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.
user32489318 · 2h ago
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…
userbinator · 2h ago
I think you're missing a didn't before "fall".
hiddencost · 2h ago
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.
verisimi · 1h ago
> both lost power and drifted into the bridge
"Restart your computer to finish installing important updates".
55555 · 2h ago
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?
ceejayoz · 2h ago
You can. You just can’t get down in time.
brador · 45m ago
Why not just jump into the water?
prmoustache · 39m ago
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.
newsclues · 11m ago
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
eCa · 12m ago
An unprepared 40 meter jump onto water? Even if you manage to miss the boat, water is like concrete from that height.
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
ars · 2h ago
The article says it lost power, but the photo shows a wind powered vessel with sails.
Some kind of hybrid ship?
jabl · 1h ago
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.
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 · 2h ago
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.
murderfs · 1h ago
Yeah, well, if you've invested 135 million euros into repairing a sailboat, you might as well put it to use...
lnsru · 1h ago
Please don’t downvote this. Obviously it was money laundering operation. For the money at least 2 such new ships could be built. The journalists uncovered this years ago.
raverbashing · 2h ago
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
crooked-v · 2h ago
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.
hulitu · 1h ago
> 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
defrost · 2h ago
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.
krisoft · 1h ago
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.
usrusr · 1h ago
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).
detourdog · 1h ago
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.
defrost · 49m ago
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.
nickysielicki · 2h ago
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.
shakow · 2h ago
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.
nottorp · 2h ago
Same for being aware of the lower abstraction layers down to machine code when you're programming in a high level language.
achierius · 2h ago
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.
ceejayoz · 2h ago
The fundamentals include things like teamwork and following orders. You can learn those on a sailing ship just fine.
frumplestlatz · 2h ago
Sailing ships generally have auxiliary engines.
melevittfl · 2h ago
Sailboats, except for the smallest ones, usually have a motor and propeller to move without relying on wind.
https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1kp9sxn/ship...
At least this bridge fall like a house of cards, I guess because the masts broke first.
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.
"Restart your computer to finish installing important updates".
Life is not a Super Hero action movie.
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
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
Some kind of hybrid ship?
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!
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.
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
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.
Greed and AI will replace all workers. /s
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.
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.