All Baltic ferries are popular business conference venues during the first half of the week; almost 100 of those who perished on the Estonia were on trips combining working seminars with pleasure. It is natural that the Swedes should choose to congregate on ships. 'In England, we don't have the culture of travelling on boats as much,' says Brian Armstrong, the Carlisle-born troubadour performing at the Captain's Corner Pub. 'But in Scandinavia, in order even to get to many of the islands, a boat is a fact of life. If you compare these ferries with the cross-Channel ones, you can see that the Nordic ferries exist nowhere else in the world.'Then there is the remnant of the more honourable tradition of Nordic seafaring. The Drivers' Inn bears a sign on the door: 'Only for the drivers of articulated lorries and buses.' These are in a sense the real VIPs of the ship, and they are allowed to dine in quieter surroundings, away from the revellers.

Timo, one of the ship's stewards, says there is still a steady contingent of lorry drivers on the ferries but they are vastly outnumbered by the drinkers. He has been a steward for almost 17 years and says that despite the accident, it is too late for him to contemplate a new profession now. He says the number of passengers has not gone down since, adding: 'It's amazing, not many people are asking about the disaster.'These ferry outings offer a rare unfettering to Swedes, who seem permanently somewhere between divorce, death and more taxes. To travel with no real destination - since nobody intends to set foot on land before going back again - is their only real escape from anything behind or ahead.Around the blackjack table, be-jeaned young men are clearly oblivious of the swell that makes the ship rock around midnight. Lasse concedes that he feels some national shame that a part Swedish-owned ship should have been capable of the worst ferry disaster in Western Europe since the war.

'I was somewhat ill-at-ease at the fact that Swedish interests were involved. Since the war we have told ourselves that we are the best as regards safety, efficiency and all that It's ridiculous, really. I don't know who ever led us to believe it.'This is no place for the claustrophobic. And there is no rapport between what goes on within and the sea without. Around 2am, some lights appear through the porthole - clear signs of civilisation. When I ask if this would be Mariehamn, on the Finnish archipelago of Aland, even seasoned travellers of this route profess not to know.