A Mexican navy tall ship’s deadly collision with the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday highlighted a hazard that has nervous seafarers for practically 150 years.
Even earlier than building on the bridge was completed within the late nineteenth century, the topmast of a passing U.S. Navy ship hit the span’s wires — and vessels continued to clip the enduring New York Metropolis construction for a few years.
However historians say Saturday’s crash seems to be the primary boat collision with the bridge to take the lives of crew members. Two Mexican naval cadets died and extra have been injured after the coaching ship Cuauhtémoc’s masts crashed into the bridge as dozens of sailors stood harnessed excessive up in rigging as a part of a public show.
“That’s the first and possibly only time where there’s been a fatality onboard of a ship that struck the Brooklyn Bridge,” stated Dominique Jean-Louis, chief historian on the Heart for Brooklyn Historical past, a part of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River, connecting its eponymous borough’s downtown to Manhattan. The very best level of the bridge’s underside is listed at 135 ft (41.1 meters) on common above the water, however it fluctuates with the tides.
Throughout building, a warehouse proprietor sued state officers — first to cease the bridge after which for compensation — arguing that some ships nonetheless had topmasts that exceeded the peak. The case made all of it the best way as much as the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, which dismissed the lawsuit, figuring out that the bridge didn’t unduly limit ship navigation.
Earlier than that call, nonetheless, at the least one ship had already tangled with the still-under-construction crossing.
Based on an 1878 report within the New York Day by day Tribune, the U.S. Navy wood steam coaching ship USS Minnesota was headed towards the excessive level of the bridge after planning forward and reducing its topmast. However on the final minute, it needed to change course to keep away from an oncoming ship, sending it to an space with decrease clearance and hanging the bridge’s wires. No person was reported injured.
By the point the bridge was full, steam ships have been transporting the lion’s share of products, and high-masted ships have been waning in significance, stated Richard Haw, professor of interdisciplinary research at John Jay School of Legal Justice and the creator of two books concerning the Brooklyn Bridge.
“They go from sail ships to steam ships,” Haw stated. “You don’t need a huge clearance.”
But mast strikes continued, together with at the least two reported within the Nineteen Twenties — one among which was with the U.S. Navy’s flagship USS Seattle, which had “slightly wood pole that was slightly too excessive,” Jean-Louis stated.
In 1941, the SS Nyassa was bringing lots of of refugees to New York Metropolis when the captain miscalculated the tide and a part of its mast was bent right into a proper angle by the bridge’s underspan, in keeping with a New York Occasions article on the time that described a “crunching sound.” Among the many refugees on board was Hedwig Ehrlich, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning Jewish German scientist Paul Ehrlich, as she headed to stay with daughters in San Francisco.
Because the twentieth century went on, ships bought taller and wider. And so they nonetheless required mast-like appendages for commentary and communication.
A shipyard simply north of the bridge, now often known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, churned out bigger and bigger ships throughout and after World Conflict II, together with plane carriers that might barely match beneath the bridge.
One photograph from 1961 exhibits the united statesConstellation plane service leaving the navy yard and passing beneath the Brooklyn Bridge with a mast that folded down onto the ship’s deck, specifically designed to get out into the harbor.
Up to now 20 years, at the least three minor strikes have been reported towards the bridge’s underside or base, together with a crane being pulled through barge in 2012, which tore into short-term scaffolding mounted beneath the bridge. The same crane accident broken peripheral bridge upkeep gear in July of 2023, in keeping with a Coast Guard incident report.
Not one of the trendy accident studies doc severe accidents.
However off the water, the bridge has been a web site of tragedy lengthy earlier than Saturday’s crash. Greater than 20 individuals have been killed and numerous crippled whereas constructing it, together with staff injured by decompression illness, a little-understood have an effect on of working in underwater in packing containers sunk to the riverbed. Twelve individuals died in a panic-driven stampede amongst crowds visiting the bridge shortly after it opened to the general public in 1883.
The Cuauhtémoc visited New York as a part of a 15-nation international goodwill tour and was departing when it struck the bridge at round 8:20 p.m., briefly halting site visitors atop the span. NBC New York’s Ida Siegal studies.
