Comment by codr7 19 hours ago
I've only ever heard of two ships hitting bridges; both recently, both in the US, both lost power and drifted into the bridge.
At least this bridge fall like a house of cards, I guess because the masts broke first.
The New York Times reported [1] that at least three other tall ships have struck the Brooklyn Bridge.
In 1921, the steel mainmast on the six-masted schooner Edward J. Lawrence was bent as the vessel was being towed under the bridge at high tide. [2]
In 1935, the first three of four steel masts were bent as the Hamburg-American freighter Tirpitz passed northward under the bridge during an "abnormally high tide." [3]
In 1986, a radar was knocked out of commission when the South Korean freighter Hai Soo scraped the bridge while heading south. [4]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/nyregion/brooklyn-bridge-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1921/02/04/archives/ship-bends-mast-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/1935/10/03/archives/masts-of-freight...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/11/nyregion/new-york-day-by-...
It happens all the time, just not as high profile as this incident or Baltimore. "An analysis of U.S. Coast Guard records of maritime incidents shows a vessel has run into part of a bridge in America at least 650 times since 2019." (https://www.scrippsnews.com/investigations/us-bridges-are-fr...)
Not sure about the US, but in Europe it happens fairly regularly with inland freight ships and private yachts. There are wooden guardrails near the bridge pylons to limit the damage (to the bridge) specially for this reason. Statics is also quite interesting, you’d expect the heavy traffic - most accidents correlation but it seems fairly randomly distributed. “Alphen aan de Rijn” in the Netherlands is quite famous for boats hitting/removing the bridge, getting stuck, yachts taller than local houses breaking down in tight spots…
There's a category error in the comparison.
The boat in Baltimore weighed at least two orders of magnitude more, and directly struck a column.
This boat hit a span with a basically negligible piece of wood. I'd be shocked if that shut the bridge for more than an hour.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil a few years ago: https://youtu.be/31B5X5G5dzw
You joke, but there was a ferry accident (I think an NJ to Manhattan ferry) where control was lost because the control station… ran out of SD card space for logs and crashed
Barges (and other watercraft) collide with stationary objects (which includes bridges) monthly, it's just not usually in the national news and doesn't usually cause a lot of damage.
For example, from 2001 to 2017 there were 1020 medium/high severity recorded "allision" incidents by just towing vessels/barges. That's over 5 times a month. [1]
10%+ of recreational watercraft accidents are with fixed objects. [2][3]
There were 18 bridge collapses (in the US) due to vessel collisions over 53 years (1960 to 2013), so averaging roughly one bridge collapse every 3 years. [4]
[1] https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO%20Documents/5p/CG-5PC... [page 9, chart 9]
[2] https://www.tuscaloosa.com/__aws/media/6553702_bridge-strike...
[3] https://www.uscgboating.org/library/accident-statistics/Recr... [page 7]
[4] https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/eesc/bridge/WBES/2013/Session9/9C_3...
[5] https://www.scribd.com/document/550271478/SHIP-AND-BARGE-COL...