Another bridge hit by ship

[John Arton]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...omotional-tour
Saw this ship under full sail some years ago when I was working on the mexican west coast running fuel from Salina cruz up to ports on the west coast. Beautiful sight she was.
Rgds
J.A

[James Curry]

Looks like the port authority of New York were as well prepared for a bridge incident as the port authority of Baltimore were.
Do not know what actually happened but why was there not an escort tug with her? Assume she was not supposed to sail under the bridge if so did no one check the Air draft. Now will Trump dare to have the master of the Cuauhtémoc arrested, is he not an officer of the Mexican Navy?

[happy daze john in oz]

I think they just put bridges in so some idiot on a ship of some kind can run into them.
Been quite a few of late, maybe need to go back to sea school!!!

[James Curry]

I watched some video footage today of this incident. There were people hanging from the masts just dangling there. Thankfully those I could see were hanging from what looked like safety harness type equipment.
What did confuse me though was there was what appeared to be a Tug and it only seemed to be watching what was going on. There certainly did not appear to be any attempt to assist the ship.

[Alan Briggs]

Havn't these people heard of tugs, any ship that comes into Sydney harbour has at least one tug in attendance the cruise liners two.

[j.sabourn]

As soon as a tug puts a line on a ship Alan the price usually jumps up dramatically. Port regulations may demand the presence of a tug which would think would come within the harbour dues , usually the master under normal circumstances will be asked if he requires tug assistance. That used to be the norm. Cheers JS.
I spent some time working out of Sydney and is one of the few ports in Australia where I found pilotage compulsory , all the other ports I had excemptions for , even Singapore going by the usual regs.if ship under think it was 1000 gross was the masters choice to use a pilot. If master was uncomfortable with it he would order a pilot . I never used a pilot in Lerwick so got half the pilotage fee which at the time was about 80 quid which put behind the bar in the closest bar as everyone involved as linesmen etc. Australia think it was agreed with the maritime union that no money would be paid to the master for non use of a pilot just to be part of ships duties . That was offshore agreements . Des may know more about it as believe he was a union official , I didn’t think too much about it as was no way to get rich quick. Aberdeen the inner harbour at least was pilotage compulsory, and yet when in the port and had to shift ship in a busy port it wasn’t , I could never work that one out as that was the hard part with 3 or more ships all shifting at the same time, was called the Aberdeen Shuffle.,Cheers JS
As regards half pilotage fees the company in uk said they would be taxing me on the money and I said you do that and I’m taken a pilot . This would have involved delays to the ship etc. so they backed down. JS

[John Arton]

Will have to wait for the official report but if you watch the video it appears that the tug escorting her inwards under the bridge but after clearing the bridge the tug left and she then lost engine power and the prevailing current took her backwards under the bridge where she struck the bridge near one of its abutment.
Rgds
J.A

[happy daze john in oz]

Sydney harbor and Melbourne always have tugs on duty not just for cruise ships but all shipping.
Some just sit alongside with no line attached, some with just one.
But they are there until the ship is docked.