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I've heard of the Swiss Cheese accident model, where the holes in the slices of cheese line up.

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Thats what's wild about all this. Half of all maritime accidents occur when entering and leaving port.

Typically theres a meeting a couple hours before getting underway with all key personnel where the central focus is getting out of port safely, not hitting anything, identifying known risks and planning what to do if something goes wrong.

'Knowing is half the battle' and also getting past the breakwater without hitting anything is also half the battle.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I've heard of the Swiss Cheese accident model, where the holes in the slices of cheese line up.

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Thats what's wild about all this. Half of all maritime accidents occur when entering and leaving port.

Typically theres a meeting a couple hours before getting underway with all key personnel where the central focus is getting out of port safely, not hitting anything, identifying known risks and planning what to do if something goes wrong.

'Knowing is half the battle' and also getting past the breakwater without hitting anything is also half the battle.

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Dang, how any "halves" are there on an entire voyage?!

Was a port authority Pilot onboard?

Another thing you gotta question here is whether the pageantry and regalia of leaving port at dusk so they could do a photo op was secondary to sound seamanship.

Sounds like they got caught up in the moment and it proved to be too big for them.

wow, several folks just barely hung onto the rigging to avoid falling

W said:

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wow, several folks just barely hung onto the rigging to avoid falling

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It looks like a lot of them had tethers.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Kenneth_2003 said:

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If you want some actual informed and knowledgeable commentary on this accident listen to an expert...

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Wow.

Not only were the tide and wind against them, the tug not tied on, but the aux engine was stuck in reverse and was not shut down.

I've heard of the Swiss Cheese accident model, where the holes in the slices of cheese line up.

This sounds like an empty bowl of queso, there weren't any factors at all that would have prevented the wreck.

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but the aux engine was stuck in reverse and was not shut down.

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The tug had come off of them. The engines were due to be on because they would motor down the river and out to sea. I suspect they would not go under sail until they were clear of the harbor/channel.

The big question is why were the engines in reverse. Granted that is somewhat speculation still, but based on the wake the ship was making astern it seems likely. Though seeing the vigor that the large Mexican flag was flying astern, it's possible that with even some sail free of the yards they had enough to catch the wind and propel them astern.

SpreadsheetAg said:

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Was a port authority Pilot onboard?

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Watch the video I posted. One of the flags displayed indicates yes a pilot was onboard.

Squadron7 said:

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W said:

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wow, several folks just barely hung onto the rigging to avoid falling

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It looks like a lot of them had tethers.

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Everyone in the rigging were wearing harnesses and fully tied off.

My suspicion is the serious injuries and those that were killed were likely crushed between the bridge and the spars or other rigging. The injuries and fatalities were not from falls.

On a ship like this theres a half-dozen ways for an engineer in main prop to shut down a runaway engine or an engine under a loss of control scenario and none of those happened here for whatever reason.

So you got to wonder if they lost pilothouse control and couldn't communicate effectively with the engine room. Or maybe they switched throttle control to engine room and they didn't know what they were doing.

If it was some sort of malfunction with the throttle control, this is precisely the reason you rock the shaft ahead and astern a couple times while you still tied to the dock. Typically you'd run this test from the bridge and engine room control.

And also the fact that this was a training ship. So one of the things you practice for all the time is the scenario for loss of propulsion and throttle control while in restricted waters such as the case here.

This was a major failure. They somehow hit every hole in the swiss cheese for this to happen like it did.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Another thing you gotta question here is whether the pageantry and regalia of leaving port at dusk so they could do a photo op was secondary to sound seamanship.

Sounds like they got caught up in the moment and it proved to be too big for them.

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Like Aggie sports

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The big question is why were the engines in reverse.

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Maybe they backed out of their berth.

Several news reports said the engine was stuck in reverse. So I assumed they couldn't use the engine to move forward. The video linked above seems to suggest the engine was in reverse and still running. I can't imagine why they didn't get it shut down.

I assume miscommunication as posited above

Burdizzo said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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Another thing you gotta question here is whether the pageantry and regalia of leaving port at dusk so they could do a photo op was secondary to sound seamanship.

Sounds like they got caught up in the moment and it proved to be too big for them.

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Like Aggie sports

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Truer words ...

They got a false start on the very first snap of the season (as we've seen so many times before).

A poor performance from the descendants of the conquistadors.

CanyonAg77 said:

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The big question is why were the engines in reverse.

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Maybe they backed out of their berth.

Several news reports said the engine was stuck in reverse. So I assumed they couldn't use the engine to move forward. The video linked above seems to suggest the engine was in reverse and still running. I can't imagine why they didn't get it shut down.

I assume miscommunication as posited above

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She was bow forward on when she was on the berth. Generally a vessel would back onto the berth so they only have a move forward coming off, but sailing vessels generally go bow forward as that presents their more beautiful and shapely bow and bowsprit more for more prominent presentation.

It is possible that her engines became stuck in reverse after she backed off the pier.

The tug boat used was an older model that is more powerful when pushing than pulling (Sal mentions this in the video I posted). So the tug would have never been tied to her. You could see where they draped tarps over the side to keep the bumpers on the tug from scuffing/maring up her pristine white paint where she was being pushed on.

The fact that they hit the bridge at 5.9 knots in reverse is truly remarkable.

Some of it was current and wind, but hard to imagine a scenario where you end up going 5.9kts in reverse.

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Squadron7 said:

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W said:

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wow, several folks just barely hung onto the rigging to avoid falling

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It looks like a lot of them had tethers.

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Everyone in the rigging were wearing harnesses and fully tied off.

My suspicion is the serious injuries and those that were killed were likely crushed between the bridge and the spars or other rigging. The injuries and fatalities were not from falls.

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There's a video where you can see I think two people fall from the rigging. People commit suicide jumping from that bridge, and the rigging was about the same height

The only videos I've seen I saw a few dangling in their harnesses, but none falling.

Everyone was 100% harnessed and tied off. Certainly possibly the impact destroyed anchor points though. You're certainly correct a fall from that height can absolutely be fatal.

I haven't kept up with this thread so apologies if it's been discussed but was this ship supposed to go under the bridge?

The ship was several feet taller than the underpass of the bridge. No matter what happened it wasn't getting under that bridge.

Did it veer off course to a shorter section of bridge?

The bridge is higher in the middle of the span I believe.

Edit, I read the map wring

Ah ok...They passed under the center and only after first clearing it something went wrong and they ended up in reverse going under the section that was too small.

Makes sense now

Ag_07 said:

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Ah ok...They passed under the center and only after first clearing it something went wrong and they ended up in reverse going under the section that was too small.

Makes sense now

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Watch the first few minutes of the video posted toward the end of page one and you'll understand what happened. The ship was never supposed to pass under the bridge, at least not at that point.

Ag_07 said:

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Ah ok...They passed under the center and only after first clearing it something went wrong and they ended up in reverse going under the section that was too small.

Makes sense now

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No.
They were berthed South of the Brooklyn bridge in the Manhattan side.

They were NEVER supposed to transit under the Brooklyn bridge.

The tug assisted them of the Beth, turned then to point downstream and moved off. Then the vessel backed down into the bridge. This appears to be with engines engaged astern.

PBS seems to have taken some literary license with all this.

According to the NTSB conditions at the time were west wind at 10 knots and only 0.3 knots of flood current (upriver). Video clearly shows the river one notch up from flat ass calm. So all this talk about the weather conditions is overstated. Wouldn't even consider the weather being a factor here.

Wasn't like they drifted down into the bridge, they somehow powered into it.

Sail on, silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
… Oh, if you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind

I agree with you.

So 10 mph winds now make sailing ships uncontrollable?

Wow. Dumb.

You should watch the video posted on page 1, I don't think anyone is debating that the ship wasn't under power.

Masts were too tall to transit BB at any point.

East River really isn't a river. Atlantic access at each end. Currents there mostly affected by tide and wind.

I read it accelerated to 6kn from less than 3.

Them hitting the bridge at 6kts in reverse is remarkable because it may not have even been possible for them to go any faster in reverse due to limitation of the hull and propellor in reverse.

Full speed ahead on a good day for this boat is probably a little more than 10kts.

But when you under astern power your speed is way less than that because the hull wasn't designed to go in reverse and the marine propellor isn't designed for reverse thrust. So you got those two things working against you.

For them to even come close to 6kts in reverse tells us that they somehow had to have been stuck at full astern power. It's possible they went to full astern while maneuvering away from the dock, got stuck there and they didn't react in time, or didn't realize there was a problem until it was way too late and they had too much momentum.

It's also possible that they tripped one of their generators offline during maneuvering and it caused a glitch that interfered with their engine/throttle/rudder control.

Investigators got to rule that out at that as a possible contributing factor as well.

When ships enter and leave port they almost always doubled up on power running two generators in parallel. But if you approach the limits on amps and somehow overload the system one of those generators can trip offline and cause a chain reaction of bad stuff happening including problems with engine control as worst case scenario.

You will note all the incandescent lighting they had strung up in the masts which draws a lot of power. Who knows if they tested that under actual conditions or made some modification to the ship since they last tested under actual conditions and it drew more power than they expected.

Gator92 said:

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Masts were too tall to transit BB at any point.

East River really isn't a river. Atlantic access at each end. Currents there mostly affected by tide and wind.

I read it accelerated to 6kn from less than 3.

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I was about to mention this as it probably isn't clear to most. The East River is a 'tidal estuary', not a river. The current shifts from 'up river' to 'down river' and back as the tide levels go up and down.

So,

How big was this Mexican anyway?

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The Mexican navy has said that the pilot navigating the training ship Cuauhtmoc during its Saturday night crash into the Brooklyn Bridge was New York-based.

"The ship must be controlled by a specialized harbor pilot from the New York government," Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales ngeles said at a press conference.

Morales ngeles acknowledged there was not much time for the pilot to react to the situation, possibly as little as 80 to 90 seconds.

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Mexican navy grabs hold of the tar-baby of trying to shift blame to the pilot and tugs.

Good luck with that because that dog don't hunt.

Yeah; the pilot doesn't touch the controls ; he advises on where the bathymetry and currents of the port may be tricky and is there mostly for marine assurance and port integrity purposes.

NTSB issues a preliminary report.

But no indication as to causation.

But will note that this boat had a CPP, which would add an extra layer of things that can potentially go wrong,

I guess the Mexican navy gets as much funding for training as the cartels are willing to give.