Hi there Ron !
From what I understand, the ship completely lost power, so they had no (hydraulic) steerage, and their Nav system was also probably down. Moving at 13 - 16 knots, a fully loaded 1,000 foot freighter has an unbelievable amount of momentum (can’t turn or stop on a dime). In spite of being well-marked and very well lit, the dredged channel is also quite narrow… and it is extremely shallow outside the marked channel.
There was a Coastal Pilot aboard, who was at the helm. The tugs had assisted the freighter leaving port and turning her around (from north to south) but they cut loose after she was headed outbound, down the center of the channel…
The wind was from the North East, so with no steerage she was blown to starboard.
While the emergency generator should have automatically kicked in (for steerage) apparently it did not. From when the ship lost power, it had no more than 2 minutes to steer hard to starboard to run it aground (instead drifting helplessly into the western support of the span. Even if the Pilot had thought of running it aground, 2 minutes is not alot of time to react (which would have been impossible without steerage by emergency Gen Set).
If you search Vessel Finder, they have lots of data online (and well over a million hits today).
We will see what the NTSB comes back with… but clearing the span from underwater will require highly skilled divers (working in zero visibility muck) to use underwater explosives to “dismantle” the tangled mess of steel, so it can be dragged out of the main channel. That process will probably take a couple of months… and cost Millions of dollars.
In the interim Baltimore Port is crippled, so Norfolk (and perhaps New York & Boston) will have to pick up the slack. This means higher prices as the goods will need to be trucked in from afar.
I was of course joking about them not having Rosepoint ECS… and even if the Pilot had separate NAV software on his laptop (or iPad)… without engine and steerage, there was very little that could have be done to prevent this.
Hindsight says that the tugs should accompany the ship traffic until through the bridge, and that the emergency generator should be routinely tested before each departure from port.
We have no idea if any sabotage of their systems took place (or by whom)… but I am sure the media will feed us their programed slant (whatever the government wants them to report, and tell them “what not to report”…)
That is it from the peanut galley tonight…
Skipper