The wreckage of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is still protruding out of the Patapsco River after the structure suffered a massive collision with a container vessel, Dali, which was on its way out of the Port of Baltimore early Tuesday morning. Several construction workers who were on the bridge at the time are now presumed dead, and for the port, one of the busiest along the Eastern Seaboard, a long disruption is now expected.
As the initial shock from the footage of the incident has started to fade, the questions have piled up: How could the bridge have been so vulnerable? Why do we let massive ships like that through such tight passes? Even if the ship lost power, how could it not have had a mechanism to stop in time? Who will ultimately take the blame? Salvatore Mercogliano is a maritime historian, professor, and the host of a YouTube channel, What’s Going on With Shipping?, that exploded in popularity during the Suez Canal disaster, and he is the person you want to explain all of this to you. Over the phone, he told me what made the bridge so susceptible to collapse, why ships like Dali aren’t even considered that big anymore, and the misconceptions that are prevailing in the aftermath of the incident. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Aymann Ismail: Can you help someone like me, who has an only marginal understanding of maritime disasters, to understand how a bridge could collapse the way it did in Baltimore?
Salvatore Mercogliano: When the bridge was built 50 years ago, it wasn’t designed to take any sort of hit at all. Ships were much smaller at the time, and the distance in the channel between the two pillars that straddle the channel was seen to be far enough apart. The problem here is, a ship the size of the Dali, which isn’t even a big ship today, is much more massive than was perceived possible in 1977. Without a series of concrete blocks—what they call “dolphins”—further out to deflect the vessel, then a hit like that is going to bring that pillar down. And the nature of the construction of that bridge is such that if you knock out one leg, it’s like removing the key piece in the Jenga set: The whole bridge is going to come down.
I find it interesting that you described the ship as not that big. I’ve heard it described as huge—longer than a horizontal skyscraper.
It’s 900 feet long. It weighs 115,000 tons. But to go back to Ever Given in the Suez: Ever Given is 1,300 feet long and 200,000 tons. A Dali carries 10,000 containers, and the Ever Given carries 20,000. Dali doesn’t even come close to registering as a big container ship. It’s basically a medium-sized one.
Have those ships gotten much bigger in recent years? And in turn, does that make them more dangerous?
We move more cargo by volume and velocity as quick as we can, with very little time in between. Believe it or not, it’s much safer sailing than ever before. We don’t have sinkings or accidents as much. But because of the pressure of the global shipping cycle—we’re moving everything so fast—that means that when accidents do occur, they tend to be very big and very dramatic.
It’s hard to keep pace, especially in the U.S., where, if you look at the $3 trillion infrastructure bill, less than 1 percent was spent on anything maritime-related. And shoring up infrastructure like the bridge, putting dolphins in or reinforcing those areas, is not seen as a really critical point, especially because there is other critical infrastructure that needs to be fixed. This bridge wasn’t going to fall down unless the ship hit it.
The ship’s crew warned about power loss, and thankfully, traffic on the bridge was halted. But some construction workers apparently did not get off in time. Can you explain the protocol for situations like this? And would you say that those protocols were correctly followed?
The alert came from the two Chesapeake Bay pilots who were on board. Pilots operate under both federal rules and state or local rules. Loss of power on a ship depends on rules in the state’s pilots association. Fortunately, the senior pilot on this vessel sounded the mayday and was able to contact not just ships in the area but also his dispatch, who in turn was able within four minutes to get word to the Department of Transportation crew up on the bridge and alert them.
It’s a remarkable performance. It really is. The fact that only six people lost their lives—if this had been rush hour, it would have been dozens, if not hundreds, lost. The pilots reacted very quickly. Which is a big difference from what we saw two years ago in Baltimore, when Ever Forward’s pilot was distracted by his computer and missed the turn and grounded the vessel. That was very different and really shows the professionalism of the Chesapeake Bay pilots here.
Was there anything more the pilots could have done? I assume it takes a good amount of lead time to stop a vessel like this. I know it takes a truck hundreds of yards to slow down and stop at a red light. Is that comparable to stopping a ship like the Dali?
You’re talking about miles. When they lost power, this ship was two-thirds of a mile from the bridge. It could not stop in that distance. Even throwing the engine on full stern was not going to stop this ship. It’s just sheer momentum. And that’s the problem. I sailed for many years, and the worst sound you ever hear on a ship is silence because that means nothing’s working and you’re in the hands of inertia, wind, and current. It is terrifying. I guarantee you that this was the most terrifying four minutes in the lives of that crew ever. This would have happened in slow motion. Ten knots is not very fast, but it’s fast enough. And it would have been absolutely horrific.
How long do you expect we will need to wait until we know for sure what happened?
You’re dealing with international shipping, so you’re dealing with a Singaporean vessel with a Singapore flag that’s leased to a Danish company that the classification society is Japanese, the insurance is British with an Indian crew on board that is coming out of the Port of Baltimore in federal waters controlled by the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s a mess. It’s an absolute mess. It’s a horror story.
I know you mentioned that installing dolphins farther out could have made a difference, but are there any other technologies or methods that could have prevented this?
Bow thrusters didn’t work. Dropping the port anchor didn’t work. There’s not a lot that stops 115,000 tons coming at you except for the main engine. And when you lose the main engine, there’s not a lot you can do, even if you had tugs alongside it. Tugs don’t follow the vessel out; that’s not standard operating procedure. But even if you had the tugs there, they would have to have been hooked up. I know tugboat operators. They would gladly put their tug in the way to prevent this from happening. But I’m not exactly sure that they would have been able to push that vessel clear at that time because of the sheer momentum, inertia, and kinetic energy that that vessel had.
President Biden said the U.S. government would pick up the costs of repairing the bridge, but who would be liable in a situation like this? If the ship is Singaporean and it was leased by a Danish company, who would you blame?
I mean, we’re still litigating Ever Given. The litigation here is going to be tremendous because if I’m sitting on a ship right now and I can’t get in the Baltimore, I’m suing the ship itself, I’m suing Dali, I’m suing the operating company, I’m suing Maersk, I’m suing everybody. The amount of liability here is going to be astronomical, which means insurance is going to be dealing with this. And it will go on for years and be tried in courts in Maryland, overseas, and everywhere you can imagine.
This is akin to the guy delivering packages to your house from Amazon at Christmas, driving a rental car, and he runs you over. Who do you sue in that case? Do you sue Amazon for delivering the package? Do you sue the driver? Or do you sue the rental company that gave them the car? And in maritime law, you sue everybody. It’s a mess.
Earlier, you said that ships are safer than ever. But judging from the recent news cycles, it feels as if there’s been an increase in maritime disasters, especially with shipping vessels. If that’s not true, can you explain why it feels as if we’re hearing about them much more often?
There is a report put out every year by a group called Allianz that tracks maritime accidents over the past decade. There is a literal decrease. It’s safer than ever to be shipping. But we see them more often now than ever before because the system is pressured so much with that volume and velocity of cargo—so when accidents do happen, like I said, they tend to be very big.
As ships continue to get bigger, are you worried about incidents like this happening more often?
As long as the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal will accept them, and as long as you can get insurance for them, if you build it, they will come—bigger and bigger. As a matter of fact, one of the big things that we’re seeing right now is a fear that because ships are diverting around Suez, that removes the restriction on length. Ships were restricted, basically, to under 400 meters. Well, if we don’t have to go through the Suez anymore, maybe we’ll build bigger.
The crazy part is, now that Baltimore doesn’t have the bridge, they’ll build a bigger bridge so they can bring bigger ships. And that’ll be the irony here. They’ll build the bridge big enough so that they can get the biggest ships underneath it.
What else is everyone getting wrong about this?
The shipping industry has been taken out of the limelight. We’ve moved the ports out from downtown. So, to most people, shipping is an invisible industry, so they don’t understand it. And what knowledge they may have is either outdated or from popular culture. And in truth, the shipping industry is a very safe industry. It is highly regulated. But at the same time, it’s a very backward industry, a very conservative industry, with a small c, in that it resists change at times. So, I think people look at things and wonder why ships are going underneath bridges without tugboats. Well, 99.999 percent of the time, ships do that without an issue.
It’s just what we take for granted. When I fly on an airplane, I want to see the pilots going through the checklist. I want to see them kicking the tires. I want to make sure that damn plane is safe for me to get on. Yet the first time I ever try my brakes on my car is when I get to a red light. I don’t even check at all for tires on my car. I just get in and drive. You get very comfortable with technology. People are just not familiar with shipping. They may go on a cruise. They may be familiar with small boats. So it’s outside the parameter. Plus, we have exported and outsourced our shipping, and so it’s not even American anymore. I think that’s the biggest issue. One of the reasons I started my YouTube channel was to explain it to people.
I’m a very big proponent for my industry. I really want people to understand shipping and the role it has. You know, 1.5 million mariners kept the world supplied during COVID. I don’t think they get the attention they really deserve. Even so, unfortunately, rules and regulations in the maritime industry are written in blood. So you have to have kind of these disasters to understand things. And so I think it’s very important not just to talk about the disasters, the negatives, but to talk about the positives. I always try to mix the two together. I just want to be known as the Jim Cantore of maritime disasters. I don’t want to be the guy that shows up every time there’s a maritime disaster.
