Dropping the anchor might stop the ship -— in a mile or two. Assuming the bottom is not mud or silt. Assuming the current is nil or against the ship. If the anchor catches on a solid rock outcropping (really solid) the anchor likely rips off a chunk of the ship.
This ship is 938 ft. long and can carry 116,851 metric tons (cargo, fuel, provisions, crew, etc.) I don’t know what she weighs empty, but maybe we can guess around 150kt total if fully loaded? Some shipping people have said some of the containers were empty and are using a figure of ~100kt.
Any way you figure it, it’s a heck of a lot of momentum. Just look at how it clobbered that concrete support.
The displacement is about 150,000 tons.
They dropped the port side anchor when the outage occurred — it drug in the channel mud and silt.
The captain was Ukrainian.
The ship had a previous electrical outage in port.
Tugs were used normally to remove it from berth and get it underway in the channel. Single prop outage and/or damage restart causes turning. It takes miles to stop.
The rudder won’t turn without electrical. He backup steering generators take time to come available. I can only assume most questions come from those not very experienced with power boats.