Sad
The video shows her going astern into the bridge. Engine failure?
I feel bad for the cadets, but it is sort of amusing that a ship with a comically large Mexican flag lit up like a Christmas tree crashed into a historical American landmark.
Why do so many countries have these old school sailing vessels for military training, seems very cool but also not very practical?
Sail training on a ship like that is excellent training that produces superior officers. That’s why they do it.
Control failure?
… plus 2-3kt flood current?
When you have a military but not the habit of invading other countries every 5 years you have to do something to keep them busy. During the height of the 2nd Iraq War I was living & working in Mexico and had the opportunity to witness one of their Sept 16, Independence Day Military Parades. Each battalion would march into the plaza, stop in front of the generals & dignitaries & preform a dance routine. I thought it cool their soldiers were trained to dance & not die in a puddle of blood in a desert. Sail shipping is not practical but not the worst thing they could be doing.
And is the practicality in question on display right here? I feel like a more modern vessel would have reacted better to a loss of propulsion/steering/whatever went wrong in this instance
Fair enough, discipline through tasks like this does beat getting shot at in the sandbox
Orange man will have a field day with this one.
You mean a more modern vessel like DALI which took down the bridge in Baltimore?
Or do you mean a DP 3 vessel filled with redundant engine rooms, and computer controlled thrusters?
Or an ultra modern autonomous vessel with no crew to eliminate the possibility of onboard human error?
If a modern training vessel is foolproof and does everything for you, how are you going to learn fundamental seamanship skills?
Haven’t you noticed that Trump isn’t orange anymore?
Apparently he has a better image consultant and is using a more subtle shade of make up.
On smaller sailing vessels, SOP in case of loss of main engine power is to get an anchor down ASAP. It’s considered good practice to have a kedge at the ready for instant use in such an emergency. I guess they didn’t have time to get an anchor loose? There was a tug right next to them – nothing could be done with that either?
Why was she going astern?
Was the intention ever to go under this bridge?
She was bound to have a pilot onboard. Should have had tugs.
I certainly do not know what happened.
But my guess would be that the engine might be a direct reversible.
They may have gotten a start astern to back away from the pier, but then failed to get a start going ahead (camshaft stuck, low air pressure, or whatever).
It could be a controllable pitch propeller and it got stuck in reverse.
I suspect that someone will post what happened within a few days.
I concur. Too much sternway for it to be deliberate. Too fast even for the tugs to do much.
I’m pretty aghast that the crew were left aloft rather than been ordered back to the deck when it was inevitable that the masts would hit.
It’s quite tragic. She’s a beautiful ship and well run in my experience. She certainly had a reputation as a party ship - best ship’s party I’ve ever been to. They played on that with showy arrivals and departures, lots of Mexican music and dancing. I hope that happy element wasn’t involved in any way with this event.
Some similarities with this one.
https://gcaptain.com/incident-video-brazilian-navy-tall-ship-has-dust-up-with-bridge/