Video: Watch as Ship Goes Dark, Rams Into Key Bridge [UPDATED With Better Video]
UPDATE: Here is a better-quality video sent over by Stu Turley:
Stunning video was just released on X showing the container ship that rammmed the Francis Scott Key Bridge early Tuesday morning. In the video, the ship goes completely dark as it approaches the bridge and then appears to be intentionally steered into one of the bridge’s supports.
Because of X’s idiotic ongoing feud with Substack, I’m not able to post the full video here, but I was able to capture it in two parts using my Iphone:
Part I:
Part II:
UPDATE: It is interesting to note that several media outlets are now airing an edited cut of this video that does not show the first 20 seconds when the ship goes temporarily dark and is steered into the direction of the bridge support. I’m glad I got this copied and pasted when I did. I have a feeling it is about to be “disappeared.”
Experienced boat handler here - grew up on the water & from Annapolis - about 30mins from Baltimore. No reason in the world a ship would go dark; I didn’t even see any running lights. No Captain worth his salt would turn off his running lights in such a narrow & busy channel. The captain will be hung & the suit against the shipping company is going to be a doozy. That said why the ship goes dark is a real mystery: accident or by design? That’s the $64k question.
I used to sail as an engineer on merchant ships like this one. This vessel experienced a loss of it's generator, causing the power outage. The black smoke you see is the main engine being restarted. To stop a ship, or radically slow it down you first have to stop the engine. Then you shift the cam shaft to reverse the cylinder firing order. Now you restart the engine and the propeller is turning backwards, helping break your forward momentum. It still takes a tremendous distance to stop a vessel going so fast.
And that's the main point - the ship was going way too fast approaching the bridge. This cut the pilot's reaction time to take evasive maneuvers once the vessel experienced a loss of power. Both the pilot and the captain should be brought up on manslaughter charges for operating so recklessly.