I was on Estonia in March six months before the disaster.

The sad thing is that it was a disaster which just had to happen. Many things added up.

1. The ship was built in 1980/81 as the 2nd oil crisis stuck. The owner - Finish Viking Line - wanted it as lightweight as possible to save fuel. They would use it in calm waters between Stockholm or Kapellskjar north of Stockholm to Turku or Åbo on the west coast of Finland. Zig-zagging between the thousands of small islands.

2. In 1992 they sold that flimsy beer can ship to Estline to be used in open water for which it was never designed. I had crossed the North Sea to Britain many times, and I remember seeing the hull structure on the car deck and was thinking, "man, if that ship was ever going to face a storm in the North Sea waters, then it would crumble like an empty beer can under your feet".

3. Until 1991 Estonia - the country - was occupied by the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities never trusted Estonians as sailors, so they were never educated in that business. Consequently the country lacked experienced sailors all way from captains and down.

4. Estline was 49% Swedish owned, and they started out with many experienced Swedish crew members. But they were hastily replaced by Estonians since their paycheque was one forth of a Swedish paycheque.

5. It had been noticed that when the weather was rough, as it often is, then Estline was mostly on time while other shipping companies crossing the Baltic often were a few hours late. Estline was proud to maintain their reputation of punctuality, and they hardly ever slowed down in rough weather or made diversions to avoid the roughest water.

6. Bad maintenance: Some fasterners for the bow port had already broken long time before the disaster. No attempts were made to repair them.

7. The ship was registered in Estonia and under control of Estonian shipping authorities. But the country in reality had no experienced staff at their control bureau.

Sad to say, but that disaster just had to happen. The German shipyard, which built the ship, has been blamed a lot. But that's hardly fair. They built the flimsy floating hotel which their customer wanted, and they never designed it to be used on open water.