As usual, the MSM "facts" are not clear. The video I posted says the cargo vessel "Dali" is owned by a Singapore company but is leased to other shipping companies. It was in the control of the ship's master navigator plus one local Chesapeake Bay Pilot on board to navigate out of the port.
Exactly. Those are the folks who take these vessels out of the harbor. The bridge still would have been struck if it had been named "America Shall Always Suck." I need some aspirin...
I’m not even close to being an expert on what happens with ships leaving port and other maritime laws but…… At the Port of New Orleans, every shia coming into and leaving port has a certified local pilot in charge plus a tug for most container ships to keep them away from bridge supports and lined up with the currents. That said, even with all the precautions, the Huey P. Long and the Mississippi River bridges in New Orleans have been hit numerous times but without any major damage. (so far). All that brings me back to wondering why the container ship didn’t have a tug on it whilst leaving the Baltimore Port? I mean, even if the ship itself lost power, the tug would have everything under control so for such a large merchant ship, why no tug whilst leaving port?
I really like this guy when I have questions about shipping. He seems to know about everything there is to know about ocean shipping. The power failures could be due to lack of maintenance or sabotage, who knows? It may have been incompetent crew members, but the fact that the vessel made it into Baltimore harbor says the ship was seaworthy prior to docking and lading.
I was watching the video of the ship coming down the river, and the power going on and off several times. Whether it was a power failure or some kind of a signal is hard to say. They stopped the cars from crossing the bridge just before the ship hit it, so at least there were not bunches of vehicles crashing down into the river. You can see the ship coming closer, and cars racing across, and then no more cars, just before it crashes into the bridge. The odd thing is that just before it reaches the bridge, the ship lurches to the right, and that is how it hits the bridge instead of just going straight and would have made it under the bridge. It is almost like it is starting to turn sideways when it reaches the bridge.
That may have been due to the dragging anchor that the video mentioned. A dragging anchor catching on something under the water can cause drastic sudden movements.
In the video I posted, the guy mentions that it had tugs to get it out of the berth but once underway under its own power, the tugs drop back.
Uh huh but to me, that’s still a little strange. I realize that the New Orleans port and the Delaware port are probably as different as night and day but in New Orleans, the tug stays with the ship until the pilot is ready to leave and boards the tug.
The Spousal Equivalent was serving on the U.S. Navy ship Yancey when it slipped anchor during a windy storm in the middle of the night in January 1970 and took out a big chunk of bridge that was part of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The bridge was down for weeks. What a mess that caused! Luckily, no one was injured. He still has a chunk of concrete that he picked up off the deck of the ship. As usual, that was the end of the Captain's career in the Navy. No matter whose fault it actually was, the "brown stuff" rolls uphill and stops at the Captain's feet. When an incident like that happens, the Captain is expected to resign his commission and retire from the service.
I remember that incident. We used to take that bridge all the time from northern Virginia to a campground outside of Ocean City MD.
I watched the entire video a couple of times. All I could think of was how poorly our infrastructure is run by a bunch of idiots. Of course, as one person noted, it looks like an erector set.