Very sad incident with loss of life and damage to property. Just read through the posts and very informative. I think a probable cause could be a steering gear failure initiating a blackout – the first as well as the consequent blackout (assuming only 2). I am assuming that the steering gear is a standard 4 ram system with 2-3 hydraulic pumps with one of them (possibly smaller kW connected to the emergency switchboard/bus - ESB). I have experienced a failure mode on one of our chartered vessels of the same vintage where there was hydraulic lock spuriously activated by an ‘auto isolation valve’ that is designed to isolate 2 rams on either side of the tiller in case of an oil leak from a burst hydraulic hose. Low level switch on the expansion tank initiates the auto isolation. A hydraulic lock potentially can damage the ram pin and the slide in the tiller (with the tiller/rudder stuck and frozen – in this case maybe a few degrees stbd (right). During this hydraulic lock event the current and power drawn from the pumps connected to the MSB (main bus board) could rise to full load that is substantially higher than normal. One of the pumps may also have single phase protection with very high current trip setting. Did this spike create a high current or low frequency trip? Maybe. Likely low frequency trip as the high current will only trip the breaker with the SSDGs operating. Also the preferential trip to isolate the reefer load should kick in without delay to prevent the high current trip.
Did this event lead to the vessel going off course with the wake? Power is restored, main engine is started and maybe full astern command given along with rudder command. Vessel does not respond and the Bridge crew realize the main steering gear pumps are off and when they switch on, the second blackout.
Just some thoughts/theories as so many of you are interested to get to the root cause.