Prayers for the sailors and their loved ones.
There is a lot of speculation here that the USS Fitzgerald was rammed intentionally.
It is possible. But a nimble US Navy warship, a greyhound of the fleet with sensing systems able to acquire and target ballistic missiles, manned by highly trained personnel being rammed by a far larger, far less agile and speedy vessel is not the first hypothesis. If it did, it would be the first time a US Navy warship has been intentionally rammed by a civilian vessel. (This is not in any way similar to the attack in Yemen on the USS Cole). That is, it would be historic, so in that sense, it is possible.
However, as the saying goes, when you hear hooves in Arizona, you think horses, not zebras. Occam’s Razor indicates this is human error. When two ships collide in open waters under clear and calm conditions in the absence of an engineering casualty, it is human error, almost 100% of the time. Not even close.
Not like a submarine hitting an uncharted undersea seamount.
Not like a ship in a typhoon.
Not like a ship maneuvering in battle.
Not like a ship losing propulsion in the shadow of a lee shore during a gale.
All those things can be made worse by human failing, but each in its own is sufficient cause for calamity no matter how well the human error side is eliminated.
But this isn’t like that. If it is an historic event, yes. It could have been deliberately rammed by a hostile vessel, but that would fly in the face of modern US Naval history which is chock full of human error, so much so it dwarfs all other causes of mishap, but does not contain any instances of deliberate ramming by a civilian vessel.
That said, I recognize that prior to 9/11, there weren’t many civilian jetliners being used deliberately as missiles, either.