Captain explains what happened during Baltimore Key Bridge collapse

In the early hours of Tuesday, March 26, a container ship struck a support on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing the bridge to collapse into the river.

[Philip-]

A retired captain speculates what happened rather than _the captain_ of the ship as your title seems to suggest.

[dexter_gd]

Nice click bait. Not the actual captain on the ship.

[pelletslinger]

The ship lost power twice if you would show the entire video. Loss of power appears to have happened a few minutes before it struck.

[politicsuncensored]

Sadly by this time nearly 12 hours later this is a recovery mission only. So sad to see this happen again. Shalom

[yellowdeer]

The one contractor working on the bridge who walked away will have some good answers. My thoughts and prayers to the contractors and those who lost their lives.

[PS-pnrd]

There were cars on that bridge that just dunked into the deep water and went. Must have been horrific for those poor souls.

[CinnamonIceCubes]

That wasn't cool they put "Captain Explains" cuz people are gonna assume it's "The Captain" that was on the boat. They also put his picture up with his name which is even worse. He's gonna get harassed. NO, it wasn't the Captain aboard. This whole situation is absolutely terrible. I pray they find some survivors. Praying for the families that lost their loved ones.

[GreenRiver]

Why are any posts that imply this may have been intentional being removed by YouTube...?

[frederickwise]

Why wasnt the ship steering toward the center of the channel? ie. THE < CENTER SPAN > OF THE BRIDGE - and widest space between support columns. (In earlier news this AM, it was stated that the ship lost power and was restarted twice.) The second restart was too late.
During both power losses the ship drifted to port, because current flow out of the Patapsco River is going to push the ship that direction - AND they drifted - into that support!!!

[realheartsofsisters]

When I woke up this morning and saw this, my heart was broken.This is so sad I cannot imagine

[coleytoons]

That ship isn't even 10yrs old🤨. That doesn't seem to be that old in my opinion.

[MrDerbee]

Like a freight train ploughing through the gates of a level crossing; unstoppable.

[glockfotyfive]

The path of the ship appeared more parallel to the bridge until it suddenly went full throttle exhaust/smoke blast and rapidly steered directly into the bridge support. Was power on ship turned off intentionally? The plot of the path in the news does not match that of the video view from side opposite of impact.

[stargazeronesixseven]

😮 OMG! How unfortunate to lose power in this crucial moment trying to navigate a tight clearance under the Baltimore's Francis Scott Key bridge! 🙏

[ramblerdave]

That's a toll bridge, and can be shut down at the toll booths, which apparently happened. Other reports say the ship notified authorities that they were out of control, very close to the bridge.

[derekpearson]

Tugboats gonna be required there now once they rebuild

[tomtransport]

Completely preventable if tugs were mandated to stay with ship till past this very important bridge. Two tugs guided it from loading dock to channel then left the ship on it's own. This was a tragedy waiting to happen.

[gbsailing]

As has been commented on elsewhere, it can been seen that the ship has 2 power outages. Following the first one smoke for the funnel can be seen. IF this is indicating that the ship was put into FULL reverse (which seems probable) then on a 'single screw' ship this will have an actual physical effect - namely that the ships stern will kick out to port, regardless of speed. This will effectively steer the ship's nose to starboard and towards the pillion, as depicted by the videos. Ships captains would be trained to anticipate this. So one has to wonder just what was going on on the bridge between the pilot and the captain.

[AsianCentury]

I think huge reefer containers were loaded and those drawing tremendous amount of power. Hence, not sufficient amount of actual power available for ship's maneuvering.

Crash astern means, bow cants to starboard. Ship was swing to starboard as soon as stern propulsion was maneuvered. It resulted bow to drift towards the pillar and out of center channel.

Anchoring will not be effective for this size of the vessel at that speed. Neither, bow thrusters would be available due to lack of power. After all, bow thrusters are mostly ineffective above 4/5 knots.

Remedial action could had been made to maintain steering with the help of emergency generator and cut off all deck power for huge reefer containers immediately. Restore power back for ship's maneuvering only with two minutes or so.

Cool down! And think! Good luck to all . My prayers are with all casualties and losses.

[larryroberts]

Pushed by wind. That water look like glass.