They were a young and happy couple. They both belonged to the Estonia's crew supervising and training new personnel. The fatal night happened to be her shift on the ship. Followed is the story how Swedish government prevented a  harmless widower from fulfilling his duties as a surviving relative. Driven by his love for Carita, Peter spent all of his blood-money on a dive trying to rescue his wife's body.

In Memory of Peter Barasinski

by Jutta Rabe

Peter Barasinski called us from Sweden in June 1995. He was deeply disappointed in his government. He wanted to bury his wife Carita in Uppsala, as he had promised her he would. Shortly after Peter and Carita married, they had strolled like two lovebirds in the picturesque cemetery of Uppsala, Carita’s hometown. That day, Carita had asked Peter to promise her that should she ever die before him, he would bury her there. Peter promised, blithely, just as anyone would who still thinks he has many years ahead of him before having to fulfill such a solemn promise.

Then it so happened that ESTONIA took his young wife along on her dramatic plunge into the depths. It was as if a haze of numbness descended over Peter. He felt no pain, no despair. Only disbelief. It first appeared that which seemed too good to be true would actually turn out that way when he arrived at the Estline terminal in Stockholm together with Carita’s mother about five o’clock in the morning. His colleague from the Estline office told him that Carita had probably been rescued. Peter had thundered into a waiting reporter’s microphone, “You’re looking at the happiest person in the world here!” But just a few hours later, it turned out that only Carita’s co-workers had escaped.

From that day on, Peter had nightmares every night. Over and over again he saw Carita sinking down into the rising waters in her red sailing jacket, or dreaming that it was not Carita who had the shift on the ESTONIA, but himself. Night after night, he drowned in the Baltic Sea for her anew. He couldn’t set foot on any ship again and thus couldn’t go back to work.

He was offered retraining but lacked the strength to be interested in anything new. He even entertained thoughts of suicide. Yet above all and at all costs, he wanted to keep his promise. He joined the SEA organization for family members and together with the other relatives, took up the fight for recovering the bodies. Then, on December 15, watching the news on television, he learned that the Swedish government was reneging on its promise [to recover the bodies]. This was the second major shock in his life. He had expected anything, but certainly not this.

He told me in an interview that he had fled his native Poland to Sweden years before asking for political asylum. He believed in self-determination and democracy. Sweden was the land of his dreams and he would have never thought that such inhumane decisions could be made there.

He actually couldn’t bring himself to believe it for a long time. Then once he did, he became seized by fierce rage. It developed quite slowly, but after he got the insurance money as compensation for Carita’s life, he was utterly clear on what he would do with it: to keep his promise.

When he called me and my partner Kaj in Berlin and asked whether we would accompany him, to document on camera that he wasn’t a grave robber but just wanted to recover his wife from the sunken ship, he had pretty much organized the entire operation. 

The ship was all ready waiting in Gdynia, Poland, including four professional salvage divers plus a pressure chamber and all the other onboard equipment needed for such a salvage operation. Peter had gotten some help from a good friend who worked for a Polish salvaging company.

We never hesitated for one second to accompany Peter on this expedition. We arrived in Gdynia in mid-June 1995 in the company of a two-man camera team. A few hours after our arrival, we met up with Peter’s friend. Everything had been extremely well prepared. We inspected the ship, met the skipper, and realized just how sophisticated the equipment was.



The departure was set for the very next day. Yet sometime during that night, the Polish government was threatened through diplomatic channels. The Swedes protested that a Polish salvaging vessel would offer assistance to Peter. The tone of the Swedish communication was extremely unfriendly and culminated in serious economic threats. I was livid that the entire power of a government would be amassed to prevent a grieving and harmless widower from fulfilling his duties as a surviving relative. Why was Sweden pushing this so hard?

Peter was devastated. All he wanted was to carry out this expedition before the law banning diving came into force on July 1, 1995; afterwards he’d be opening himself up to the risk of spending up to two years in a Sweden prison. He was furious and heartbroken at the same time.

We put our heads together. Perhaps he could charter a ship from Germany? We burned up the telephone wires. We finally found a small shipping company in Cuxhaven willing to put a tug at our disposal, her name was the TAUCHER OTTO WULF. Rostock, Germany was agreed upon as the harbor from which she’d sail and we were lucky that the Swedish government hadn’t reckoned with so much resourcefulness. We were able to set sail unchallenged. Unfortunately, we hadn’t been able to organize new divers, but the Baltic Taucher company helped us out with an ROV and an experienced operator, Englishman Philip Sayers. The ROV was equipped with a gripper arm which would hopefully allow us to recover Carita.

We quickly blended in with the crew of the ship and those from Baltic Taucher and as we neared the position of the ESTONIA wreck, we were already a team which meshed as if we’d been working together all our lives. I had never before experienced such a degree of commitment as I did on that excursion.

We were seventeen people from nine different nations on that ship. The skipper was the best I ever met. The ship was licensed for a maximum of only nine people. Our water had to be rationed from day one and we could only sleep in limited shifts in the ridiculously small mess room.

We had great difficulties in finding the wreck at first. We were searching at the wrong position as given by Kari Lehtola. We criss-crossed the area, but could not locate any significant underwater projection. Then we moved to another position, the coordinates given to me by the German Navy. And found the wreck immediately.

But before we had a chance to drop the ROV into the water, we were approached by the Swedish Navy’s icebreaker ship ALE. The might of the government makes its presence known after all. This was an act designed to intimidate us. They contacted us by radio.

Peter explained his intent. The Swedes attempted to string us along by saying they first wanted to consult with Stockholm as to whether our operation would be tolerated. This was totally irrelevant to us, so we simply got down to work.

We let the ROV into the water and in fact found the wreck just ten minutes later. Philip Sayers had to get his bearings as to where exactly on the wreck we’d landed; as the small letters spelling out ESTONIA appeared in the ROV’s camera, we realized we were at the stern.

Philip Sayers slowly worked his way forward. He had to steer the ROV up to Deck VII on the port side. Just as Philip was almost level with the railing, the image suddenly went black. He immediately diagnosed camera or cable damage. The device was carefully brought back up on board. A lengthy, tedious diagnosis of what the problem was followed, as did its eventual repair. Hours passed and by the time we were able to put the ROV back into the water, it was already afternoon. The diving ban law would be coming into force in just a few hours. A race against time was now underway.

The icebreaker ALE which had remained a passive observant from afar up to this point now started to move in steadily closer. Using its large bow thruster and side blasters, they tried every trick in the book to displace us from our position. Dietmar, our skipper, held to our position as skillfully as he could. But it became increasingly difficult to keep steering the ROV as precisely as we needed to because each rough movement of the ship caused tension in the cable and the ROV would be pulled off to another position. The ALE assumed a collision course, turned her stern to face our bow, and consciously and deliberately hazarded ramming us.

She came within mere hairs. Dietmar, exhibiting nerves of steel, didn’t budge an inch. While all this was going on above the water, Philip managed to guide the ROV to the pertinent opening. The door which had blocked Carita’s only way out no longer existed, it had been torn out as the ship sank. Just a black hole gaped back at us now.

Once Philip had painstakingly maneuvered the ROV, we hoped we’d be able to spy Carita’s red sailing jacket somewhere in its ray of light. But Lady Luck wasn’t with us during those few minutes. The ROV’s cable got hung up on the railing. It took several hours to get the ROV untangled.

Peter called off the operation. He went to the stern of our boat, crying, and threw the red roses he’d brought with him into the water. He wasn’t able to get Carita out of the ship but at least he had tried everything in his power. All that was left for him was his grief and his solid will to continue to fight for his Carita. 

Some time later, he told me the story of the Wasa ship. It took 333 years for Sweden to decide to raise her. Today, she rests in a museum built especially for her in Stockholm. The remaining bones of the victims of Wasa were interred in a mass grave. Peter smiled and added, “Well, at least I’m still young.”

Peter died on September 17th 2006, 12 years after ESTONIA sinking, taking Carita with her into the icy cold depth of the Baltic. We will never forget this remarkable man who during the last 12 years of his life was driven by his love for CARITA. The following poem was read in four languages on his memorial service in Stockholm:

What it is

It is nonsense
says reason
It is what it is
says love

It is misfortune
says calculation
It is nothing but pain
says fear

It is hopeless
says insight
It is what it is
says love

It is ridiculous
says pride
It is careless
says caution

It is impossible
says experience
It is what it is
says love

By Erich Fried
Translated by M. Kaldenbach

See also:

WIDOWER IN £40,000 DIVE TO FIND BODY
http://www.elaestonia.org/eng/index.php?module=lingid&link=279