While we await more news, fun fact: Robert E. Lee designed the hexagonal island very near the bridge (wiki includes a good aerial photo of the bridge, which may help readers of this thread get a sense of context.)
Reminiscent of the incident with the Bright Field cargo ship in New Orleans in the mid-90s, where they lost engines and found themselves coasting toward a moored passenger vessel. I don’t remember all the details, but as I recall, the pilot ordered the anchors dropped, so they were able to slow a bit and skew their trajectory to avert the most dangerous impact. Nevertheless, they still plowed into the Riverwalk and destroyed a few shops and restaurants, just on their remaining coasting power.
That’s my impression: the harbor pilot would have been in command, and, naturally, with all of his intimate knowledge of the area, above and below the water line. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but that seems to rule out some drunken Quint or any of that kind of shenanigans.
Those guys are very far from random n00bs lost in a strange land, you know.
I’ve sailed under the bridge many times over the past 19 years, day and night. There’s plenty of lighting all over it - barring thick fog, it’s easy to see everything even at night.
The plot I saw of the ship’s track shows it turning slightly to starboard pretty close to the bridge. It’ll be interesting to see the report of what caused that - it should have maintained a constant heading for about three miles, from when it got into the navigation channel after departing g the dock at Seagirt till well after it was through the bridge. There was basically zero wind and nearly slack tide at the time so even if all power failed I’d expect it to pretty much stay on course. Seems like there would have to have been a rudder movement to change course like that, but it’s it’s a fairly narrow channel so it wouldn’t take much.
There was a cruise ship out (Carnival Legend) that left on Sunday - they’ll be disembarking somewhere else; I don’t think the channel will be clear by this weekend.
“Dol” means dolphin:
“In the Chesapeake, we see a number of ‘Dolphins’ (usually a cluster of 3 pilings) used as a lighted or unlighted navaids. It is illegal to moor or tie up to such markers.”
These ones ARE lighted (as andrewm just confirmed).
And…yeah, I was also thinking a rudder failure was at least as likely as an engine failure – maybe more likely.
Given that there was an 185 foot drop to the water and the water temperature was 41 degrees I think one can assume they are all dead. The crew of the ship were all unharmed.
The cause of the crash seems to be mechanical problems.
Looks like the ship had a blackout at the worst time possible. You can see the lights go out before it hits the bridge. This means all power is lost to the steering gear hydraulics. The emergency generator will start after 30 seconds of blackout condition which will power up emergency systems which includes at least one steering gear motor. Which you can also see the lights come back on again 5 seconds before impact, but only emergency deck lights. From blackout to loss of steering, to regaining steering again it was far too late to course correct a 300M plus vessel. Incredibly unfortunate timing.
Here is the video with the lights:
This is a very uninformed statement. Even in the absenseof the bridge, the ship is operating in a very narrow (~500feet wide) dredged channel that is deep enough for large ships. If it were deviate from that, it would quickly run aground. The channel is perfectly straight for miles. The next turn it would have made after passing under the bridge to get to the Chesapeake (and not rung aground on Pasadena) would have been a slight left turn. It should not have been turning to the right then, even without the bridge.
Maybe not impossible. This is where my mind went after seeing the video:
When the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay collapsed for basically the same reason (support hit by a ship) the replacement bridge was built with concrete barriers around the supports. Replacement bridge at right:
ETA: partly ninja-ed above.
Typically bridge supports have exactly that. The bridge support is whatever structure it is, then there’s a separate massive concrete “bathtub” around it built up from the bottom to a few (10-20) feet above water level. With also 10-20 feet or air or water between the inside surface of the bathtub and the bridge structure.
However stout that thing is built at any bridge, there is a force bigger than that that will breach it. As well, some ships have overhangs large enough that even if the hull is deflected when it hits the tub, some part of the bow structure well above the water may have impacted the bridge structure.
A side effect of the USA having so much aging infrastructure is that lots of it was designed long ago to now obsolete standards. Ships and planes are bigger, road traffic is heavier and faster, etc. This bridge was opened in 1977, so designed in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Which sounds sorta recent to me until I do the math and realize that was ~55 years ago! :eek: I’m old!
Because design standards tend to lag current reality by a decade or two, the bridge may have been designed with fender structures appropriate to fending off a 1955 era cargo ship. Or even a WW-II sized cargo ship. IOW something with 10% of the inertia of the particular ship that hit this particular bridge.
From the vid it looks like the ship hit the bridge tower very close to dead on. Which would also imply hitting the fender structure nearly dead on. Had they instead sideswiped the fender structure it may well have held and prevented the collapse.
Does it? Alternatively, depending on the type of engine, it could suggest a sudden increase in output, such as may happen if they tried to put on a backing bell (like going in reverse) but too late to actually stop the ship.
Ships that size take a long time to stop.
It could also indicate, depending on the type of engine, that the engines just hadn’t been operated at power in a very long time.
Or, hey, maybe there was an engine failure.
But nothing is conclusive just from seeing thick smoke emanating from a large ship just after getting under way and just before a collision (well, technically, allision).
That’s an understatement. 
I get the good explanation, which makes me think that “mechanical failure” may very well be the culprit.
Very bad luck. The ship departed Seagirt about two miles from the bridge, about 45 minutes before the collision. The ship is 1000 feet long and the anchors are at the bow. That means if you drop the anchor while heading toward an obstruction, the whole ship may still swing around 180 degrees (depending on wind, current, etc) - it’s not like applying brakes on a motor vehicle. So best case, if the anchor dropped and held instantly, the ship could only stop itself if at least half a mile from the bridge. Realistically, ever farther since dropping the anchor and slowing takes time.
Is that wise? It seems that, for the sake of stability, you’d have anchors at both the bow and stern of a ship for the very reason you state. Why just the bow?
You do realise that there would have been one or possibly two licensed pilots on the bridge.
Something that’s a bit surprising to laypeople, (and IANA expert on ships, just that dangerous level of a little bit knowledgeable) is that oceangoing ships have rather little redundancy. And what they do have is not instantly available. Nor are the maintenance standards all that high.
If commercial aviation was designed and maintained to the same standards, we’d be crashing multiple jets every day.
The design assumption with ships seems to be that significant failures will happen out on a calm sea where if it takes a few minutes to get the backup systems operating or a few hours to get the normal systems operating again, that’s good enough. There’s lots of room and therefore on the ocean.
The problem is there isn’t room or time in or near ports.
In that video, just before the ship hits, you can see several vehicles crossing the bridge. The timing suggests that they made it across safely, but boy, I bet they’ll have some stories to tell! There were no vehicles visible at the time of collapse, hopefully there weren’t any.
The vessel would have been running two or possibly three gensets. This should usually preclude most power failures. However there are early reports of a fire on board which may go some way towards explaining how all power could have been lost.
And they are a good banana for showing the scale of just how big the ship is.
Good analysis, and the approach makes sense. Unfortunately, those things are huge, and docking them must be like getting Shaquille O’Neal inside a Volkswagen even when they are in proper working order.
I read “The Box” once, so I’m practically an expert on this…
Shipping containers didn’t really start getting used until the mid 1950s, and widespread adoption came about after the Vietnam War, even well into the 1980s to get standardization at the global level.
This bridge - an many, many more in North America - were absolutely not designed for the size and weight of ships being used today or even 40 years ago.
Similar to how the WTC towers were designed to withstand a -at the time - foreseeable plane crash into them, but not something the size of an airliner.
The change in ships could have led to a reassessment of the risks and safety provisions, but there’s still a limit on what a bridge can tolerate, and such changes take time and money, neither of which governments of today care to spend (and many would defund safety organizations). It’s shameful.