disasters.

The goal of the dive, organised by a Estonia-based fund, “is to find answers to questions” that official joint and separate investigations by Estonia, Finland and Sweden have failed to provide on the vessel’s fate, the organisation said on Wednesday.

“Although during these decades numerous different investigations have been carried out, they have not been able to give the survivors and close relatives of the deceased exhaustive answers regarding the reason why Estonia perished,” the Mare Liberum fund, created in July, said in a statement.

The M/S Estonia ferry, which was travelling from the Estonian capital Tallinn to Stockholm in Sweden, sank in heavy seas on Sept. 28, 1994, killing 852 people, most of them Swedes and Estonians. Only 138 passengers survived.

The Mare Liberum fund, which has backing from victims’ relatives groups in Estonia and Sweden, said it would organise the two-week dive expedition for late September. The project is headed by Margus Kurm, a former Estonian state investigator into the ferry’s sinking, and it is estimated to cost 800,000 euros ($946,000).

Some victims’ relatives say all previous research into the accident, which has triggered numerous conspiracy theories over the years, had been conducted to hide the real cause of the accident.