Bengt-Erik Stenmark, safety chief of Sweden's National Maritime Board, said he would consider a general ban on ships similar in design to the ill-fated vessel after media reports of a spate of other incidents involving open bow doors.
"The bow door had been open and water got on to the car deck," Stenmark told a news conference, adding that accounts of survivors and technical probability pointed to water washing across car decks as the cause of the ship's swift capsize.
The 15,500-ton Estonia sank in darkness in the Baltic Sea southwest of Finland early Wednesday, taking more than 900 people to their deaths.
Only 141 passengers and crew scrambled free from the sinking vessel and lived long enough in rough cold seas to be picked up by rescue helicopters and ships. Many were young and relatively fit, officials said. More than 900 other people, less lucky or less strong, are believed to have perished.
Confusion over the exact number of dead persisted with conflicting accounts of the numbers who boarded the ferry Tuesday evening. Swedish officials said many children under the age of five were never registered on the passenger list.
TT news agency said a Finnish rescue vessel, the Suunta, had discovered the wreck of the Estonia off the coast of Finland in an area of treacherous currents and unpredictable weather known as "The Ship's Graveyard."
Swedish marine inspectors were checking all roll-on roll-off ships using Swedish waters following reports of serious previous incidents involving the bow doors of car ferries, Swedish newspapers reported Friday. The dailies Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter said the Mariella ferry, involved in the rescue effort after the Estonia sank, suffered a similar incident eight years ago, where water rushed in through the bow doors on to the vessel's car deck.
"A general ban is possible on this type of vessel if more faults are found ... I'm prepared to keep ships in harbour," Stenmark told a news conference. It is not known how the bow doors on the Estonia came to be open.
Swedish safety officials were quoted Wednesday as saying they had discovered defective seals on the Estonia's bow doors, hours before it sailed, but were later reported to have discounted that as a cause for the disaster.
Investigators from the three nations involved in the tragedy have sent search teams to hunt for clues to what went wrong aboard the 14-year-old German-built vessel.
As military rescuers discounted the possibility that more survivors would be found, the task of identifying the 85 bodies plucked from the water began at a makeshift Finnish morgue. Ships were still combing the sea for more corpses.
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