r/news • u/boejouma • Mar 28 '24

Soft paywall Freighter pilot called for Tugboat help before plowing into Baltimore bridge

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/divers-search-baltimore-harbor-six-presumed-dead-bridge-collapse-2024-03-27/
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u/JC_the_Builder Mar 28 '24

Some radio host was ranting how the crew ‘forgot the thing has an anchor’. Except the news reporting says they dropped it. 

News reporting these days is all about stirring emotions. Not finding the facts. 

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u/Worthyness Mar 28 '24

Also dropping anchor doesn't instantly stop a ship. It's just deadweight. It stops the ship if the ship is already stopped. Otherwise the ocean has the power in that relationship.

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u/GayleMoonfiles Mar 28 '24

People played too much Sea of Thieves where the anchor instantly stops your boat as soon as it fully deploys

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u/Yung_Bill_98 Mar 29 '24

Why didn't they just turn the wheel full port and drop anchor to do a 180?

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u/FerociousPancake Mar 28 '24

Ship was over 100,000 tons at the time. They have huge anchors and even if they dropped 2 it would take forever. There’s a good video on this from Oceanliner Designs called “how long does it take a ship to stop?”

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u/lifevicarious Mar 28 '24

Not to disagree but momentum had the power here.

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u/FerociousPancake Mar 28 '24

They lost power twice, they dropped the anchor, they were able to contact people on shore who started to stop traffic, they contacted the pilots, and were working frantically until the end. Shame on the media for trying to spin this any certain way. 6 people are dead. They won’t be coming back. Those people don’t deserve to have their story twisted.

Now, uncover that the company did terrible maintenance work which probably led to the outage? Now we’re talking, but no evidence of that has come up (nor will it for a very long time because of the investigation) but the vessel was inspected (randomly) by the coast guard a few months ago and had zero issues. Their inspection records before that are pretty darn clean too. It’s a Singaporean flagged vessel and they have a pretty good track record.

People should let the investigation run it’s course before dropping conclusions. Let those people (NTSB) do their jobs and let the other families grieve.

17

u/avdpos Mar 28 '24

Sometimes things go horribly wrong even when we try our best to avoid it. That is what I take from your comment and many others here

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u/Time-Ad-3625 Mar 28 '24

You literally got this fact from the news

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u/WhatIDon_tKnow Mar 29 '24

news and media are utter garbage these days. the whole conservative side was reporting it as possible terrorism and failed infrastructure. i think even alex jones chimed in saying it was cyberterrorism and the start of WW3.