Retired Merchant Marine reacts to video of cargo ship striking Key Bridge in Baltimore

We are now eight hours into stunning breaking news out of Baltimore.

Around 130 this morning,

a container ship struck a pier of the

Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore within seconds,

the sections of the bridge around that pier collapsed into the harbor.

Just unbelievable.

Since then, first responders have been trying to save people who went into the water

and they expect that search and rescue operation to last for several more hours.

The people they're looking for include crews working on the bridge.

This is an active search and rescue mission.

We know

we know there were individuals on the bridge at the time of the collapse,

working on the bridge contractor for us.

That is the Maryland Transportation Secretary,

Paul Wiedefeld speaking there confirming state workers were

on that bridge when the ship hit it.

And that's in addition to the vehicles on the bridge at that moment

and joining us right now on the phone is Captain John Conrad.

He is a retired merchant marine and runs the website G captain. Good morning.

Good morning. How are you today?

Oh, we wish it was a better day.

Um But we gotta ask when you when you look at that video of the ship, what do you see?

Well, you see as the ship is coming towards the bridge, it's going relatively fast,

it's going about eight knots and you see large

amounts of smoke coming out of the smoke stack.

So

question is, you know, the engine seems to be working hard.

We don't know exactly why it was working hard.

Potentially, the ship was put in reverse to try to slow it

and get a new course, but the engine was working hard and then we saw a blackout.

All the lights on the ship went out

and it looks like the emergency generator kicked in,

uh the lights reemerged

but the emergency generator cannot slow the ship down.

All it can do is restore the emergency fire pumps and lighting.

Um, so that,

you know, the ship continued,

uh to uh lose course and the bow was pushed by the wind down into that

column. And uh, unfortunately, it hit. We also saw

there were, uh, there were no tug boats around.

Usually the port of Baltimore allows the ships to uh

get rid of the tugs uh, before it, it gets near the bridge,

but the ship likely did have a pilot still on board.

So it sounds like there were a few steps taken before the generator kicked in.

At what point do you make that distress call? And what can cause a ship to lose power?

Well, the most common cause of, of losing power is a crash astern.

So if you did an emergency astern, I don't know that that is what happens here,

but when a ship comes into port, so before when it's coming in from overseas,

before it enters the port, it has to do a crash, a stern test, they make them do that

because it is a frequent cause of uh of

a blackout. So they want to make sure that the ship does not black out when it goes uh uh

full astern. It's also an older ship and these are minimally crude ships.

The ship likely has less than 25 people on board

and they're highly complicated. So uh any mechanical issue, electrical issue

in the engine room could cause a blackout

and, and speaking off camera, you mentioned a bow thruster. What, what is that?

And how could it uh play a role in, in an incident like this?

Right.

So on the, on the bow of the ship,

you'll see if you look at pictures a circle with an X through it,

that's a symbol, meaning there's a bow thruster underneath and you know,

the tugs don't want to press against that area.

So there's a little propeller that goes sideways and

that propeller just moves the bow left and right.

It's a small, much smaller engine than the main propeller which is on the stern.

And that can help if the,

if the wind pushes the bow off course as it

looks like happened now that can push the bow back.

Um, you know, you know,

under the bridge problem is those bow thrusters are recessed.

So as the ship picks up speed, the bow thruster becomes less effective.

Usually when a ship is going more than five knots,

that bow thruster does not work properly.

Um, so

that could be another reason that they, you know, did a,

a went full of stern to slow down

to restore that bow thruster. But

we don't know that for sure. It's, it's just an educated guess at this point.

And I have to ask you, what role do a tug boats play in all of this?

Right.

So a tugboat is,

is the best thing to have when you lose

an engine and they're required for close in maneuvering.

So as the ship gets, you know,

when it's coming in from overseas and it gets

under the bridge and comes close to port,

um,

you have to have a pilot on board and that

pilot orders tugs based on the maneuverability and of the ship

and those tugs can push the ship sideways,

it can push the heading and they can also slow down the ship if it's, if it's going

too fast. But Baltimore and the US coast guard

captain of the port, so the coast guard captain of the port is in charge of all the,

all the uh port facilities and, and that,

you know, the military person in charge of the entire area.

Um They do not require a tug boat under the bridge. If there was a tug boat there,

it, you know, a tug boat off the stern, usually f two that could have slowed the,

the ship down and a tugboat

connected near the bow could have pulled that heading

away from the column. But tug boats are not required at

this bridge point.

Captain Conrad, you know,

people are gonna be listening to uh your educated opinion

and all all of this and what happened here.

And the obvious question gotta be

why wasn't the bridge shut down? If this vessel was in distress?

It was, you know, things are happening really quickly.

It seems uh like it was slow, but this all happened in under uh five minutes.

And

um you know, there's, there's these ships are very minimally manned.

You have an all foreign crew, they may or they're required to speak English.

But how well they speak English is not always known and you have one local pilot.

So you have a captain like me who's in the, you know,

an expert in the port of Baltimore and he's managing everything.

He's trying to talk to the engine room, trying to get tug boats,

trying to call me day with the Coast Guard.

And

it's,

it's a lot for a very minimally manned ship

and these ships don't have very much automation.

So there's been resistance towards using a I to help,

help the pilot and help the ship navigate.

Um, it's really operated on old school VHF radio.

So unless someone,

unless that bridge is manned and it's not a

drawbridge and someone on the bridge is monitoring that radio

and then can quickly put up the signs, you know, in under five minutes.

Um, it's just not going to happen if it had been a drawbridge,

it's possible they might have got it shut down,

but uh things were just happening too fast to shut down the bridge in this case.

That is uh Captain John Conrad. Captain Conrad.

Thank you so much for joining us for a few

minutes here and sharing your insight and knowledge with us.