0:00

From crowd network, a new

0:02

podcast investigates Europe's

0:04

worst shipping disaster since the

0:06

Titanic. How did

0:08

a passenger ferry sink in the Baltic

0:10

Sea, killing close to a thousand

0:13

people? How did it happen

0:15

in nineteen ninety four? And

0:17

was there a cover rope? Journalist

0:19

Steven Davis investigates a

0:21

mysterious trail that leads all the way

0:24

back to the Cold

0:25

War. This

0:27

is a crowd podcast. There

0:33

are I

0:43

realized that the water is coming

0:45

closer. And

0:48

I had no other choice

0:50

them to jump. Finding

1:01

myself out in the dark on

1:03

a fairy that is thinking, understanding

1:06

that I could die and that I really

1:08

have to struggle for my life. Antonio,

1:12

what's going on? Can you reply?

1:14

No life jackets. No life rafts. The

1:17

water was coming in behind me. Everything

1:19

closing in on me.

1:25

I got really angry because I felt it

1:28

was so stupid way to die.

1:30

More than eight hundred people are missing almost

1:33

certainly dead after the ferry has

1:35

earlier sank in the storm of Finland.

1:38

A made a message was sent saying the roll

1:40

on roll off ferry had developed a severe list

1:42

in waves up to thirty feet high.

1:45

Then there was silence. The

1:56

Estonia was Europe's worst

1:58

peacetime shipping disaster since

2:01

the Titanic. In

2:03

a raging storm in September nineteen

2:05

ninety four, the huge ship

2:07

sank in less than an hour. It

2:10

all happened so fast that many passengers

2:13

never made it out of their cabins. Some

2:16

jumped into the crashing waves. Few

2:19

climbed into lifeboats, only

2:21

to die of hypothermia while waiting

2:23

to be rescued. Eight

2:25

hundred and fifty two people lost their

2:27

lives To

2:30

this day, the wick lies on

2:32

the ocean floor a

2:34

sea wave for hundreds of

2:36

bodies What are the chances

2:38

of finding more people? I

2:40

think there's not any people

2:43

alive. In the days after

2:45

the tragedy, as people mourned,

2:48

the authorities vowed to leave no stone

2:50

unturned to find the cause of the

2:52

sinking. But

2:54

two years later, they were trying to

2:56

cover the wicked and concrete. Why?

3:00

Why have the bodies never been recovered?

3:02

So families could bury their loved ones.

3:05

It's brutal. It's not the humane.

3:08

Normally, what would we do when we lose somebody.

3:11

We try to find the bodies Why

3:13

have repeated investigations failed

3:16

to find an answer to what happened?

3:18

Everyone on board should have been spoken to about

3:20

what they thought happened to what they saw

3:22

that night. And yet, I was never

3:24

spoken to in any form whatsoever. They're

3:27

more deeper I went

3:29

with my questions the more arrogant

3:32

they were in answering. My

3:35

name is Steven Davis. I'm an

3:37

investigator journalist. An

3:40

MI six source of mine told

3:42

me to look deeper into what happened to the

3:44

Estonia. He said there was

3:46

more to it than met the eye. And

3:49

as I dug into the story, the

3:51

trail lead back to the cold war.

3:54

And to a time of smuggling, secrets,

3:57

and spies. In the early nineteen

3:59

nineties, Estonia was fighting for its survival,

4:01

economically, politically and in security

4:04

terms. There was a full fledged

4:06

operating branch of the KGB

4:08

and Estonia for many years. In

4:11

search for the truth, I traveled to

4:13

Estonia in Sweden to hear from

4:15

survivors and to meet relatives

4:17

of the victims. I visited

4:20

the memorials to those who lost their

4:22

lives. I spoke with investigators

4:24

who refused to stop asking questions

4:27

and with journalists who've been prosecuted for

4:29

diving to the wink.

4:31

Henrik Ebertson and Linus Anderson

4:33

sent a remote operated submersible down

4:35

to the

4:36

Astoria, the ferry that sank in the Baltic

4:38

Sea in nineteen ninety four. This

4:40

discovery was something

4:42

that throw completely new lights

4:45

on the whole situation. There

4:47

are many layers to the story.

4:50

And over the next eight

4:51

episodes, we're going to pick them apart. This

4:54

is the secret history of the

4:56

Estonia The

5:02

secret history of the Estonia is out now.

5:05

Across all podcast platforms with

5:07

new episodes every Monday. The

5:09

entire series is available ad free

5:12

on the CrowdStrike's channel on Apple

5:14

Podcasts.