I hate to base my entire opinion on such but I think it's probably right.

Seems like they lose power all the time on that show and everything goes to crab pot after that

I think I read the ship was built in 2015. Is that considered old in the shipping world? My guess is some EPA mandated emissions system shut down the engine due to bad fuel.

I have been following a lot of mega yacht and super yacht channels  over the years.
Which intern, leads to ship building channels.

My guess is the onboard digital control center had a catastrophic failure with the electrical failure.
There was not enough time to do any manual controls to right the direction.
Dropping the anchor was probably too late and an outgoing tide could very well have been factored in to the swinging of the stern.


There have been numerous instances with new tech and digital controls on ships failing, this could very well be the case.

My buddy says:

"The reason this happened is the fault of government. It's been long known that ships can take out bridges...there's been more than a few examples of this happening.

Government has had plenty of time to beef up the bridge so that it would not be taken out about the ship (like putting barriers so the ship can't hit the bridge - like the Skyway bridge in Florida).

You have 'God's Law', then Murphy's Law' and then 'Man's Law' - where Murphy is always looking for an opportunity.

Any reasonable person would know you have to build a bridge taking in consideration that a ship may hit it."

I think you are on to something. I'm surprised old Joe has not came out with a statement something like this,

"This whole matter of a ship running into my rail road bridge that I used many times and knocking it over was a republican terrorist attack on my home state lead by Trump."

They knock it down every time, just usually isn’t this bad.

No, it could be worse - it could be really evil tires:

The engine probably had the same brand injectors Ford put in 7.3s and a Dodge drivetrain.

The bridge has minimum 185ft clearance....

Why would one expect people to build a bridge differently than their home? We don't hurricane proof, tornado proof or fire proof our homes yet these natural disasters are far more likely.

My God.  Someone with real knowledge.

The ships resources couldn't handle the 20 threads on the same topic in GD.

I'm waiting for the black box data but I'm thinking she didn't lose propulsion. I'm think she lost steering and I'd like to see the combination of rudder orders and engine orders during the casualty.

I’m surprised they did not have tugs guiding through the channel to get passed the bridge.

Couple of "experts" on tv I've seen stated conventional dolphins, etc wouldn't stop a ship that large?

Indian Mariners and poor maint. You surely jest good sir.

I know how lots of things work, but ocean going ships ain’t one of them.  Spitballing is the only thing I can do, so here goes:

The backup/redundant power systems go through the same power distribution bottle neck.  If the power distribution system fails, the primary or redundant power available can’t help you.  Or the back up power and/or power distribution systems take longer to be brought on line than the ship had to avoid hitting the bridge.

I'm not a bridge engineer.

Is it normal to build a bridge in such a way that knocking out one support dominoes the entire thing?

I think we will probably get the real answers soon enough, but if engaging in early speculation:

Power loss appears to be the problem.  Likely causes:
1. Electrical generation, switching, distribution
2. Fuel problems, including main engine and generators.

If it turns out to be bad fuel, it's going to be difficult to know if an accident or terrorism.  I would guess that state-level actors have the technology to develop something like a Tide Pod that could be dropped into the ship's fuel tanks (and maybe also the shore fuel supply for a cover story) to make the fuel go bad on a schedule -- like a certain number of minutes after the ship departs.  Even if they got the timing wrong and the ship missed the bridge, it probably would have still caused major traffic disruptions for at least a week.

It’s a relatively new vessel. My fishing boat is twice as old as this ship, and they have more than twice the service life my boat should have.

The obvious solution is more mandatory Ship Resource Management and Bridge Resource Management training.  Engine Room Resource Management is another compulsory training class.

In the world maritime shipping, that’s damn near brand new. Like it’s been said 100s of times at this point, ships lose power all the time.

When I worked in private ship repair, most, if not all the ships I worked on had fueling issues at some point, most commonly from clogged filters, although more than once, it was a damaged injector or injectors or even a fuel rail from where the ship had a fuel supply issue from clogged filters and instead of cleaning them, the crew just pulled the filters.

Had one that I remember was having issues with their primary diesel generator cutting out and causing electrical cutouts. They assumed generator problem, turned out to be a kinked hard line going to the fuel rail and it was causing fueling issues under high load.

Also, most of the rudder systems we worked on were hydraulic in nature but electrically controlled. You could theoretically have a powered ship with no steering.

My best guess for now is a lack of fuel somehow, not bad fuel since bunker oil is basically a step above crude oil, or electrical failure.

I'm very limited on shipping, but know enough that they need to switch fuels when close or in port to low sulfur.

Based on my limited googling, I'm wondering if the use/switch of low sulfur fuel while in ECA  caused issues in a ship probably designed for bunker fuel.

Looks like some ships reported engine issues using low sulfur early on when it began being mandated in places.

https://www.rivieramm.com/news-content-hub/news-content-hub/vlsfo-causes-more-engine-damage-and-handling-issues-62053#:~:text=Engine%20problems%20include%20piston%20ring,blocked%20filters%20and%20separation%20failure

These issues and others have led to engine damage and handling problems, said Mr Townley. He said since the industrywide switch to VLSFO, there have been more engine failures and issues.

"No one anticipated the increases in engine damage," said Mr Townley. "Some are still suffering ongoing issues with most damage occurring when using higher density fuels with high viscosities."

Engine problems include piston ring breakage, injector failures, liner wear and scavenge fire.

There have also been more fuel handling problems on ships, especially with lower viscosity VLSFOs, mostly through blocked filters and separation failure.

All in the name of cost cutting.
This is where the cheapest possible imports get you America.

I have a few years at sea and taught steering at IC"A" school.  

I was never on a third world cargo carrier but on the world's best navy's capital ships - aircraft carriers.

As a civilian I've seen shit happen ... multiple failures cascading as people failed to test the built-in redundancies out of fear so when they do go on-line it's likely the first time since the very complex system was commissioned.

There are five ways to steer a Navy carrier.

1. The bridge operates the helm and steering hydraulically swings the rudder to and fro
2. Auxiliary control operates an inside the ship using a secondary helm listening to lookouts and combat's radar information
3. A portable console can be plugged into the wiring in pre-designed locations
4. Man powered pumps can swing the rudder manually
5. Spinning the propeller shafts at different speeds

The Navy has mandatory exercise requirements where backup systems are put on-line and tested. The first time you test auxiliary control (Aux Con) better not be following a failure of bridge steering control ... and the first time you use the "bitch stick" (the portable steering system) better not be following a failure of Aux Con. So you test them in drills while your in deep water simulating a loss of steering on the bridge and a takeover of control from Aux Con. You practice driving the ship and let everyone get a chance at touchy-feely and then you simulate a failure of Aux Con so the "bitch stick" has to be wired in. Failing that there's direct sound powered phone (no electrical power needed) between the bridge and aft steer where men can crank on hand powered pumps to move the rudders. Doing that it takes some un-Godly number of cranks by two men per pump to get the rudder to move a degree. Finally by dragging a shaft slightly you can gradually move the ship in a direction, sort of.

The rudders are about 75' tall and 50' across to move the 100,000 ton carrier. You know that feeling you get on your speed boat when you just start slamming the rudder back-n-froth and then put your foot in to a quarter million horse power?



ETA: When the Navy is coming into or out of ports, or transiting "tight" areas, they'll go to the "sea and anchor detail" and man up Aux Con, Aft Steering, the Focsile (the anchor room), add look outs, additional watch standers in combat and restrictions against taking down navigational systems. There's a ton of stuff that goes on just "in case". You wouldn't have to find the team to man Aux Con, they'd be standing there communicating with the Bridge.

Lack of maintenance, or poor maintenance is the usual culprit.

3 knot crosswind was the cause.

Needs more anchors.

I posted in the first thread that I assumed they may have had a generator transfer breaker failure but dirty fuel is way more likely and if they took on bunkers right before departure, that's a dead giveaway.

To those that don't know that's refueling the ship. A bunker barge is a big ol floading fuel tank full of heavy fuel oil (HFO) or just "bunker fuel". I don't have access to Marinetraffic AIS history but I bet if you ticked the history back you would see a tug alongside delivering the barge.

HFO is the nastiest of the nasty crap that a diesel will run on (not as nasty as mazut) but it still has standards of purity. When bunkers get delivered they don't get accepted and pumped onto the ship without a sample being provided and an analysis having been done on that sample. The analysis is always delivered to the port engineers and the Chief before accepting the fuel. However that doesn't mean that there may not be some contamination that occurs after the fact (because afaik the sample is taken as the bunker barge is filled at the refinery/fueling station).

Even "pure" HFO still has to be heated before it can be pumped, and then it has to be strained before it can reach the injectors. The strainers have to be maintained - that could have been a factor here too, as foreign flagged ships sometimes have shitty PM.

We've had several of our ships have issues with fuel in the past year. One ship had to be towed back to port before even leaving the Puget Sound because they couldn't make speed due to fuel causing issues with the injectors.  

We had a WSF ferry completely lose power and slam into a beach last year due to fuel issues that caused them to lose the generator plant - because WSF ferries are all diesel-electric, losing the plant means they lose propulsion and steering. Fortunately they slammed into a soft beach at low tied, and most of the passengers were actually able to walk off of the ferry, and a shallow draft foot ferry was able to come alonside and take the rest.

Why are fuel issues seem to be happening more? I'm not a fuel guy so I can only speculate based on what I've heard from the engineers I talk with.. Part of it is that our HFO refinery capacity has dropped due to refineries being closed. I'm sure there's a competency crisis argument to be made as well.

There's also the factor of regulation of which fuel the ships are allowed to burn while in port to run their service generators. In some states they cannot burn HFO in their generators while in port or within coastal waters due to EPA emissions regs. Instead they have to burn Marine Diesel Oil which is more highly refined and expensive. So what the engineers will do is run a smaller aux generator on MDO while at the dock in port, and then after leaving the dock (or when outside of coastal waters) they will perform a fuel changeover from MDO to HFO. Or they keep one or more main/aux generators on HFO and then bring that generator online and do a bus transfer. I've heard of some ships sometimes having issues when doing this, but it's more a problem for some of our newer ships changing over from MDO or HFO to LNG as the LNG delivery is temperamental and there's a lot of prep work to get it going.

So I wonder if the engineers on board decided to do an MDO to HFO changeover and ran into issues, lost one or more generators as a result.

Or they just had fuel that was so contaminated that it almost immediately started clogging strainers and contaminating injectors everywhere as soon as they put real load on the engines and generators.

We had a fun one on a sea trial of a new build where the ship went to change over to LNG while out at sea and they locked themselves out of part of the automation system when it asked for a password to change the fueling setup. Nobody knew what the password was. It wasn't in any documents. The onboard engineers from the automation company said it shouldn't be doing that. They had to drop anchor and wait to hear back from techs in Norway why they tried to figure out why the system was asking for a password that it shouldn't be asking for. Meanwhile they could not switch back to any other type of fuel, so they were dead in the water.

They got Baltimored.

ain't got no gas in it

Next, explain why the USN has had so many collision failures as of late.

The ship builder bought either....

Chinese low bid electronics.

British built electronics.

All of those things could have been done easily under normal circumstances... Definitely not when the ship has minutes to avoid a collision.

You can have all the backup and manual systems in the world, the crew cannot create time.

Like I said in the other thread.. I wouldn't be surprised to see new regulations dictating that there will be a tug alongside every ship arriving/departing major ports until they have cleared potential obstructions like major bridges.

Mechanical things break down

It's called a bridge collapse because the collapse is the main story, the ship hitting the bridge is noteworthy because it's the cause but ultimately secondary in importance and thus not the lede.

The captain isn't in front of congress because it's only been like 48 hours and he's still on his ship stuck under the bridge and has all sorts of federal investigators stuffed up his ass, congress can hold off on the performative hearing sideshow for a bit.

The ship was built in Korea at Hyundai.. A lot of the Korean built ships utilize Japanese electronics like Yokogaw/YDK, JRC and Furuno. Yokogawa makes a huge amount of steering stand and control systems.

I've done work on Indian crewed ships.  I'm surprised more of the aren't up against the rocks on a daily basis.

You better get rid of your Tesla.

Attached File

Late-stage capitalism and consumerism culture applied to business transportation. Cut spending until it breaks; maintenance is an overhead to minimize.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/port-worker-says-dali-ship-behind-baltimore-bridge-collapse-had-electrical-issues-for-days

Dali, the ship behind the fatal bridge collapse in Baltimore on Wednesday, had suffered from a “severe electrical problem” for days before it lost power during its ill-fated trip out of the Maryland harbor, a port worker told a CNN affiliate on Thursday. Julie Mitchell, co-administrator of Container Royalty, a company tracks the tonnage on container ships coming in and out of Baltimore, said the massive container ship had sat in the port for two days suffering from “total power failure, loss of engine power, everything.” Now Mitchell is pointing a finger at those who gave the ship an OK to leave port despite its alleged issues. “They shouldn’t have let the ship leave port until they got it on under control,” she said, adding that she’s unsure whether decision makers thought the issue was fixed before Dali set sail.

Still amazing how fast that all went down. Not a chance for anyone.

I don't miss it.

For some reason a common combination I would see was Indian deck dept (Captain, mates), Russian or Ukranian engine department, and the whole set of ABs would be Filipino/Indonesian/etc

The Indian Captains took themselves VERY seriously and were consistently the only commercial Captains I would encounter who whore a full on uniform like they were in command of a Navy ship.

I liked working with the Russian/Ukranian engineers though.. Rough dudes who were no BS. If you needed something done they would get it done, with their boiler suits undone just enough for their chest hair and gold necklace to be hanging out, and a cigarette dangling from the corner of their mouth. They were more like Americans than anyone else you would encounter aboard those ships.

Tag

On the ship. As in, the ship had an engineering failure which caused it to crash into the bridge and cause a catastrophic structural failure.

If anyone has followed the Arfcom yacht thread, things are always broken/stuck/wornout, and need to be fixed.  A much larger ship, and you have 100+ times the number of issues/breakdowns.   I imagine breakdowns happen but usually in areas where it really doesn't matter (no obstacles/ships nearby.)   This one happened in an unfortunate location.  

I think the current popular term is "quality escape"

LoL.....like anyone ever looks at that shit anyway

That stems from the Caste system still used in Inida. That dude probably came from a wealthy family and took the job serious because if he fucked up they would disown him

This is where the bread crumbs are going

reports that while in port, they were having issues with refrigeration units overloading the ships electrical, causing system failure (just like what happened when approaching the bridge)