Mexican Navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge leaving two people dead

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/18/mexican-navy-ship-hits-brooklyn-bridge-during-promotional-tour

by teleforce • 1 year ago

147 82 1 year ago

theguardian.com

ars• 1 year ago

The article says it lost power, but the photo shows a wind powered vessel with sails.

Some kind of hybrid ship?

frumplestlatz• 1 year ago

Sailing ships generally have auxiliary engines.

SllX• 1 year ago

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!

Tomte• 1 year 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.

alistairSH2• 1 year ago

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.

melevittfl• 1 year ago

Sailboats, except for the smallest ones, usually have a motor and propeller to move without relying on wind.

jabl3• 1 year 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.

thomasfedb• 1 year ago

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.

grues-dinner• 1 year ago

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.

perlgeek• 1 year ago

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.

zeeZ• 1 year ago

From the video you can also see that it's moving backwards.

codr7• 1 year ago

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• 1 year 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…

userbinator2• 1 year ago

I think you're missing a didn't before "fall".

hiddencost• 1 year 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• 1 year ago

both lost power and drifted into the bridge

"Restart your computer to finish installing important updates".

chrisdalke• 1 year ago

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

Brybry• 1 year ago

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...

viraptor• 1 year ago

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".

5555624• 1 year ago

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...)

lanna• 1 year ago

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil a few years ago: https://youtu.be/31B5X5G5dzw

jshprentz• 1 year ago

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-...

steveBK1233• 1 year ago

American cultural dominance of the news

fwipsy• 1 year ago

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.

haunter• 1 year ago

You can see on the video that all masts were fully manned. RIP

https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1kp9sxn/ship...

Aidevah• 1 year ago

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...

55555• 1 year 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?

ceejayoz3• 1 year ago

You can. You just can’t get down in time.

brador• 1 year ago

Why not just jump into the water?

Polizeiposaune2• 1 year ago

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.

steveBK1233• 1 year ago

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.

metalman• 1 year ago

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

Rodeoclash• 1 year ago

I visited this ship when it was in Melbourne. Heartbreaking.

steveBK1233• 1 year ago

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

ilamont• 1 year ago

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)

userbinator2• 1 year ago

If it ran aground instead of cutting its masts on the bridge, perhaps there would've been no fatalities.

sinuhe69• 1 year ago

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?

loloquwowndueo2• 1 year ago

Electrical power (for lights) may well be decoupled from engine power for the propellers.

alistairSH2• 1 year ago

Yep. Sailing vessels have batteries and generators to power things when under sail.

janeway• 1 year ago

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.

deepfriedchokes• 1 year ago

Wow. I hope everyone survived that crash.

nicwolff• 1 year ago

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.

arwineap2• 1 year ago

One of the cardinal rules of cruising, is you should never sail to a schedule

HelloNurse• 1 year ago

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.

burnt-resistor• 1 year ago

WGOWS: https://youtu.be/gIlRiauatEo

Mexican Navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge leaving two people dead

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