I was going with “intentional” as soon as I saw the video of the ship turning toward the bridge column. For that to happen accidentally would take at least three spectacular failures: Rudder jam itself hard to starboard, engine to fight its own shutdown, Escort tugs sleep in and miss the call?
The shipping channel there is 50 feet deep. To hit that bridge abutment the ship had to be plowing mud for a quarter mile or so.
Where do I place my bet?
“I was going with “intentional” as soon as I saw the video of the ship turning toward the bridge column. For that to happen accidentally would take at least three spectacular failures: Rudder jam itself hard to starboard, engine to fight its own shutdown, Escort tugs sleep in and miss the call?”
I was watching a recap on YouToob this morning about 5 am. There were obviously two power failures (hacked? - you won’t get an argument from me on that one.)
Drive-by-wire? If so, they likely lost rudder control during the power failures - they looked like they were ship-wide. Hydraulic control? Don’t know.
Loss of comms to the engine room during the first blackout? Emergency backup comms missed until too late? Poor training?
The black smoke looked like ALL BACK EMERGENCY on the screws. Screw control (assuming they have 2 screws) could have allowed some avoidance control, but there wasn’t a lot of time apparently, once they lost power and steering control.
They were trundling along at about 8 knots, but by the time they hit the pylon they were down to 1.5 knots.
A lot of moving mass, no pylon “concrete bumpers”, and the bridge was going to go down.
That one video shows it plain as day, the ship is in reverse, you can see the back of the ship get larger and a wave of water at the base when it hits. So obvious.
Apparently the tugs release the ships before the bridge.