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I have a few disagreements with your posting.

1. The ship's name is Dali vice Cali. I'll take that as a typo.

2. Undocking at night is indeed standard. While Dali is only a mid-sized container ship these days, operating a 146K tonne container ship is expensive. They pay for every minute they are tied up at their berth.

You are correct that Dali departed right at high tide. Time and tide wait for no man. They could gain a free 3-4 knot speed over ground benefit for their trip down the Chesapeake Bay. The sooner they get to Colombo, Sri Lanka the sooner they get paid again.

3. Once away from the quay and able to start her engine, Dali had little need for the tugs. They have to pay for those too while they are in consort.

When Dali started her engine she was alongside the quay and pointed roughly NW and away from the bridge. One 90° turn to port with the tugs and one without the tugs and Dali was in the outbound channel.

At the time of the first loss of power, Dali was slightly left of channel center line. This is normal.

Dali's engine is notable for the amount of torque it generates. Assuming that Dali had a right-handed engine, the most common, then when it started going astern the prop would tend to walk the stern to port, pushing the bow to starboard. (If anyone wants an explanation of right and left handed engines I will explain separately.) If Dali didn't have control of the rudder because of the power failure, that alone would explain why the ship veered right and out of the channel.

There is also the point that the wind was from the NE and almost abeam of Dali. That slab sided container ship has a lot of sail area. This would have been setting Dali towards the FSKB piling.

Had the engine failure occurred two minutes sooner or later there would likely have been no collision with the bridge. Stuff happens and there is no reason for anyone (not you) to go building some great conspiracy where none likely exists. In any event, the NTSB report should make for interesting reading.

SpyNavy

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

Yesterday the NYSB lady (Homendy?) mentioned that ship’s crew had called for tug support just moments after pointing toward the FSKB. They knew they were in trouble shortly after firing the main engine. Fascinates me that these port geniuses don’t require tug escort at least until the big haulers get past all the bridges, and they had one more to go to get to open water.
Yeah, it costs money to have a tug baby sitter but we see how expensive the cleanup can be. It’s not like the big guys haven’t missed the channel before. Remember the one that missed the channel and hit an island some months ago——just off the Naval Academy. We never did hear who got stoopid that time but it was the same company that jammed up the Suez months before. After awhile it’s hard to believe in accidents.

Then remember the one that anchored off Long Beach then used its anchor to drag up a pipeline? I used to build this stuff and taught guys how to use them but no one ever fell asleep in my class and no one ever wrecked one that I helped build. just weird.