Baltimore Bridge Collapse: Analysis of MV Dali's Collision Course

Footage of the bridge collapse is here:
krplus.net/bidio/nbmErKOifJHZl2k
The owner of this footage has restricted it from circulation without permission which is why I have not used it in this video!
If anybody is more familiar with the Chesapeake Bay area and shipping involved there you might be able to comment a bit more on protocols surrounding tug use. My understanding is Dali had tugs leaving her berth and executing the turn into the channel but it seems they left her once they finished the turn.
Thanks to other commenters for pointing out the similarities with other bridge-ship 'allisions';
1975 Tasman Bridge: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_Bridge_disaster
1980 Skyway Bridge:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge#1980_collapse

The problem with this incident is that it happened at the worst possible time.
When a ship like this is leaving a port like this, in quite confined conditions, the ship will carry one or several local harbor pilots. In this case, the ship had two local harbor pilots on board.
When a ship navigates through a pretty confined area like this, there will usually be more generation power online (Diesel generators) than normally needed and the control room will be manned.
What people need to understand is that if a ship suffers a blackout, all power to the main switchboard is lost which means that all the equipment needed to operate the main propulsion engine is lost which trips out the engine. At the time the ship suffers the blackout, the steering gear (rudder) will be left in the position it was in when the blackout happened. This means that the ship will continue in the direction of the rudder position bleeding off the speed it had at the time of the blackout.
The next thing that will happen fairly quickly (within a minute or less) is that the emergency Diesel generator will start automatically and power up the emergency switchboard. From the emergency switchboard, the ship will now have power for essential system such as navigation systems, lighting (not full lighting), steering gear power and a few auxiliaries to enable startup of the main Diesel generator engines again.
In order to restart the main engine, compressed start air, fuel systems, lubrication systems and cooling water systems are needed.
In an extreme emergency, it is possible to start the main engine shortly with reduced systems online but this may subject the main propulsion engine to severe damage. In any case, to get the main Diesel generators and the main propulsion engine started up again after a blackout will take some time. Even if everything goes well and all the crew know exactly what to do, this process can easily take 5-10 minutes in the very best circumstance and usually longer. The problem is that whatever caused the blackout in the first place may still be a fault that prevent the startup process to take place.
Suffering a blackout on board any large ship in any kind of confined spaces is the worst nightmare for any professional seaman.
However, it is important to always understand that when suffering a blackout, the main switchboard that powers main essential services will be gone and you are left with the required minimum services the emergency switchboard can provide and that will usually not include the service of the main seawater cooling pumps which will be needed if you want to be able to operate the main propulsion engine more than a few minutes. All the Diesel engines on board are cooled by closed fresh water systems and the fresh water is cooled in heat exchangers by seawater so if any of the Diesel engines (except the emergency Diesel engine) are to be operated for a longer time (more than a few minutes), the main seawater cooling pumps are needed and they are too big to be operated by the emergency Diesel generator.
It's way too early to know what initiated the blackout. There are literally hundreds of reasons this can happen, but since all power was lost, it could be a short circuit in the main switchboard bus or a major malfunction of one or two of the main Diesel generators which would have left the ship with too little generation power on the remaining Diesel generator which could then cause the blackout.
However, an investigation must find out what happened because it is extremely rare to see this kind of total blackout. Usually, a ship will have a power management system that may automatically disconnect faulty parts of the switchboards and/or generators thus enabling the ship to at least operate on reduced power.
Regarding a crash stop and reversing the main propulsion engine, there are a few limitation there. If the ship is moving forward in the water with sufficient speed when the blackout happens, the propeller and thus main engine will continue to rotate in the direction of moving forward. Even when you have the power back, it may not be a simple thing to carry out a reverse operation of the main engine since this can first really be successful after it has been possible to stop the forward rotation movement of the propeller shaft and engine crankshaft. This type of ship has a propeller shaft that is directly connected to the main propulsion engine. There is no gear in between so in order to start the main engine in a reverse direction, the crankshaft and thus the propeller shaft shall basically be stopped first.
The first light coming on seems to be the emergency generator having started up. The next flickering of light may either be an attempt to power up the main switchboard again with one of the main Diesel generators and the black smoke coming out of the funnel is either because the main Diesel generators are loaded up very suddenly or because the main engine is attempted started up.
These are Diesel generators so when you start a Diesel engine of these sizes and load them up too quickly, there will be plenty of black smoke coming out of the funnel simply because the engines will not get enough combustion air because the turbochargers have not had time to spin up sufficiently yet.
A long comment, which could be much longer if being more detailed and technical so I hope people will excuse the long comment.

Baltimore native here. My mom was set to drive over that bridge the morning after it fell, as a matter of fact. And I was going to drive over it to see family on Easter Sunday. Some additions to the info you gave:
The ship is confirmed to have dropped anchor in an attempt to miss the pillar of the bridge.
The ship sent out a mayday call shortly before collision, and the transportation authorities were able to stop incoming traffic onto the bridge.
The confirmed number of people on the bridge was 8 (2 have been accounted for- the rest are considered dead) they were all road workers filling potholes.
I really can’t overstate how important this bridge was. It shortened commutes significantly, but it was a large part of Baltimore’s identity too. 35,000 people commuted over the bridge every day. Everyone I’ve talked to about it is in total shock that it’s gone- it’s like we’ve lost a family member. Thankfully, there is a tunnel under our port for commuters to use. But now it’s going to be overloaded, so there are concerns about that too.
Just thought I’d add that in. I was surprised to see a channel I’ve followed for a while cover this disaster in my state!

I live in Baltimore County. Seeing all the conspiracy theories and claims that the bridge wasn't well maintained is very tiring. Thank you for covering this in a sane way (I expected nothing less, of course).

I live in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 1980 this very thing happened to our Skyway Bridge when a freighter took down the southbound span killing 35 people mostly in the Greyhound bus that when into the bay. It's something that has been on our minds ever since, and we mark the day it happened every year.
When they built the New Skyway they installed all these dolphins to protect the support columns and also for the main supports they made two islands.
I noticed that the Key bridge only had two dolphins way back from the bridge, it left the support exposed to any wayward ship. I don't understand why, after it happened before with the Skyway bridge, they didn't install better protection around all the important bridges.

The only channel I trust to cover disasters like this.

For those who don't know, Baltimore harbor is historic. During the War of 1812 (between England and US), an American lawyer was on a British ship that was at anchor in the harbor. He watched the British shelling of Fort McKinley, which was on an island in the harbor. The morning after the shelling, he was shocked to see the American flag still flying over the fort, and he was inspired to write a poem about it. His name was Francis Scott Key, and his poem went on to become the words to the American National Anthem.

You've done the best job of pronouncing 'Maryland' out of all the foreigners I've seen pronounce it over the last few days.

That the police managed to stop traffic in less than 5 minutes once the ship lost control and sent a Mayday, then relayed to them was amazing. Yes it was 1: 30 AM , but I commend the police/dispatchers/port authority/ship's crew involved for quickly reacting saving many lives. So far ,there are only 6 dead from a bridge maintenance crew and the vehicles lost were their vehicles. You can see 3-4 stopped/parked vehicles with yellow flashing lights on the bridge before the collapse. I assume these were vehicles of the maintenance crew. No civilians vehicles/people seem to has been lost. Really miraculous given the scale of the disaster.

A couple of points for non-Americans:
I-95 is the major highway that runs from southern Florida through all of the populated East Coast cities up all the way to Canada.
I-695 is a loop that goes around Baltimore rather than going through the city center. Therefore anyone going north from Florida / Washington or south from New York, Boston, or Philadelphia would go over this bridge [Edit: if they want to avoid local traffic or if their vehicle does not meet more restrictive size and weight and content limitations of other routes or if they are headded towards the industrial regions around 695].
Francis Scott Key, FWIW, wrote the national anthem while watching the British attack Baltimore during the War of 1812.

According to the excellent "what's going on with shipping" analysis, tugs in Baltimore typically assist ships out of port, but return to base well before the bridge. Dali was escorted in that manner, with the tugs departing before the ship entered the field of view of the webcam.

Wow. Analysis without conspiracies - refreshing!

I am so, so grateful you prepared this video so quickly. I have sent it to a number of friends to explain what happened.
If I may, the bridge was built in the 1970s and was a marvel for its age. It really consists of two parts. There are two causeways on each side of the truss bridge, held up by modest, but closely placed, piers. The causeway is self-supporting and does not have a superstructure much above the road surface. In the middle is the truss span. The truss starts at one of the causeway piers, connects to a large massive pier, connects to another duplicate large, massive pier, and connects to a causeway pier on the other side. The ship was trying to pass between the two large piers, where the truss bridge was significantly higher above the water and far more open than the causeway portion. Those two large truss piers were protected by what amounts to large bollards. However, they were designed for the ships with half or less the mass of the Dali. They failed to provide the necessary protection for today's much larger ships. That is the main point of failure (to make the analogy popular on your channel), if the bollards were of proper strength, height, and number, they would have stopped the Dali from hitting the pier with such destructive force, just as if the water tight compartments of the Titanic had gone all the way to the superstructure, they would have kept the water from spilling over the subsequent compartments, sinking the ship as quickly as occurred.
I completely agree with you about the tugs. I am absolutely sure they will be required after the harbor reopens. Another example of the rules not being updated with the increasingly large ships, just as the Board of Trade regulations stopped at 10,000 registered tons for lifeboat requirements for the Titanic.

I am a lifelong resident of MD. I live about 65 miles west of Baltimore. I have traveled this bridge and others that go from the west side to Maryland’s eastern shore my entire life. Just two days ago our son showed us your channel and then this accident happened. I truly appreciate your knowledgeable insight and your other informative, fascinating videos. Thank you!

Thank you for covering this. I live in the DC-Baltimore area and it’s surreal to see the footage of a bridge I use frequently tumbling down. P.S., Yes, NTSB will head up the investigation. The focus thus far has been search and rescue-sonar revealed that there are indeed cars in the water. FYI: the Key Bridge was the world’s third longest truss bridge.

Having driven over this bridge many times, I never even considered the possibility of this happening.

Great analysis and runthrough! The "Casual Navigation" channel pointed out that the side channel that meets up with the main shipping lane just before the bridge, would affect the currents, potentially pulling the ship towards the pylon, despite the rudder staying straight ahead, so if all control went offline, it's possible that the natural progression of the vessel would be straight into the bridge pier.

Such a horrible thing to happen. My heart goes out to families who have lost loved ones or are dealing with injuries. So sad.

Thing is this has essentially closed a major harbour, and also stopped traffic flow for the entire area as well. Going to mean a massive delay all over the world, as ships that were contracted to leave do not, and cargo going in has to divert and wait at other ports, then get shipped by rail or road to destination.

I live 30 min from Baltimore and worked in the city until February. As soon as I heard about this I thought "I wonder if Mike will make a video about this?" So glad that you did so I can get a comprehensive analysis of what happened!

It's also important to note that the FSK Bridge was the only route 'hazardous materials' were allowed to take through Baltimore -- the tunnels are off limits. I have an RV with a standard 20-gallon propane tank on it, just like a grill in the USA would have, and that's not allowed through the tunnels (this is the route I would take each year from Virginia to home up in New England; I last crossed this bridge at the end of May 2023). Even a bottle half that size is not allowed through the tunnels. Obviously therefore, trucks carrying gasoline, oil, chemicals, propane, etc are not allowed through the tunnels either. So this route was an important truck route and this accident is going to significantly lengthen routes trucks will take, which translates to increased shipping costs, which will get passed on to the consumer. Also, the most obvious alternate route through the Eastern Shore of VA, MD and DE is mostly an undivided 4 lane route with tons of traffic lights and lower speed limits, and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is very expensive for a truck to take.

It's a terrible accident with loss of life, but it's so fortunate that didn't happen during peak hour when presumably the bridge would have been full of vehicles.

For having so little time to do research and having so little reliable info at this time, this video is insanely informative on the situation. Well done.

Mike, you operate one of the finest and highest quality channels on KRplus. You deserve every bit of success you receieve and will continue to receive.

Youre one of the only channels that i trust to get this sort of analysis. You have no bias or reason to tweak the facts to fit a story narrative. Thank you for this video.

So... I've heard a bridgebuilding expert say the pylons were flimsy and unprotected, and now a shipping expert says the ship should have had tugs. There's going to be a lot of questions asked and for some reason I think the answer to many of them will be "because savings"

Thanks Mike for covering this. I'm from PA and frequently cruise out of Baltimore port with Carnival. It's truly surreal that this has happened and a tragic loss of life. You asked about Tugs - according to the port, it's standard procedure that they pull the ship from port, guide them to the channel, then release. Dali initially had 2 tugs when leaving, but they released once the ship was in the channel.

Thank you for covering this, and something that I thought of while listening to the beginning of this video is that- History was once the present, so covering topics such as this as they happen is just as important as covering what's happened before, to ensure it's never forgotten, and never repeated.
Rest in peace to all those who have lost their lives, and my sincerest regards to all those who have lost loved ones and those who have survived in this tragic event.

Your videos started popping up in my recs a couple weeks ago. I've watched a number of your vids since, I'm very impressed by the quality of your content. It's interesting, informative, and you present it well. This video is no exception, very well done. You've got another subscriber!

Thanks for covering this Mike, your finger is always on the pulse!

Glad you did this short summary. When I saw your upload I was afraid you'd speculate but this was an honest telling of events and I learned things about ship navigations and tugs. Thankyou!

I have watched your channel for years and I have to say: it is quite surreal to watch someone I'm used to hearing discuss distant international events talk about a bridge five minutes from my high school.
That said, thank you for the video and coverage. Local news has been mostly focused on the rescue/recovery efforts, the victims' families, alternative traffic route recommendations, and playbacks of the crash video; the details of the event itself and the circumstances that led to it have been mentioned but WBAL hasn't done a great job explaining it when I've been tunning in.

I really appreciate your takes on situations like this. It’s always so respectful and rooted in the factual information. So helpful for staying informed and learning.

Nice turnaround! This happened at 3 AM eastern time, that's 7PM in Sydney? I guess that's a prime evenings worth of work, but your local imagery from a continent away (Great quick work BTW) knowledge of shipboard procedures, accent and good nature made this better than the local news, thank you!

Always love your channel and use your videos as a training video to my crew. (Just retired from the biz)
For that turn to starboard…if the engine failure/brown out occurred when passing by the Curtis Bay channel (that leads to the USCG Yard), the hydrodynamic properties of a gap in the channel on the starboard side, could pull a vessel to the starboard side.
Hopefully this helps.

I know I'm not your only Baltimore subscriber and on behalf of all of us, thank you for the thoughtful and thorough video.

I was born and raised there, only just moved 2 years ago. I have tons of family that live within 2 miles of the bridge from both sides (city and county). When it went down, they were awoken from sleep as it felt like an earthquake, and houses shook.

Minor thing for those who might not understand the terms, as a civil engineer here, the pylon is the high tower part that supports a cable or suspension bridge, the part in the water is called the pier.

I am so glad you did this video! Thank you. I felt like your channel was the only place I was going to find good and reliable information.

I just want to say I thoroughly enjoy and love the fact that you wear a suit/vest and tie during your videos. You just look so propper and dapper, it's really lovely.

From the videos it appears that the vessel lost power a couple of times. If this is what indeed happened the loss of power would have meant that the vessel lost steerage. There is a second smaller channel entering the main shipping channel. So it is safe to assume that the loss of power and loss of steering coupled with bank suction the vessel was pulled starboard and hit the bridge.

Thanks, Mike! Really good video! Thoroughly informative and much appreciate the foray into current events!

Great analysis and insights, as always, from our friend, Mr. Mike Brady! Always informative and entertaining.

As a Maryland native, I always feared this would happen to the Bay Bridge that spans across the Chesapeake Bay, but this is still absolutely devastating to our state. The FSK Bridge was a major part of our land transportation and shipping. I still can't believe the bridge is gone.

It’s quite terrifying to think that even that with better navigational equipment things like this can still happen. RIP to all those lives lost.😢

Mike Brady I was hoping you’d make a video about this, I live 5 minutes away from it and take it almost everyday for work and traveling home. The collapse of this bridge was devastating to those living in the area and we are all saddened by the tragedy of those who lives were lost on the bridge that morning. Thank you for bringing light to the situation and informing others❤

Its very nice to hear someone actually give the facts about this disaster.
We have alot of "so called experts" talking about this and not saying much.
I live in Baltimore, have crossed this structure many times.
Always enjoy your video's, thank you.
👍👍

Never clicked a video so fast. 10 seconds after it was posted.

thanks for covering this, need and respect your thoughts. Good morning from Canada, goodnight to Australia.

soon as I heard the news I thought of you and your insight into what happened
love the channel and your explanations and the very quick turnaround time
much appreciated

It is always good to have a friend like Mike Brady explain things in a calm, knowledgeable, and respectful manner. Thank you.

Rip to those lost in this tragic accident.😔

Reminds me of the Tasman bridge disaster here in Tasmania, when a bulk iron ore carrier collided with the bridge in 1975. So sad and tragic 😥

A terrible situation and really well explained video.
However just a couple of things that aren’t quite right.
The reason there were no tugs with DALI is that they had finished their task and had been dismissed as the ship was building up speed. At 8 knots tugs wouldn’t be able to do much anyway as they are approaching their top speed. It’s actually very dangerous to keep tugs attached as there is a risk of pulling the tug over (called girding). Most ports around the world don’t have tugs staying with ships for very long before or after passing under bridges. There are exceptions, Hobart for example, but more often than not no tugs are there.
The other minor point is that vessels of this weight (@100,000 tonnes), anchors will do almost nothing at 8 knots. They still should be dropped as it will reduce speed slowly, but given how close DALI was to the bridge, there wasn’t enough time for the anchors to have any real effect.
Last thing I’ll say is the quick mayday call by the pilots saved many, many lives. They should be applauded, not condemned.
For the record, I have almost 30 years in the industry, 15 as a harbour pilot.

Thank you for this post, Mike! I was hoping to see your take on this disaster. Yours, along with the reporting from National Public Radio, has been the most comprehensive and informative that I’ve heard yet. The whole discussion of this kind of ship’s weight and its forward momentum (and trying to slow or stop it) had me thinking about parallels to the efforts of the Titanic’s crew to evade their fateful collision with the iceberg.

I couldn’t believe how fast the bridge went down. It looked like a toothpick model snapped into pieces! 😢

I'm born and raised in Baltimore. In December I sailed under that bridge on vision of the seas and got incredible pictures of it and what the underside of the road deck looked like. Fun facts, about Port of Baltimore, she's been serving passenger vessels for over 100 years now including actual ocean liners, she's also the current home of the only nuclear powered ocean liner, Savanah.

This is the only channel I watch to understand ships. I live a few hours away from where this disaster happened. Thank you for doing a video on this.

This is the best explanation of what happened and the best interpretation I've seen. This is an excellent channel.

Great video to watch as I'm getting ready for work (I'm usually not this early in videos!) Appreciate the initial thoughts, given your experience with ships and their inner workings. :)
Side note: Francis Scott Key was the lawyer/poet who penned the Star Spangled Banner. (America's national anthem).

There's no conspiracy, it was just an accident.

I’m in Baltimore and I’ve followed this channel for a while now. And I’m glad you are covering it. I’ve learned so much already from this channel.

Mike just adds that bit of extra knowledge and detail. Calmly providing an interpretation of the known events. No sensationalism.

The amount of people I have seen commenting on videos about this saying stuff like 'It looked like it turned on purpose'.. and 'who is behind this I wonder'... just proves that no matter the tragedy, there will always be idiots in the comments.. who and what do they think they are achieving by hitting a bridge with nothing but a maintenance crew on it? My heart goes out to their families. Working hard through the night to keep a huge part of the city's infrastructure maintained and they didn't deserve this. RIP.

Mike, thank you for what is easily the most informative and intelligent coverage of this incident anywhere, either online, or MSM. No half-baked speculation, or dodgy "experts". Makes you realise just how appallingly bad the mMedia has become.

Definitely an expert in your field. Keep it up bro!! You the man!
Folsom, CA

Yesterday morning I was chatting with my co-worker about a couple of car accidents adding about 20 minutes to my commute. He quipped, “At least you weren’t driving across a bridge that fell.”
I had no idea what he was talking about until he pulled up an article and we scanned the initial reporting. Having started watching this channel in the last few months, I immediately wondered if you would cover this and am glad to see you have.
My initial worry was for the bridge traffic and the ship workers, though it’s been lessened by reports that law enforcement managed to stop ongoing bridge traffic and the ship workers were inside when everything fell. I am saddened to hear there are 6 casualties so far, but hopefully that number doesn’t increase.
Sure does put a lot of burden on commuters and other ships though. Won’t be surprised if the next few months are absolute headaches for everyone.

As others have mentioned, Sal over on "What's going on with shipping" has observed that it appears that, either due to hardware fault OR crew error, the ship went to full reverse after the power dropped twice, which given the design of the ship being a traditional single screw single rudder hull was the wrong move. The raw hydrodynamics would've caused the stern to kick off to port and the bow to starboard, corroborated by the belch of smoke seen. The NTSB report is going to be extremely telling.
One other thing i wager we see come out of this is a redesign not of bridges but whats around them - were cement or dirt pilings set up outside of the support pylons, giving a massive 100k ton ship to hit into before the structure itself, this outcome wouldve been much different. Sure, the ship would be much more damaged, but the bridge would be intact in theory.

A few things. The black smoke is from the crew starting up the emergency generators. Trying to get enough power to get rudder control back. Two tugs were used to get the ship off the dock, into the channel, and to make that 180 turn. Once the ship is stable in the channel the tugs are no longer needed. A ship with two tugs along side wouldn’t fit between those power line pylons and under the bridge at the same time.

Informative and very well done, SIR! Outstanding.

Great work Oceanliner Designs. Thanks for the video.

At Baltimore when the ship is in the Channrl the tugs are not used. They are only used to maneuver the ship to and from the dock inside the harbor.

That bridge, and many like it built in a similar style, crossing a channel to a major port, are only ever one engine failure away from a possible disaster. For me that is a scary thought. The use of tugs for such an old bridge - that is in no way protected from collisions, seems to be an obvious choice. Can you imagine the loss of life if this had happened during rush hour, when it is likely the port authority would not have time to clear the bridge? And even at gone 1am it was only the quick actions of certain people that stopped the flow of traffic on the bridge. In the short time between the power outage on the ship, and the ship sending out a distress call, the authorities on shore got that bridge closed. And it would seem, if it was not for those poor folks working on the deck of the bridge - fixing pot-holes or something similar, if they had not been out there that night then there may have been no lives lost at all. So i take my hat off to those responsible for getting that bridge closed so quickly.
Modern bridges have much more protection designed into them from the start - be that massive concrete encasements around the piers, or the level of the river or sea bed is raised on the lead up to the piers, so any vessel out of the channel will run aground before hitting the pier. But this old bridge had nothing like that, and the same can be said for many such bridges both in the states and around the world. And pretty much all of these bridges have one thing in common - a single failure point could well bring down the whole bridge - not just the section involved. Just like we watched happen with this one. Yes, having more tugs will be expensive, but I wonder how much this is going to cost in total? A major port shutdown, a massive salvage operation, and the cost of building a new bridge. This is going to cost billions, plus of course lives have been lost.

Very interesting. I find all of your presentations informative. Thank you for the work you do.

Thanks for explaining this, I left a comment on a couple other videos asking what happened cuz I didn’t understand exactly what went on in the incident. You did a great job of explaining the ships route and what happened as it was leaving. Thank you

Crazybhow this happened yesterday and there are already videos on it

Catastrophic failure was inevitable when one support was taken out like this. The bridge is basically as cantilever design, and each part 'leans' on the other, so the whole central span couldn't stay up once it was split in two. The bridge design is limited by the need to get large ships under it, and to make a space big enough.
Last report I heard said there were 2 pilots aboard at the point of collision, and the ship sent a MayDay call.
Personally, I think the world has got too 'used' to things being safe, and has stopped thinking 'what if'. Tugs probably should be used, but I bet they are not cheap to operate, and the cost for a tug service would come out of the ship operators profits. I don;t blame the shipping companies for wanting to make money...as any increased costs get passed on to the consumer anyway, and nobody wants to pay more for anything if they can help it.
But this is a start reminder of what can happen, and with modern all electric/computerised systems, when the power fails completely there is no plan B for the ships crew.

G'day Mike. I've only just found your channel (fellow Melburnian) and really like the detail that you go to. Looking forward to watching many more clips from you. Cheers, Dan.

As soon as I heard about this catastrophe I Immediately look for Oceanliner Designs, I knew Mike would have the best and most accurate coverage of this ongoing disaster.

Living in Jacksonville, I was terrified that morning because I thought it was the hart bridge, Baltimore stole our beige design

From the news reports that I saw, the Port of Baltimore does not require tugs for ships leaving. I think they said that the Dali had 2 tugs that helped her turn around after leaving the pier, but they were detached afterwards and not nearby. When the Dali put out its mayday, they heard and tried to come and help but it was far too late. I agree with you though that it is almost certain that the rules will be rewritten to require tugs after this.

Mike Brady; I'm a big fan of the Oceanliner Designs channel. Thank you for doing a great job. Great coverage on the Baltimore Bridge.
Thank you.

Thank you for the detailed and professional coverage of this disaster, as always. I live in Baltimore and went over the bridge last week; I’m a big fan of your work, but I never thought I’d hear about something so close to home!

Hello Mike. Just a humble suggestion: If you would hold the image still and not move it around as erratically as you do, then maybe we all could have a look at it and get an idea of the situation. Just a thought ;-)

I've been avoiding reading too much into this story until one of the reliable shipping youtubers I follow had a look...too much misunderstanding and conspiracy in the mainstream internet

Mike I’ve lived in Baltimore all my life, such a tragedy, your question about tugs is what people are asking about here. Great job as usual!

Outstanding analysis, my friend Mike Brady!

What I don't understand; in such a heavy occupied passage under a bridge, why was there no instream ram protection for the bridge piers? We have a lot of them here in Germany on e.g. Elbe or Rhine bridges.

Good morning Mike

Serendipitous that you just talked about stopping ships last week. Thank you for the analysis, Mike!

Thanks for all the details and background. It really helps to understand the situation a bit better. My husband and I were just discussing the shipping industry and how we know next to zero about how it works, much less how ships works.
It truly is a tragedy, but hopefully, it will bring about changes to ensure it doesn't happen again, here or elsewhere.

Here before the video is an hour old!

She had two tugs to get away from her berth and she did drop her port anchor. I agree with you about the tugs should have been required until clear of the bridge. That didn't happen likely due to cost and Port Authorities not requiring them. One thing you only mentioned briefly is rudder effectiveness as speed drops. Sal Mercagliano (What's Going On With Shipping) and John Konrad (gCaptain) both former Mariners who also have done videos about this accident mentioned one additional factor that you did not cover, it would affect the turning of the ship to starboard. If the ship's main engine were put in reverse to try and stop the ship, the propeller will "Walk" the stern to
Port. And as way comes off the ship the rudder will become less and less effective and will not be able to counteract this force.

Great job illustrating the scale and putting it into perspective!

YES PLEASE!
Though I love your historic content, throwing in some current events is very much appreciated. Thank You!

Apparently, the captain was wanted on the bridge.

It’s impressive that new vehicle traffic was able to be stopped from entering the bridge so quickly, limiting the loss of life. That’s evidence of procedures and training exactly for this sort of disaster - not simply luck.

Long time watcher, first time commenter (I think?), and Maryland resident. Thank you for explaining this. Seeing the footage yesterday was so disturbing and bizarre, like watching a bad horror movie. But thank you so much for your analysis.

I was literally thinking “I hope Mike covers this” this morning. I’ve had so many questions about this and this video answered them. Thank you, Mike!

Unfortunately for me I grew up in Baltimore finally made it out of there at 20 but I drove over this bridge about 10k times and I always had intrusive thoughts about the bridge falling while im at the peak!this is so horrific... everything in Maryland is run down and trashy these days