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Mexican Navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge leaving two people dead
- ars 1y agoThe article says it lost power, but the photo shows a wind powered vessel with sails. Some kind of hybrid ship?
- frumplestlatz 1y agoSailing ships generally have auxiliary engines.
- SllX 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cuauht%C3%A9moc_(BE01) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cuauht%C3%A9moc_(BE01) Looks like it. It’s a sail training ship, but it has an engine looking at the infobox, presumably so it’s not relying on the sails for tours such as this, and maybe because the ship itself is for training and they need a failsafe? To be honest, I’m not gathering what the purpose of such a ship is to a modern Navy other than maintaining cultural continuity and a tradition in wind sailing. EDIT: I'm still inside the edit window but there have been several good answers below. Rather than responding to each one individually let me just say y'all have provided some great answers. Thanks!
- Tomte 1y agoLearning the fundamentals. Germany puts all aspiring naval officers through a tour on the Gorch Fock. It‘s kot just culture, although those ships also serve as excellent ambassadors to far-flung countries.
- nickysielicki 1y agoThe fundamentals have obviously changed. At no point in any serious engagement will it ever be important to have experience with sailing. This ship should have been dry docked and turned into a museum years ago. Two people are dead.
- ceejayoz 1y agoThe fundamentals include things like teamwork and following orders. You can learn those on a sailing ship just fine.
- bombcar 1y agoYou learn them better. A big ship can run just fine with a few people; heck, it's probably possible to run with just one if we admit it. Big sailing ships don't work like that, you can't furl a sail without intense physical cooperation and teamwork.
- shakow 1y agoThat sail-trained sailors make better sailors than engine-trained sailors is similar to how glider-trained pilots make better pilots after transition than engine-trained pilots. They typically acquired a better understanding of the medium they're evolving in, giving them a deeper understanding of the dynamic situation of their craft.
- nottorp 1y agoSame for being aware of the lower abstraction layers down to machine code when you're programming in a high level language.
- achierius 1y agoThis incident could have happened regardless of the type of ship. Unless you have some reason to believe otherwise, I'd suggest against saying so.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoThere’s a lot more to seamanship and crewmanship than propulsion methods. Cuauhtemoc is a training ship designed to teach that, not primarily how to work sails. Also it was built in 1982 so I fail to see how it should be a museum ship since it’s not that old or historic.
- kbelder 1y ago
- raverbashing 1y agoI suppose "not hitting bridges" is part of the fundamentals But it's really curious how it seems those collisions have been becoming more frequent (or only our awareness of it?) Another alternative is "the sort" working better than ever which means that maritime employment in some places does not attract the best professionals
- defrost 1y agoTo be fair "can this ship clear this bridge given it's height, the time of day, the general broad area tidal conditions and the specific hyper local variations" is fundemental but far from basic. It also raises a question as to whether the fault lies with the ship crew or with a local pilot who had local control of the ship.
- usrusr 1y agoOn the videos the ship is drifting backwards, from wind and/or currents (are currents the East River dominated by tides?). I don't think that they ever intended to clear the bridge. The fundamental they missed was keeping their maneuvering engine up and running (or calling in some tugs).
- detourdog 1y agoYes, the East river and the Hudson are both tidal estuaries. The tide has a big effect on water flow direction. I'm an in-experienced sailor but I was surprised they left with the water flowing against them.
- sklargh 1y agoHad similar thoughts. Hell Gate is no joke.
- defrost 1y agoDamn. My bad for getting the full details .. I came to this story via a chain of bridge clearance fail stories and jumped to the assumption this was another intended passage clearance mistake. There are some knuckle chewing engineering videos of planned water transits of "big loads" timed happen for a still water king low tide .. fast work with tiny clearances and major downsides on failure.
- murderfs 1y agoYeah, well, if you've invested 135 million euros into repairing a sailboat, you might as well put it to use...
- lnsru 1y ago[flagged]
- alistairSH 1y agoThe USS Constitution is still operated by the USN. No longer solely a training vessel, but fills a similar ceremonial role. And the USCG operates USCGC Eagle as a training vessel for future officers attending their Academy.
- melevittfl 1y agoSailboats, except for the smallest ones, usually have a motor and propeller to move without relying on wind.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jabl 1y agoPractically all sailing vessels in use (some racing sailboats etc excepted) have auxiliary engines for moving in constricted areas like ports. Considering this accident happened with people up in the rigging, they were presumably hoisting or lowering the sails when the engine lost power and they drifted into the bridge.
- thomasfedb 1y agoI’ve heard (can’t tell for sure from the photos I’ve seen) that they were “dressing the yards” at the time - which is when the crew stands on top of the yards (the horizontal spars) side by side. It’s done for ceremonial or celebratory reasons, not for work.
- jabl 1y agoYou're right. As can be clearly seen in the snippets shown in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlRiauatEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlRiauatEo
- grues-dinner 1y agoI'd be surprised if any port would easily permit such a ship to come or go under sail power. Sailing a ship into port is risky at the best of times. Yachts may do it into a marina when the wind and tide are just right for fun it as a little bit of a flex. But ports have work to do and having out-of-control sailing ships three sheets to the wind, so to speak, having misjudged the tide or whatever, is just dangerous. Also, having your ship stuck in port for days waiting for wind and tide to be suitable for leaving would have been commonplace before engines, as would bring becalmed for weeks on end and being unable to evade dangerous storms. None are probably high on the list of things these ships really want to be doing today.
- arwineap 1y agoThe port expects yachts to safely operate their vessels, and it's up to the captains to execute. That could mean sailing in / out of port, or it could mean under engine power. The trouble I'm having is if they were leaving under engine power alone, with such fast current, why was the ground tackle not ready to be deployed? We ran a much (much) smaller vessel with an unreliable engine and often pre-prepared our anchor before getting into port
- perlgeek 1y agoYou can see both from the videos and the photos that the sails weren't set, so I can't have been wind-powered at the time of the accident. Operating a large, wind-powered vessel in a harbor or near shore is very tricky and dangerous (what if the wind suddenly doesn't provide enough propulsion to counteract some water current? what if it suddenly changes direction? breaking is also very tricky) which is why it's not done, and some auxiliary engine provides propulsion.
- zeeZ 1y agoFrom the video you can also see that it's moving backwards.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- codr7 1y agoI've only ever heard of two ships hitting bridges; both recently, both in the US, both lost power and drifted into the bridge. At least this bridge fall like a house of cards, I guess because the masts broke first.
- user32489318 1y agoNot sure about the US, but in Europe it happens fairly regularly with inland freight ships and private yachts. There are wooden guardrails near the bridge pylons to limit the damage (to the bridge) specially for this reason. Statics is also quite interesting, you’d expect the heavy traffic - most accidents correlation but it seems fairly randomly distributed. “Alphen aan de Rijn” in the Netherlands is quite famous for boats hitting/removing the bridge, getting stuck, yachts taller than local houses breaking down in tight spots…
- userbinator 1y agoI think you're missing a didn't before "fall".
- hiddencost 1y agoThere's a category error in the comparison. The boat in Baltimore weighed at least two orders of magnitude more, and directly struck a column. This boat hit a span with a basically negligible piece of wood. I'd be shocked if that shut the bridge for more than an hour.
- verisimi 1y ago> both lost power and drifted into the bridge "Restart your computer to finish installing important updates".
- chrisdalke 1y agoYou joke, but there was a ferry accident (I think an NJ to Manhattan ferry) where control was lost because the control station… ran out of SD card space for logs and crashed
- deleted 1y ago
- haunter 1y agoYou can see on the video that all masts were fully manned. RIP https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1kp9sxn/ship_crashes_into_the_brooklyn_bridge/ https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1kp9sxn/ship...
- 55555 1y agoRIP to everyone who died. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but when you're standing on the mast, how can you not tell that you're about to collide with the bridge?
- ceejayoz 1y agoYou can. You just can’t get down in time.
- brador 1y agoWhy not just jump into the water?
- prmoustache 1y agoThe boat being wider than the mast, you have a near 100% probability of just hitting the deck even when propelling yourself. Life is not a Super Hero action movie.
- newsclues 1y agoYou can jump away from the boat and land in water. And you can moved along the yards to get closer to the water. But the tallest mast is 158 feet and that’s a big jump. Source: was on a tall ship for a week, and done some cliff jumping
- squigz 1y agoI think the top yards are not much, if any, wider than the deck, are they? Depending how quickly this happens, you may not have enough time to get across the yard and prepare for a 50m jump into water
- newsclues 1y agoYou see it’s going to happen and move towards the edge of the yards. You then get a bit of horizontal momentum and jump away from the centre of the ship, giving you a few seconds to fall away and hopefully hit the water.
- suraci 1y ago[flagged]
- metalman 1y agoaccidents happen, https://maritime-executive.com/article/video-cma-cgm-feeder-hits-dock-and-crane-arriving-in-hamburg https://maritime-executive.com/article/video-cma-cgm-feeder-... the one in new york is bad because it's cadets, on a world tour, they are the best, representing there country, and flag generaly these national training ships meet up somewhere each year and do a sail past, be interesting to see if Mexico pulls it together and can step new masts and be sea worthy in time
- Rodeoclash 1y agoI visited this ship when it was in Melbourne. Heartbreaking.
- steveBK123 1y agoTerrible accident and the video from the Brooklyn side is insane, they seemed to drift quite close to shore .. could have been an even bigger disaster. Note that the tall ship had been visiting South Street Seaport from which it departed. This is extremely close to the Brooklyn Bridge, roughly 1/8th of a mile. The East River has some strong currents, even at 5 knots that's something like only 2.5 minutes to drift into the bridge if they lost power when they left port. This was part of a preparation for a big US 250th anniversary tall ship event next year in NYC, in which there will be far more ships next summer. Hopefully they re-evaluate port operations in time for that. From the video it looks like a tug ship was close enough to try and help, but not close enough to be of any use. Given the above math, it seems like a more proactive escort for tall ships may be in order.. edit: TikTok of the Brooklyn side showing how close it came to running aground https://www.tiktok.com/@vladmad9/video/7505576469876296991 https://www.tiktok.com/@vladmad9/video/7505576469876296991
- ilamont 1y ago> The East River has some strong currents The tide was also coming in. If it were ebb tide and mechanical failure it might have drifted away from the bridge (albeit risking collision with something else)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 1y agoIf it ran aground instead of cutting its masts on the bridge, perhaps there would've been no fatalities.
- sinuhe69 1y agoThey said the ship lost power, but we can see the light chain were all lit up. Were they just for decoration, or where did they draw the power from?
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoElectrical power (for lights) may well be decoupled from engine power for the propellers.
- alistairSH 1y agoYep. Sailing vessels have batteries and generators to power things when under sail.
- rapestinians 1y ago[flagged]
- janeway 1y agoVery sorry to hear about those people. It reminded me of something from childhood. It’s no comment on this story - just a personal anecdote. We were on a family road trip, and I was wearing a new pair of cheap sunglasses, feeling way too cool for a kid. As we turned a corner, the setting sun blinded my father. But through my tinted lenses, I saw the wall coming. He didn’t. We crashed hard. My sunglasses flew off, and in that moment, all I cared about was catching them. For a few seconds, I thought that was the only emergency. That moment left a mark. Now, whenever I start to feel too cool or overconfident, I get a quick flash, like a reflex, to check myself. How stupid will this look if things suddenly go wrong, especially if I could have seen it coming? It’s made me quietly grateful for all the small, tedious safety rules. Not because they prevent every disaster - but because they sometimes do.
- deepfriedchokes 1y agoWow. I hope everyone survived that crash.
- nicwolff 1y agoWhy did they leave the Seaport on the flood tide? Low tide was 5:37 PM EDT, so at 8:30 the current up the "river" (really a tidal strait) was just about at its fastest – if they'd lost way there four or more hours earlier or later they'd have been washed out into the harbor, probably safely but at any rate not under any bridges. At 8:30 PM, even if it had gone well, they'd have been motoring against a 3 knot current that they could have had going their way instead. I fear the reason they left then was so they could have their light show with the cadets on the yardarms just after sunset for greatest effect and audience... but then they should have picked another day.
- arwineap 1y agoOne of the cardinal rules of cruising, is you should never sail to a schedule
- HelloNurse 1y agoThey performed a very dangerous maneuver (as demonstrated, any engine failure guarantees crashing because there is no time to use the sails or the anchors) at the most unsuitable time. A tugboat would have provided redundancy, waiting for a mild current in the opposite direction would have eliminated the risk.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoWGOWS: https://youtu.be/gIlRiauatEo https://youtu.be/gIlRiauatEo