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Mexican navy tall ship slams into Brooklyn Bridge 1

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There's something very wrong with that scene. The ship was moving backwards and towards the immediate shoreline with the tug in chase. Unfortunately the bridge got in the way. The ship then glanced off the shoreline just after it passed the bridge.

Brooklyn bridge collision.jpg
 
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Did the ship lose power and was caught in the current of the river taking it towards the bridge? If this is true, then the only thing they could do was to drop the anchor. How unfortunate. Love old wood boats.
 
It's a steel ship built in the 1980's

On older vessels, these types of loss of power incidents usually have some absurd cause. My favorite was on the Moku Pahu. A manhole cover had a gasket that someone didn't cut the center out of. The center of the gasket deteriorated and fell into the tank. The gasket ended up in the fuel meter and shut the entire plant down, electrical and propulsion.

However, with modern emissions controlled electronic engines, shutdowns are common and spontaneous. We've been experiencing this in one of our common rail injected engine families.

Redundancy is low in the maritime industry and poorly executed where it exists. I had an engine with primary and secondary ECM's. The secondary ECM failed and as a result misinterpreted the heartbeat from the primary. The secondary took control of the engine without having a personality profile which resulted in the immediate shutdown of the engine with no alarms.

I have a backup power system that can switch to a dead power bank. This and the previous example are from the highest tier OEMs.

Finally, there are no procedures for repair of components. Pneumatic controls on older boats are quite robust but are very sensitive to damage from lubricants. Most don't know to use only non-petroleum greases. Everything will work for 2-3 years but then the problems start if the wrong grease is used.

Finally, that station transfer button is the devil. The Mathers pneumatic system allowed any button to take control. Most of the newer systems transfer control from a station instead of taking control as a station. Very dangerous, these newer systems have caused many accidents. Staten Island ferry experienced a deadly incident some time back.
 
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It's a steel ship built in the 1980's

On older vessels, these types of loss of power incidents usually have some absurd cause. My favorite was on the Moku Pahu. A manhole cover had a gasket that someone didn't cut the center out of. The center of the gasket deteriorated and fell into the tank. The gasket ended up in the fuel meter and shut the entire plant down, electrical and propulsion.

However, with modern emissions controlled electronic engines, shutdowns are common and spontaneous. We've been experiencing this in one of our common rail injected engine families.

Redundancy is low in the maritime industry and poorly executed where it exists.
It was confirmed in later news feeds, that it was loss of power, and river current that carried sail boat under bridge.

Edit: Now they are saying loss of steering was cause.

Another example of why Tugs should be required anytime large ships are operating near bridges that they cannot at clear the superstructure above. Further this could be extended to all bridge crossings based upon container ship into Baltimore Bridge.
 
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That ship isn't much larger than the tugs. The tug in the video is around 5-6k horsepower. The ship has 1500 horsepower, when it's engine is operational.
 
I should have said large or too tall to clear under bridge. Agree relatively small ship vs container ship. But with 200 plus sailors not tiny either.
 
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It's been noted by Sal Mercogliano that there was a wake and "bow" wave at the stern of the ship--you can see it in the video as it approaches land. If it was riding with the current, and no power, that would not happen. While there was wind, it didn't look that strong. To me.

So. Sal thinks the engine was operating in reverse.

That, combined with throwing off the tug's line kinda hints the captain is in deep doo.

Oh, yeah. There WAS a tug.

Well, and crashing the ship. That's bad, too.

And. No one dropped anchor. While probably not helping much, it sure would have looked good--"we tried, we really did".

And. The captain chose to leave when there was an incoming tide towards the bridge. There was slack tide two hours earlier, and four hours later. But the lighting was just right at THAT time to put on a show.

With two of the crew dead, I suspect there's going to be a court martial.



spsalso
 
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The tug appears not to be a tractor tug. It takes much more time for non-tractors to get into positions where they are useful as assist boats.

Dropping the anchor is seldom an option. Even after the decision is made it takes minutes for someone to get to the forecastle and lower the anchor with minimal guarantee of success.

The problem here is that people were in the rigging while a freak accident occurred. If nobody was in the rigging the loss of power would not have resulted in loss of life. A loss of power isn't likely to put the ship under a bridge at high speed. Two major factors had to combine to make this a casualty event.

What will be interesting is to see if the Mexican maritime academy ends this ceremony over a 1 in a million incident.
 
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Here's specs on the tug:


https://www.mcallistertowing.com/our-fleet/charles-mcallister


Considering the circumstances (tidal flow, bridge nearby, no tugs attached, no thrusters, low-power engine), one can wonder why no one was in position at the anchors.

I'd hate to be the one to say: "I KNEW dropping an anchor would not help at all, so I never placed crew to do it quickly."


spsalso
 
Potentially ignorant question from a non-mariner, but if a decent sized boat like this is motoring right along and the anchor suddenly drops&snags, is the line likely to survive? I'd assume there's an awful lot more energy in an emergency stop/snag than simply preventing movement when parked, which often involves multiple anchors.
 
Well, we've found out that a dragging anchor works very nicely for ripping up undersea cables. And you don't even notice. So they say.

spsalso
 
Potentially ignorant question from a non-mariner, but if a decent sized boat like this is motoring right along and the anchor suddenly drops&snags, is the line likely to survive? I'd assume there's an awful lot more energy in an emergency stop/snag than simply preventing movement when parked, which often involves multiple anchors.
A lot of variables, mainly the length of the anchor chain and whether the chain is ina catenary where the force is mainly gravity rather than the friction force from the anchor at the end. Velocity, mass of the vessel etc, but any chain can fail. Pipelines are impacted especially and many have either failed or the anchor needing to be removed after the ship has dropped the chain or cut it off.

In a moving situation the anchor just drags and slows the vessel down usually unless as you say it snags on something.
 
Somewhere on the internet is a video of a ship using it's anchor to stop itself in Panama. The brakes were on fire by the time the ship stopped. The system isn't really designed to do this. Heck, runaways are not uncomm even during a normal deployment.


Meanwhile, Chuck "Cheese on Raw Meat" Schumer has just blamed Trump for this.
 
Summary:

The engine didn't fail, the ship accelerated backwards under its own power. The ship has a controllable pitch propeller.

Sorry, when he started going into details on the displacement of the engine, it's obvious he's trying to fill time. Also, the D399 is a 16 cylinder engine, not a 12.
 
Somewhere on the internet is a video of a ship using it's anchor to stop itself in Panama. The brakes were on fire by the time the ship stopped. The system isn't really designed to do this. Heck, runaways are not uncomm even during a normal deployment.


Meanwhile, Chuck "Cheese on Raw Meat" Schumer has just blamed Trump for this.
That just ran out of chain...
 
Not actually sure if that ship was moving. But shows the brakes on those are not great....

Nor was the deckhand controlling it.
 
If that ship was not moving and dragging anchor, then the brakes were not even handling the dead weight of the chain and anchor.
 

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