Terrible 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
> 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)
If it ran aground instead of cutting its masts on the bridge, perhaps there would've been no fatalities.
Very 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.
Wow. I hope everyone survived that crash.
You can see on the video that all masts were fully manned. RIP
https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1kp9sxn/ship...
Looks like the crew were manning the yards[1] as they went out to sea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yard_(sailing)#Manning_the_yar...
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I'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.
Barges (and other watercraft) collide with stationary objects (which includes bridges) monthly, it's just not usually in the national news and doesn't usually cause a lot of damage.
For example, from 2001 to 2017 there were 1020 medium/high severity recorded "allision" incidents by just towing vessels/barges. That's over 5 times a month. [1]
10%+ of recreational watercraft accidents are with fixed objects. [2][3]
There were 18 bridge collapses (in the US) due to vessel collisions over 53 years (1960 to 2013), so averaging roughly one bridge collapse every 3 years. [4]
[1] https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/CG-5PC... [page 9, chart 9]
[2] https://www.tuscaloosa.com/__aws/media/6553702_bridge-strike...
[3] https://www.uscgboating.org/library/accident-statistics/Recr... [page 7]
[4] https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/eesc/bridge/WBES/2013/Session9/9C_3...
[5] https://www.scribd.com/document/550271478/SHIP-AND-BARGE-COL...
It's like the inverse of "everyone having a smartphone proved Bigfoot doesn't exist". Additionally we now get "everyone with a phone, yt, insta, tiktok, etc. shows all the accidents you never knew occurred".
The New York Times reported [1] that at least three other tall ships have struck the Brooklyn Bridge.
In 1921, the steel mainmast on the six-masted schooner Edward J. Lawrence was bent as the vessel was being towed under the bridge at high tide. [2]
In 1935, the first three of four steel masts were bent as the Hamburg-American freighter Tirpitz passed northward under the bridge during an "abnormally high tide." [3]
In 1986, a radar was knocked out of commission when the South Korean freighter Hai Soo scraped the bridge while heading south. [4]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/nyregion/brooklyn-bridge-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1921/02/04/archives/ship-bends-mast-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/1935/10/03/archives/masts-of-freight...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/11/nyregion/new-york-day-by-...
It happens all the time, just not as high profile as this incident or Baltimore. "An analysis of U.S. Coast Guard records of maritime incidents shows a vessel has run into part of a bridge in America at least 650 times since 2019." (https://www.scrippsnews.com/investigations/us-bridges-are-fr...)
Not 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…
There'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.
It feels like after a large accident, the media is more likely to report similar accidents, even if they're smaller and not normally notable. After the east Palestine, OH derailment in 2023 it felt like I saw articles about a half dozen other rail accidents.
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I think you're missing a didn't before "fall".
> both lost power and drifted into the bridge
"Restart your computer to finish installing important updates".
You 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
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil a few years ago: https://youtu.be/31B5X5G5dzw
American cultural dominance of the news
Why 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.
They 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.
One of the cardinal rules of cruising, is you should never sail to a schedule
RIP 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?
You can. You just can’t get down in time.
Why not just jump into the water?
The 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.
You 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
I 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
You 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.
How many people are jumping?
If only 2 died then you'd need a pretty high survival rate from jumping for it to be advantageous over sitting still.
You also look pretty silly if the ship manages to avoid collision, or just gently boops.
If you make it!
Your sailor buddies would never let you live that down.
They'd call you some silly nickname forever too
So simple!
I wonder why those experienced sailors didn't think of that!
In case anyone's curious, here's a picture of a couple sailors on a topyard [1] - I'm not sure you're easily getting any "horizontal momentum" on that thing while 50m in the air in choppy water. Nevermind the safety harnesses.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-detail-of-main-mast-of-tal...
Jumping into water from roughly the height of the Brooklyn Bridge is generally what people do when they _want_ to end their own lives.
An unprepared 40 meter jump onto water? Even if you manage to miss the boat, water is like concrete from that height.
My back of the envelope math says velocity of about 28 m/s — call it an even 100km/h. Yeah seems kinda tough.
Into East River currents?id rather take my chances than risk certain death hitting the deck or falling into the river and getting dragged under.
Boat was supposed to be going the other way, lost power and drifted in fast current. It's only 1/8th of a mile from port to the bridge so there was at most 2.5 minutes of drifting, but possibly quite less depending on where they lost power and how fast the current was at the time.
In addition to what others have mentioned, crewmembers up in the rigging are most likely wearing some sort of safety harness which would not be quick to remove/unhook to allow them to dive into the water.
WGOWS: https://youtu.be/gIlRiauatEo
I visited this ship when it was in Melbourne. Heartbreaking.
They 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?
Electrical power (for lights) may well be decoupled from engine power for the propellers.
Yep. Sailing vessels have batteries and generators to power things when under sail.
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The article says it lost power, but the photo shows a wind powered vessel with sails.
Some kind of hybrid ship?
You 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.
From the video you can also see that it's moving backwards.
Practically 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.
I'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.
The 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
Looking at the timeline described in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlRiauatEo , it all happened pretty quickly. They probably didn't have time to deploy anchors.
I’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.
You're right. As can be clearly seen in the snippets shown in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIlRiauatEo
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!
Learning 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.
Yeah, well, if you've invested 135 million euros into repairing a sailboat, you might as well put it to use...
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I 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
With the case of the US Navy and the well-publicized collisions with civilian vessels, it's happening more because the organization is trying to run more ships and more constant operations with fewer people than are actually required.
And that's on top of scheduling practices that are fundamentally negligent and dysfunctional to start with, like watch standers (whose job is to watch for and react to dangers to the ship) trying to perform duty shifts on 4 hours of sleep a night for months at a time.
> because the organization is trying to run more ships and more constant operations with fewer people than are actually required
Greed and AI will replace all workers. /s
To 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.
On 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).
If you watch the video you can see tugs moving the boat. Current speculation is that the tugs/harbor captain messed up and the ship got away from them in the tide and drifted backwards into the bridge.
Tugs were nearby; one had helped it back away from the pier it had been docked at, but none were hooked up at the time of the collision.
Sal Mercogliano — a maritime historian at Campbell University - saw indications that the ship's engine may have been stuck in reverse.
See video edited from his livestream here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2p9bYfFhHE
Yes, 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.
Had similar thoughts. Hell Gate is no joke.
Damn.
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.
It is not a case of not knowing that the bridge is too low. It is a case of not being able to avoid it and being pushed into it by winds and waves. Reportedly something went wrong with their engine.
The 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.
That 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.
Same for being aware of the lower abstraction layers down to machine code when you're programming in a high level language.
There’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.
This incident could have happened regardless of the type of ship. Unless you have some reason to believe otherwise, I'd suggest against saying so.
The fundamentals include things like teamwork and following orders. You can learn those on a sailing ship just fine.
You 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.
You can go your whole programming career without using assembly, but it unquestionably makes you a better programmer.
Sure -- what the fuck does that have to do with sailing, though?
The 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.
Sailboats, except for the smallest ones, usually have a motor and propeller to move without relying on wind.
Sailing ships generally have auxiliary engines.
accidents happen, 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