Come Tuesday 6th March it will be the 31st anniversary of the tragedy where 193 people lost their lives. May they all RIP
raymundo:
Come Tuesday 6th March it will be the 31st anniversary of the tragedy where 193 people lost their lives. May they all RIP
RIP 
You’ve opened up a right can of worms here just watch they’ll all be telling their stories.
bobbya:
You’ve opened up a right can of worms here just watch they’ll all be telling their stories.
I wasn’t booked on her that night but I was skipper of a ship that responded to the initial Mayday by Oostende radio and was asked to make all haste to the casualty but was stood down after about half an hour because lots of other boats were nearer. Felt bloody awful being so close but unable to help …
The Beeb did a lot about about it last year.
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g2r99
That drama was particularly good, but seems it`s out of date now.
A terrible tragedy that needn’t have happened…
I was …nowhere near it that day, but sat waiting to unload at Tosco Welham Green watching the tragedy unfold on TV.
I had sailed on ferries with the bow doors open, much the same as anyone else who did the Dover-Calais trip back in that era. It was a regular thing to watch them put out from either side of the channel with the doors still closing.
TiredAndEmotional:
A terrible tragedy that needn’t have happened…
Human error, the person who was responsible for closing the doors was ■■■■■■ up in his cabin and no alarms to notify the bridge watch the doors weren’t closed and as she increased speed the bow wave built up flooding the lower car deck causing loss of stability and eventual capsize.
Before we get all the stupid " I just missed it, so lucky , if it wasn’t for, ", etc. etc. comments, just take a bit of time to think of those that did actually board and lost their lives. Truckers, tourists, R.I.P.
know a guy who makes /puts up vids on youtube down at the docks at felixstowe and harwich of the ships and ferries coming and going
on his vids he had the radio chatter of the ship to shore it made intresting listening. but someone in authority didnt like him broadcasting who is saying what and now his vids have no radio chatter
Unfortunately it was the norm to leave the berth, spin it round and head for the dock entrances. I don’t know whether anyone was ■■■■■■■ tired or somewhere they shouldn’t have been, we were lucky we were not on it.
raymundo:
TiredAndEmotional:
A terrible tragedy that needn’t have happened…Human error, the person who was responsible for closing the doors was ■■■■■■ up in his cabin and no alarms to notify the bridge watch the doors weren’t closed and as she increased speed the bow wave built up flooding the lower car deck causing loss of stability and eventual capsize.
Bad practice…
corij:
know a guy who makes /puts up vids on youtube down at the docks at felixstowe and harwich of the ships and ferries coming and going
Chris Gosling ■■?
I was working for Swifts on night trunk, I remember standing in the traffic office and one guy told us it had happened. One driver I used to talk to on the CB, I can’t remember his handle but his name was Steve and he was seeing a girl from MK who was also on the CB at night, she told me “Pat, Steve was on the Herald of Free Enterprise”
“■■■■, is he ok ?”
“Well he’s still on it, if that answers your question”
Turns out the silly man was sleeping in his cab when it went down RIP 
A good friend of mine was called to cut into it as he invented underwater cutting gear, they used kerrie cable to cut out sections of the hull and sides of the ship to allow divers fast access. It was a terrible affair, I knew a lot of the divers working on it too. They had to bang on the sides with wooden pick axe handles and metal bars trying to get a return knock, when they got a knock back they cut out a section to allow the divers in. The person they called upon was reg clucas in Cottingham. Clucas marine.
TiredAndEmotional:
Bad practice…
Also a compromised design in which the roll through advantages are outweighed by having an open front end totally reliant on moving doors and their lock and hinge mechanism to seal the decks against the weather especially in the case of western channel/biscay/north sea operations.
Always felt safer on Italian ferries with solid bows and only rear load unload seeming to be compulsory.That design would have saved the Herald and Estonia casualties at least.
Wasn’ t anywhere near it at the time.
But it made a big impression on me when I heard about it
Thinking… ‘‘That could easily have been me on that boat’’
A terrible tragedy that need not have happened.
raymundo:
corij:
know a guy who makes /puts up vids on youtube down at the docks at felixstowe and harwich of the ships and ferries coming and goingChris Gosling ■■?
not him,hes known locally as a real pest if he starts filming you watch out .
the guy im thinking of his vids channel is deano c hes gone from nothing [cooking his breakfast on the beach] to making a living of sorts making ship vids. more power to his elbow
he was startin to make vids that went behind the scenes of the ship guys
A massive tragedy that could so easily have been avoided
To all those that lost their lives…r.i.p…
as previously said may they all rest in peace.