Built in 1980 by Meyer Werft in Papenburg as the Viking Sally, the ship spent her first years on the busy routes between Finland and Sweden, sailing for Viking Line and later as Silja Star and Wasa King. In 1993 she came to the Estonian–Swedish joint venture Estline, was renamed Estonia and placed on the overnight route between Tallinn and Stockholm – for the newly independent Estonia she was a symbol of its new links with the West.
On the night of 28 September 1994, in a heavy storm on the Baltic Sea, her bow visor was torn away. Water flooded the open car deck, and within roughly an hour the ferry had capsized and disappeared. Only 137 of the 989 people on board survived; 852 lost their lives, one of the worst peacetime shipping disasters in European history. The exact causes are still debated; new underwater surveys after 2020 led to a fresh investigation of the wreck.
