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Youtube tracking analysis from a knowledgeable mariner. He says that at about 1:24 AM the ship loses power (from video feed) while traveling 8.5 knots. at 1:2

Youtube tracking analysis from a knowledgeable mariner. He says that at about 1:24 AM the ship loses power (from video feed) while traveling 8.5 knots. at 1:25.30 power is restored. at 12:25.59 the ship shows smoke. The ship has already drifted in the channel. It is believed that at this time the ship applied full reverse power as evidenced by the black smoke. (My analysis: the ship drifted but hasn't turned in the channel, more of a translation) By 1:26.45 the ship has obviously turned in the channel pointing at the pier. Full reverse would cause prop walk to change heading angle; 1:28.52 impact at 7.6 Knots. Camera says 1:28.52, AIS reports the ship still moving at 1:29:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39w6aQFKSQ

secstate 3y ago
Does that mean this was effectively captain error? Like in response to a power outage the decision was made to try to reverse and rather than arrest forward momentum it just pushed their forward vector into the piling?
- paddy_m 3y ago
  I would tend to think so. The pilot should have anticipated prop walk and known that the ship had no chance of stopping before the bridge. I’m trying to find a color coded current map. Wind too. I wouldn’t expect wind or current to cause the pronounced heading change that is visible. The drift seems possible. Note: I’m an experienced dinghy/keelboat sailor, but lack virtually any experience driving boats under power, much less commercial vessels
  - secstate 3y ago
    yeah, noted. But it does seem like the heading change was so dramatic and the smoke pouring out after power recovery that something happened with the prop. And while it may have been currents, the lack of heading change before the smoke seems to suggest there was an intervention that caused heading change. Ship travel, much like orbital mechanics, are so often non-intuitive if you're not familiar with how much effort it takes to make significant speed changes vs. heading changes. And speed changes often affect the heading as well if you're not careful.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    It seems the excellent windy.com has wind and current data from the incident still available. Looks like current was <0.2 kts and wind was 6 kts south-east. So both should be completely negligible.
    - paddy_m 3y ago
      Checks out. .2knots/hour = 405 yards/hour It was 4 minutes from power loss to impact. 405 yards/15 = 27 yards. And that's if the ship instantly accelerated to a 0.2 kt drift, which it wouldn't. Wind acceleration on the vessel than current.
  - wyldfire 3y ago
    For some reason, I thought that large vessels hired a local pilot to navigate their way through places like this.
- spenczar5 3y ago
  Captain, or pilot? In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local pilot comes on board to guide the ship. Is this their responsibility?
  - cududa 3y ago
    I too, have read about Baltimore pilots for the first time today. If you’d read a bit further, the Pilots use either intercoms and sometimes radios to send instructions to the captain while they’re elsewhere on the ship. If they were using intercoms, and there was no power, that would do it
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    > In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local pilot comes on board to guide the ship. Is this their responsibility? I would doubt the pilot would have ordered the power to the ship to be cut and for everything to go dark right before hitting the bridge. Pretty sure they were probably telling them to navigate away from the pylon.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Yes, they have the responsibility, not the captain, as evidenced by the specific insurance they carry. Of course, lawyers will try to spread the blame around (who chose the pilot, did captain's actions or orders somehow get in the way of the pilot; did captain not ensure engines were working properly...). But the base responsibility lies with the pilot. It probably helps the captain that this was a ship owned and operated by a very big vertically integrated company (Maersk). Most ships are owned by smaller companies with a few (10-150) hulls and then chartered out. And while in this case the ship was chartered (along with crew) I bet Maersk's systems are stronger than your average charterer's.
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      I thought the pilot only offered “guidance” to avoid responsibility. I learned that from a documentary on the Panama Canal. Is that just a Panama Canal thing? Or should I find better documentaries?
lenerdenator 3y ago
How common are power outages on ships? I get that the captain might not have responded to it correctly but that seems like a thing that shouldn't happen, at least in my completely uneducated opinion.
- NaviNick 3y ago
  The American courts should hit Maersk really really hard financially and get them to foot the bill for all losses of the bridge collapse. Shipping companies should not be driving vessels of these huge tonnages with such poor levels of redundancy and poor levels of manning. It is insane for a 100,000 tonne vessel, that takes so long to stop due to its incredible inertia, that can find itself many thousands of miles from land, to rely on one engine, one gearbox, one shaft and one rudder; without sufficient secondary and tertiary back-up systems. Why was there no battery back-up, or motor on the shaft? Surely the bow thrusters should have a battery back-up to stop such a lurch to starboard. How can all of the generation and all electrical busbars fail at once? Even if the fuel was bad, surely the generators should draw on separate fuel tanks. For such a large and relatively modern ship to suffer a total power failure is complete corporate incompetence. If, as some allege, the refrigeration containers were causing problems, and total power outages occurring before sailing, the vessel should not have sailed, certainly at night. If this is the case, The Master needs locking up. But, poor man has to take the blame, because he is cheaper than a Danish Master and his Singaporean employer (if he is employed and not a contractor) also operating in a cheaper flag state than Denmark. The Singaporean Company also needs hitting hard if the culture was the cause of the Captain sailing after such alleged pre-sailing power outages. Maersk outsource to reduce personnel and running costs. They use the cheapest crews, cheapest ships and need hitting very very very hard. We might then stop this culture of wealthy shipping companies using every method possible to avoid complying with IMO and more rigorous Nation State standards, operating in the shadows and ducking accountability and responsibility.
- paddy_m 3y ago
  It shouldn't happen. There will be investigations. I think that having a properly operating ship is the captain's responsibility. But the ship's pilot [1] (not captain) should know exactly how the boat will handle and the exact course of action. Pilots are extremely well paid ($200-$400k) and the tests are very stringent. Friends have told me that the Narraganset Bay pilot test involves drawing every shipping navigation bouy on a map by hand to within ~200 yards from memory alone, compass, ruler and scaled map provided.
bastardoperator 3y ago
The video is surreal, it looks like it barely bumps the bridge and 2 seconds later the entire thing is gone. I don't know what I was expecting, the bridge just looked extremely fragile, makes me wonder what other bridges are at risk of an event like this.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  It's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be in something moving so slowly. I say somewhat, because when you're up close it's much more obvious, but you're right that on a video it doesn't look like much.
  - major505 3y ago
    Force = mass * acceleration, it might be slow but how much does a container shop weighs? 100, 200 thousand tons?
  - hangonhn 3y ago
    The same go for cars. I was hit by a car which was already slowing down but over ran the line and hit me. The car couldn't have been going more than 10 mph but it was enough force to fracture my knee (the fracture type is also colloquially known as a bumper fracture).
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > It's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be in something moving so slowly. Reminder: Kinetic Energy = ½mv^2 Squaring numbers can make them big in a hurry.
    - dweymouth 3y ago
      But in this case with slow speed, it's the massive (literally) amount of mass of the cargo ship that gives it an un-intuitively large amount of energy.
      - trilbyglens 3y ago
OJFord 3y ago
Apparently (this is just via someone on Reddit who supposedly heard/read it somewhere) the ship mayday'd on losing power hoping the bridge could be cleared. But why not (or did it?) also just blast its horn repeatedly, drawing attention so people on or near the bridge would notice it and realise something was wrong and perhaps even where it was headed? I'm sure it's not allowed generally and not the protocol and whatever ... But it does seem like a common sense & do whatever you can sort of situation to me?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- themerone 3y ago
  Why would a driver think a ship's horn was signaling them?
  - OJFord 3y ago
    AIUI most souls on the bridge were construction workers filling potholes, not drivers. But either way I'd have thought a certain amount of horn blowing would catch my attention just for being out of the ordinary, even though it's also not ordinary for ships to (need to) signal me.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Ya the people on the bridge would have less than 4 minutes to figure out the ship is crashing then to clear 2500 feet of bridge. When you're working with construction equipment you'd probably not notice till you had seconds left.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        4 minutes is a lot longer to save your life than nothing? And do you really think that's the answer, that was the calculation on the ship - well they only have 4 minutes until we hit anyway, so there's nothing they can do, not worth it? I wasn't criticising anyone, I was 1) asking if that happened; 2) asking why it might not have. I think the answer is much more likely that the loss of power disabled the horn (as others have suggested) than that the crew thought it wasn't worthwhile because there was insufficient time for anyone on the bridge to fare any better anyway!
bmitc 3y ago
That timeline implies that there was only four minutes to respond. Is that correct? Where was the ship going? Does it travel under this bridge on its own power rather than a tug boat? What I am wondering is: why couldn't the bridge have been blocked off preventing casualties? It seems like more than just the boat and operators' failing if there's no time or secondary precautions if such failures occur. I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons like they have in front of buildings to stop cars and trucks.
- throwup238 3y ago
  It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through. Most (all?) of the people on the bridge were contractors repairing potholes. > I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons like they have in front of buildings to stop cars and trucks. They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    > It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through. This video makes that a little hard to believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk. Looks like traffic was crossing up until the last second. Will have to do some more reading as it's very confusing what the ship was doing and what it should have been doing under normal circumstances. In the video, it almost looks like it was steered directly into the bridge. Very confusing. > They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them. Thanks for that!
    - dyno12345 3y ago
      yea if you watch the longer video they stopped traffic only a few seconds before the impact. incredibly lucky.
Jun8 3y ago
Relevant discussion on whether Titanic also tried to do a full reverse and, if true, if this was the right decision: https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1abvwqt/if_the_titanic_hadnt_reversed_would_it_have/ https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1abvwqt/if_the_tit...
araes 3y ago
Current personal suspicion after watching your linked video (excellent discussion by the wgowshipping author) is: Catastrophic engine failure (1:24) causing wide scale power loss. No rudder control, rudder drift, and ship alignment drift (1:24-1:25:30) Power restored and ship reengages prop with bad ship/ruddder alignment (1:25). However, ship is now pushing itself into a further bad turn. Pilot likely stomps the brakes realizing misalignment. Obviously 2-3 minutes is not enough to stop 100,000 tons at 8.5 kts, since it only got to 7.5 kts before crashing. Power loss may have caused total rudder loss. Similar to a car that hits ice, wheels have arbitrary alignment when they reengage road, when power starts being delivered again, car swerves towards concrete barrier even with brakes. Driver with limited crash experience is mostly just panicking and stomping. How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses where seconds matter? Edit: Also, economic disaster for Baltimore. > (Wiki) The Port of Baltimore generates $3 billion in annual wages and salary, as well as supporting 14,630 direct jobs and 108,000 jobs connected to port work. In 2014, the port generated more than $300 million in taxes. 1st in automobiles, light trucks, farm and construction machinery, imported forest products, aluminum, and sugar. 2nd in coal exports. Edit2: Bloomberg has an economic look including info on autos. ~$500 million in March 2024 so far. Honda, Mercedes, Subaru likely worst hit. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJmvXiCWkAAgDcE?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJmvXiCWkAAgDcE?format=png&name=... 3,600 commercial trucks / day. Hazardous material transport has a 30 mile detour. Baltimore had $350 million of insurance. However, Brent Spence Bridge is noted for cost comparison at $3.6 billion and 1/5 the length. Baltimore StreamTime also has live view with ongoing discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg
- pseingatl 3y ago
  Panama Canal pilots.
- jcgrillo 3y ago
  I'm not sure what configuration of props a ship like this has, but in my experience with a 40ft sailboat with a single propeller you have absolutely no rudder authority while reversing. I've read that some large ships also are direct drive--there's no transmission between the engine and the propeller, so "reversing" (if it's even possible) entails shutting down the engine and restarting it in reverse. This can be done with a two stroke engine. And yes, 8.5kt is not slow when you're displacing 100k tons, no correction will happen quickly.
ultrarunner 3y ago
I'm once again impressed that subject matter experts are out there on every topic, and they are often capable of quickly and accurately disseminating information about an event far better than the local news.
- jerry1979 3y ago
  Do you have recommendations/other channels with experts like this?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- epcoa 3y ago
  > event far better than the local news. That’s such a ludicrously low bar that I’m not even sure this would qualify as a compliment to these alternative producers.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    One might expect that local news are well connected with those who actually did construction, planning and whatnot of such projects, or emergency responders, or disaster mitigation, or people specialized in local geology / hydrology to show up challenges... The sad truth is that "local" news more often than not barely has any local people any more, a lot of content is directly ripped off from others (especially fire dep't or police reports, with the added problem that no one challenges the copaganda), or not local at all but produced/sourced by central agencies, or theoretically "local" reporters have such large areas to cover that they can't reasonably build relationships with experts.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      > One might expect that local news No. Local news is free over the air. Thus, it is paid for by advertising. Thus, you (the watcher) are the product. Hence, it is low quality. Local news is interested in producing as much clickbait emotional content as possible to drive up viewership. See: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. All are "free" and terrible for depth of their reporting.
paddy_m 3y ago
The local sailor/professional mariner bar in Newport will be interesting tonight!
boringg 3y ago
How much of this is falls on the protocols of the shipping company? I.e. the same shipping companies that gouged the planet during covid - did they strip away safety protocols in order for profits/expediency? Is this similar to Boeing for the shipping world? I realize it is early to come to any conclusions. The question of this being a rare one off vs container companies deprioritizing safety protocols is what I am interested. The power failures make me go down this logic of thought.
- dubcanada 3y ago
  Boeing makes and sells planes, they don't fly people. Maersk/ZIM rent container ships from another company who makes them and drive them around. These are completely different companies. A more correct comparison would be something like Jetblue or American Airlines. But I seriously doubt there is the result of some kind of profit hungry CEO. However I cannot with 100% say it's not until we find more details. But I feel confident enough to avoid the tin foil hat.
baxtr 3y ago
Can anyone say if there is the slightest possibility that this was caused by an Cyber attack?
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  As an inland armchair-captain, I want to admonish that tugboats should probably always be stationed around bridges to intercept such off-course mariners.
  - Arrath 3y ago
    It seems much more reasonable to only disengage the tugboats that were already helping the container ship get under way once it clears navigation hazards like the bridge, instead of keeping 24/7 quick-response tugboats at the bridge that try to intercept an out of control ship in a bare few minutes.
    - efitz 3y ago
      Moving large boats across water is slow. The Francis Scott Key bridge was 8600 feet long, or 1.4 nautical miles. AFAICT there were just over 4 minutes from the time that the first power outage started until the ship struck the piling. A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4 minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at the very best (running start in correct direction). So let's say that there would have been 4 minutes for a tugboat to (1) become aware of the problem, (2) travel to the location of the ship, (3) figure out what it needs to do, (4) maneuver into position [keeping in mind it might need to move to the other side of a 900' ship moving 8 knots] and (5) move the ship. And this assumes that the tugboat was idle in the first place. There just would not have been enough time to do anything meaningful if the tug wasn't already right at the ship, on the correct side.
      - histriosum 3y ago
        > A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4 minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at the very best (running start in correct direction). It's probably pedantic, but I don't understand your math. Knots are nautical miles per hour. To travel 4nm in 4 minutes would imply a speed of 60 knots. At 15 knots, you would travel 1 nautical mile in 4 minutes. (15kn/60min * 4min = 1) Or it's possible I haven't had enough coffee.
darkclouds 3y ago
[dead]
egberts1 3y ago
Other photos of aftermath shows an anchor dropped. Was wondering if he dropped anchor before the impact.
- egberts1 3y ago
  update: anchor was on the other side furthermore that anchor wouldn’t help much in last 45 seconds at 7.5 knots.
beanjuiceII 3y ago
The ship dropped anchor btw when power Temp came back on as part of its procedure which is why you see the quicker directional change at end
ropable 3y ago
It's fairly horrifying how fast the bridge collapsed after the moment of impact on the pylon. The whole span seemed to fall in totality almost at once. If anyone was on that bridge at the moment of impact, they were in the water a couple of seconds later.

secstate 3y ago

Does that mean this was effectively captain error? Like in response to a power outage the decision was made to try to reverse and rather than arrest forward momentum it just pushed their forward vector into the piling?

paddy_m 3y ago
I would tend to think so. The pilot should have anticipated prop walk and known that the ship had no chance of stopping before the bridge. I’m trying to find a color coded current map. Wind too. I wouldn’t expect wind or current to cause the pronounced heading change that is visible. The drift seems possible. Note: I’m an experienced dinghy/keelboat sailor, but lack virtually any experience driving boats under power, much less commercial vessels
- secstate 3y ago
  yeah, noted. But it does seem like the heading change was so dramatic and the smoke pouring out after power recovery that something happened with the prop. And while it may have been currents, the lack of heading change before the smoke seems to suggest there was an intervention that caused heading change. Ship travel, much like orbital mechanics, are so often non-intuitive if you're not familiar with how much effort it takes to make significant speed changes vs. heading changes. And speed changes often affect the heading as well if you're not careful.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  It seems the excellent windy.com has wind and current data from the incident still available. Looks like current was <0.2 kts and wind was 6 kts south-east. So both should be completely negligible.
  - paddy_m 3y ago
    Checks out. .2knots/hour = 405 yards/hour It was 4 minutes from power loss to impact. 405 yards/15 = 27 yards. And that's if the ship instantly accelerated to a 0.2 kt drift, which it wouldn't. Wind acceleration on the vessel than current.
- wyldfire 3y ago
  For some reason, I thought that large vessels hired a local pilot to navigate their way through places like this.
spenczar5 3y ago
Captain, or pilot? In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local pilot comes on board to guide the ship. Is this their responsibility?
- cududa 3y ago
  I too, have read about Baltimore pilots for the first time today. If you’d read a bit further, the Pilots use either intercoms and sometimes radios to send instructions to the captain while they’re elsewhere on the ship. If they were using intercoms, and there was no power, that would do it
- rdtsc 3y ago
  > In Baltimore, as in most harbors, a local pilot comes on board to guide the ship. Is this their responsibility? I would doubt the pilot would have ordered the power to the ship to be cut and for everything to go dark right before hitting the bridge. Pretty sure they were probably telling them to navigate away from the pylon.
- gumby 3y ago
  Yes, they have the responsibility, not the captain, as evidenced by the specific insurance they carry. Of course, lawyers will try to spread the blame around (who chose the pilot, did captain's actions or orders somehow get in the way of the pilot; did captain not ensure engines were working properly...). But the base responsibility lies with the pilot. It probably helps the captain that this was a ship owned and operated by a very big vertically integrated company (Maersk). Most ships are owned by smaller companies with a few (10-150) hulls and then chartered out. And while in this case the ship was chartered (along with crew) I bet Maersk's systems are stronger than your average charterer's.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    I thought the pilot only offered “guidance” to avoid responsibility. I learned that from a documentary on the Panama Canal. Is that just a Panama Canal thing? Or should I find better documentaries?

lenerdenator 3y ago

How common are power outages on ships? I get that the captain might not have responded to it correctly but that seems like a thing that shouldn't happen, at least in my completely uneducated opinion.

NaviNick 3y ago
The American courts should hit Maersk really really hard financially and get them to foot the bill for all losses of the bridge collapse. Shipping companies should not be driving vessels of these huge tonnages with such poor levels of redundancy and poor levels of manning. It is insane for a 100,000 tonne vessel, that takes so long to stop due to its incredible inertia, that can find itself many thousands of miles from land, to rely on one engine, one gearbox, one shaft and one rudder; without sufficient secondary and tertiary back-up systems. Why was there no battery back-up, or motor on the shaft? Surely the bow thrusters should have a battery back-up to stop such a lurch to starboard. How can all of the generation and all electrical busbars fail at once? Even if the fuel was bad, surely the generators should draw on separate fuel tanks. For such a large and relatively modern ship to suffer a total power failure is complete corporate incompetence. If, as some allege, the refrigeration containers were causing problems, and total power outages occurring before sailing, the vessel should not have sailed, certainly at night. If this is the case, The Master needs locking up. But, poor man has to take the blame, because he is cheaper than a Danish Master and his Singaporean employer (if he is employed and not a contractor) also operating in a cheaper flag state than Denmark. The Singaporean Company also needs hitting hard if the culture was the cause of the Captain sailing after such alleged pre-sailing power outages. Maersk outsource to reduce personnel and running costs. They use the cheapest crews, cheapest ships and need hitting very very very hard. We might then stop this culture of wealthy shipping companies using every method possible to avoid complying with IMO and more rigorous Nation State standards, operating in the shadows and ducking accountability and responsibility.
paddy_m 3y ago
It shouldn't happen. There will be investigations. I think that having a properly operating ship is the captain's responsibility. But the ship's pilot [1] (not captain) should know exactly how the boat will handle and the exact course of action. Pilots are extremely well paid ($200-$400k) and the tests are very stringent. Friends have told me that the Narraganset Bay pilot test involves drawing every shipping navigation bouy on a map by hand to within ~200 yards from memory alone, compass, ruler and scaled map provided.

bastardoperator 3y ago

The video is surreal, it looks like it barely bumps the bridge and 2 seconds later the entire thing is gone. I don't know what I was expecting, the bridge just looked extremely fragile, makes me wonder what other bridges are at risk of an event like this.

danpalmer 3y ago
It's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be in something moving so slowly. I say somewhat, because when you're up close it's much more obvious, but you're right that on a video it doesn't look like much.
- major505 3y ago
  Force = mass * acceleration, it might be slow but how much does a container shop weighs? 100, 200 thousand tons?
- hangonhn 3y ago
  The same go for cars. I was hit by a car which was already slowing down but over ran the line and hit me. The car couldn't have been going more than 10 mph but it was enough force to fracture my knee (the fracture type is also colloquially known as a bumper fracture).
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > It's somewhat counterintuitive how much energy can be in something moving so slowly. Reminder: Kinetic Energy = ½mv^2 Squaring numbers can make them big in a hurry.
  - dweymouth 3y ago
    But in this case with slow speed, it's the massive (literally) amount of mass of the cargo ship that gives it an un-intuitively large amount of energy.
    - trilbyglens 3y ago

OJFord 3y ago

Apparently (this is just via someone on Reddit who supposedly heard/read it somewhere) the ship mayday'd on losing power hoping the bridge could be cleared. But why not (or did it?) also just blast its horn repeatedly, drawing attention so people on or near the bridge would notice it and realise something was wrong and perhaps even where it was headed? I'm sure it's not allowed generally and not the protocol and whatever ... But it does seem like a common sense & do whatever you can sort of situation to me?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
themerone 3y ago
Why would a driver think a ship's horn was signaling them?
- OJFord 3y ago
  AIUI most souls on the bridge were construction workers filling potholes, not drivers. But either way I'd have thought a certain amount of horn blowing would catch my attention just for being out of the ordinary, even though it's also not ordinary for ships to (need to) signal me.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Ya the people on the bridge would have less than 4 minutes to figure out the ship is crashing then to clear 2500 feet of bridge. When you're working with construction equipment you'd probably not notice till you had seconds left.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      4 minutes is a lot longer to save your life than nothing? And do you really think that's the answer, that was the calculation on the ship - well they only have 4 minutes until we hit anyway, so there's nothing they can do, not worth it? I wasn't criticising anyone, I was 1) asking if that happened; 2) asking why it might not have. I think the answer is much more likely that the loss of power disabled the horn (as others have suggested) than that the crew thought it wasn't worthwhile because there was insufficient time for anyone on the bridge to fare any better anyway!

bmitc 3y ago

That timeline implies that there was only four minutes to respond. Is that correct? Where was the ship going? Does it travel under this bridge on its own power rather than a tug boat? What I am wondering is: why couldn't the bridge have been blocked off preventing casualties? It seems like more than just the boat and operators' failing if there's no time or secondary precautions if such failures occur. I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons like they have in front of buildings to stop cars and trucks.

throwup238 3y ago
It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through. Most (all?) of the people on the bridge were contractors repairing potholes. > I wonder if it makes sense to protect bridges with pylons like they have in front of buildings to stop cars and trucks. They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them.
- bmitc 3y ago
  > It was blocked off the shortly after the ship pilots sent their mayday signal and declared an emergency, giving the traffic that was on the bridge time to make it through. This video makes that a little hard to believe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNRRdha1Xk. Looks like traffic was crossing up until the last second. Will have to do some more reading as it's very confusing what the ship was doing and what it should have been doing under normal circumstances. In the video, it almost looks like it was steered directly into the bridge. Very confusing. > They're called "dolphins" and some bridges do have them. Thanks for that!
  - dyno12345 3y ago
    yea if you watch the longer video they stopped traffic only a few seconds before the impact. incredibly lucky.

Jun8 3y ago

Relevant discussion on whether Titanic also tried to do a full reverse and, if true, if this was the right decision: https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1abvwqt/if_the_titanic_hadnt_reversed_would_it_have/ https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/1abvwqt/if_the_tit...

araes 3y ago

Current personal suspicion after watching your linked video (excellent discussion by the wgowshipping author) is: Catastrophic engine failure (1:24) causing wide scale power loss. No rudder control, rudder drift, and ship alignment drift (1:24-1:25:30) Power restored and ship reengages prop with bad ship/ruddder alignment (1:25). However, ship is now pushing itself into a further bad turn. Pilot likely stomps the brakes realizing misalignment. Obviously 2-3 minutes is not enough to stop 100,000 tons at 8.5 kts, since it only got to 7.5 kts before crashing. Power loss may have caused total rudder loss. Similar to a car that hits ice, wheels have arbitrary alignment when they reengage road, when power starts being delivered again, car swerves towards concrete barrier even with brakes. Driver with limited crash experience is mostly just panicking and stomping. How many pilots, trained or not, really have any experience with a 100,000 ton ship in a crash situation with responses where seconds matter? Edit: Also, economic disaster for Baltimore. > (Wiki) The Port of Baltimore generates $3 billion in annual wages and salary, as well as supporting 14,630 direct jobs and 108,000 jobs connected to port work. In 2014, the port generated more than $300 million in taxes. 1st in automobiles, light trucks, farm and construction machinery, imported forest products, aluminum, and sugar. 2nd in coal exports. Edit2: Bloomberg has an economic look including info on autos. ~$500 million in March 2024 so far. Honda, Mercedes, Subaru likely worst hit. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJmvXiCWkAAgDcE?format=png&name=small https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GJmvXiCWkAAgDcE?format=png&name=... 3,600 commercial trucks / day. Hazardous material transport has a 30 mile detour. Baltimore had $350 million of insurance. However, Brent Spence Bridge is noted for cost comparison at $3.6 billion and 1/5 the length. Baltimore StreamTime also has live view with ongoing discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83a7h3kkgPg

pseingatl 3y ago
Panama Canal pilots.
jcgrillo 3y ago
I'm not sure what configuration of props a ship like this has, but in my experience with a 40ft sailboat with a single propeller you have absolutely no rudder authority while reversing. I've read that some large ships also are direct drive--there's no transmission between the engine and the propeller, so "reversing" (if it's even possible) entails shutting down the engine and restarting it in reverse. This can be done with a two stroke engine. And yes, 8.5kt is not slow when you're displacing 100k tons, no correction will happen quickly.

ultrarunner 3y ago

I'm once again impressed that subject matter experts are out there on every topic, and they are often capable of quickly and accurately disseminating information about an event far better than the local news.

jerry1979 3y ago
Do you have recommendations/other channels with experts like this?
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epcoa 3y ago
> event far better than the local news. That’s such a ludicrously low bar that I’m not even sure this would qualify as a compliment to these alternative producers.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  One might expect that local news are well connected with those who actually did construction, planning and whatnot of such projects, or emergency responders, or disaster mitigation, or people specialized in local geology / hydrology to show up challenges... The sad truth is that "local" news more often than not barely has any local people any more, a lot of content is directly ripped off from others (especially fire dep't or police reports, with the added problem that no one challenges the copaganda), or not local at all but produced/sourced by central agencies, or theoretically "local" reporters have such large areas to cover that they can't reasonably build relationships with experts.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    > One might expect that local news No. Local news is free over the air. Thus, it is paid for by advertising. Thus, you (the watcher) are the product. Hence, it is low quality. Local news is interested in producing as much clickbait emotional content as possible to drive up viewership. See: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. All are "free" and terrible for depth of their reporting.

paddy_m 3y ago

The local sailor/professional mariner bar in Newport will be interesting tonight!

boringg 3y ago

How much of this is falls on the protocols of the shipping company? I.e. the same shipping companies that gouged the planet during covid - did they strip away safety protocols in order for profits/expediency? Is this similar to Boeing for the shipping world? I realize it is early to come to any conclusions. The question of this being a rare one off vs container companies deprioritizing safety protocols is what I am interested. The power failures make me go down this logic of thought.

dubcanada 3y ago
Boeing makes and sells planes, they don't fly people. Maersk/ZIM rent container ships from another company who makes them and drive them around. These are completely different companies. A more correct comparison would be something like Jetblue or American Airlines. But I seriously doubt there is the result of some kind of profit hungry CEO. However I cannot with 100% say it's not until we find more details. But I feel confident enough to avoid the tin foil hat.

baxtr 3y ago

Can anyone say if there is the slightest possibility that this was caused by an Cyber attack?

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
As an inland armchair-captain, I want to admonish that tugboats should probably always be stationed around bridges to intercept such off-course mariners.
- Arrath 3y ago
  It seems much more reasonable to only disengage the tugboats that were already helping the container ship get under way once it clears navigation hazards like the bridge, instead of keeping 24/7 quick-response tugboats at the bridge that try to intercept an out of control ship in a bare few minutes.
  - efitz 3y ago
    Moving large boats across water is slow. The Francis Scott Key bridge was 8600 feet long, or 1.4 nautical miles. AFAICT there were just over 4 minutes from the time that the first power outage started until the ship struck the piling. A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4 minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at the very best (running start in correct direction). So let's say that there would have been 4 minutes for a tugboat to (1) become aware of the problem, (2) travel to the location of the ship, (3) figure out what it needs to do, (4) maneuver into position [keeping in mind it might need to move to the other side of a 900' ship moving 8 knots] and (5) move the ship. And this assumes that the tugboat was idle in the first place. There just would not have been enough time to do anything meaningful if the tug wasn't already right at the ship, on the correct side.
    - histriosum 3y ago
      > A modern harbor tugboat can go perhaps 15 knots. In 4 minutes this means it would travel 4 nautical miles, at the very best (running start in correct direction). It's probably pedantic, but I don't understand your math. Knots are nautical miles per hour. To travel 4nm in 4 minutes would imply a speed of 60 knots. At 15 knots, you would travel 1 nautical mile in 4 minutes. (15kn/60min * 4min = 1) Or it's possible I haven't had enough coffee.

darkclouds 3y ago

[dead]

egberts1 3y ago

Other photos of aftermath shows an anchor dropped. Was wondering if he dropped anchor before the impact.

egberts1 3y ago
update: anchor was on the other side furthermore that anchor wouldn’t help much in last 45 seconds at 7.5 knots.

beanjuiceII 3y ago

The ship dropped anchor btw when power Temp came back on as part of its procedure which is why you see the quicker directional change at end

ropable 3y ago

It's fairly horrifying how fast the bridge collapsed after the moment of impact on the pylon. The whole span seemed to fall in totality almost at once. If anyone was on that bridge at the moment of impact, they were in the water a couple of seconds later.