Question For commercial captains (Baltimore bridge collision)

[Trilobite]

They put massive piling protectors at the Sunshine Skyway bridge after the 1980 collision.

The most sensible explanation I've read so far is from a British expert who viewed the video. He said there appeared to be protectors in front of the pilings (called "dolphins"), but they only protect the pilings from a straight on collision (parallel to the river), and this ship somehow came in from an angle, so it missed the protectors. He also noted that when the bridge was designed in the early seventies, ships were smaller and there was less traffic.

 

[Johnoly]

$$ but cheaper the the cost of a bridge and the lost lives.

I'd guess a filing has been already done at the court house like the Conception did.
Because ..................

Within the contents of United States Maritime Law, the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 states that the owner of a vessel may limit damage claims to the value of the vessel at the end of the voyage plus “pending freight” as long as the owner can prove it lacked knowledge of the problem beforehand.

Tags = @Wookie @nolatom

 

[Pipehorse]

I can go into excruciating detail in a later post, but here are a few things you need to know about how this can happen. Food for thought, think of the momentum of an object that weights 100,000 tons traveling at even a slow speed of five knots. It was unheard of and unimagined when the bridge was built 50 years ago.

The ship runs on a 56,000 hp engine, two stroke, 9 cylinder, crosshead engine (.9meter bore probably about 2mstroke). Big engines like that do not have their own power supply like a smaller engine. The fuel supply pumps, the lube oil pumps, the motor blowers for air at slow speed, the camshaft pump, and jacket water pump are independently supplied with electricity from aux generators. A ship that size probably has three maybe four in the 1200kw-2500kw range.

If those aux generators are not running then the main engine is not running. And probably the steering gear is not powered. There is a separate emergency generator that will supply power to one steering gear motor, and the fuel pumps that are needed to run the aux generators, but it seems like the Emergency Generator was not running either. NO Power means no propulsion and no steering.

Report says ship had no power, that means the emergency was not running and the aux generators were not running. Bad fuel could be a culprit, crew familiarization could be a culprit, catastrophic failure in the engine room could be a culprit, or any combination.

I worked on ships as a marine engineer for 36 years. The last nine years as a chief engineer on a 60,000 ton, 936 foot long container ship with 66,000 shp. The Dali is 100,000 tons, 985 foot long with a 55,000 shp. A bigger ship with less power than the ship I worked on.