Mexican navy sailing ship carrying 277 people hits NY’s Brooklyn Bridge, killing 2 crew members

NEW YORK – A Mexican navy training sailboat on a goodwill tour drifted directly into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge on the night of May 17, smashing its masts and rigging and killing two crew members.

There were 277 people on the Cuauhtemoc at the time, and everyone is believed to be accounted for, a New York Fire Department official said.

Mayor Eric Adams said in a social media post after midnight that two people died, and that the ship lost power before the crash. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on social media that the victims were crew members.

The Mexican navy said at least 22 others were injured, including 11 who were in critical condition and nine in stable condition.

The ship was docked at Pier 17 in Manhattan, just below the Brooklyn Bridge.

On the night of May 17, it was supposed to head south and sail out of New York harbour, with a stop on the Brooklyn waterfront to refuel before heading to Iceland.

Instead, at about 8.30pm (8.30am in Singapore on May 18), the Cuauhtemoc was apparently headed in the wrong direction, never intending to sail under the bridge, said a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

In videos showing the crash, a tugboat could be seen near the Cuauhtemoc, which appeared to be moving backward, stern first, when it crashed.

It lurched but stayed upright as it came to a stop at Brooklyn Bridge Park, according to social media video and images from the scene. Its masts appeared to be badly damaged.

At a news conference on May 17, the authorities said a pilot assigned to navigate the Cuauhtemoc out of the channel experienced “mechanical issues”.

The National Transportation Safety Board will undertake an investigation.

Mr Nick Corso, 23, was finishing dinner with friends at a restaurant when they saw the ship. He thought that it would clear the bridge, but “the top lights on the mast disappeared behind the bridge and I was like, oh, it’s not going to make it”.

When the mast made contact, “you could hear it snap”.

At Pier 16 where the injured were taken to, a large crowd gathered and emergency vehicles filled South Street.

Periodically, emergency workers wheeled victims with neck braces towards ambulances. Whenever a new survivor appeared, the crowd broke into cheers and applause and chanted: “Mex-i-co! Mex-i-co!”

Mr Octavio Muniz, 44, came from his home in Newark, New Jersey, to see the ship “because I am from Mexico”. Officials said it was on a goodwill cruise and headed to Iceland.

As the masts toppled, the crowd around him began to scream and cry. “It was horrible,” he said. “It was so sad.”

After midnight, the vessel docked at Pier 36 behind a city sanitation depot, its broken masts visible from behind a row of police barricades blocking access.

The Cuauhtemoc is used to train seamen, captains and officers at Mexico’s Heroic Naval Military School, according to a statement from one of its cruises. It is a steel-hulled sailboat, launched in 1982 and about 90m long.

It docked in Singapore in August 2024 at VivoCity, during a global deployment.

The Mexican navy said the Cuauhtemoc set sail on April 6 from Acapulco with a goal of “exalting the seafaring spirit, strengthening naval education and carrying the Mexican people’s message of peace and goodwill to the seas and ports of the world”.

It planned to spend 254 days away making calls in New York; Kingston, Jamaica; Havana, Cuba; Reykjavik, Iceland; Aberdeen, Scotland; Aviles, Spain; Bridgetown, Barbados; and London.

Government documents show the bridge has a navigational clearance of 38m. The Cuauhtemoc’s masts were roughly 48m tall.

After the crash, all lanes of the bridge were briefly closed in both directions, the city’s emergency management notification system reported.

Mr Ydanis Rodriguez, commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, said the span was being inspected, but “information is there was not any major damage to the bridge”.

The bridge, which took 14 years to build, was the city’s first suspension bridge. Since its triumphant construction over 140 years ago, it has become a quintessential part of New York City, tying Brooklyn to Manhattan. It is as recognisable a symbol of the city as the Empire State Building.

This is not the first tall ship to strike the bridge.

In 1921, the steel mainmast of schooner Edward J. Lawrence struck as it was towed beneath the central span.

More than a decade later, a freighter hit a steel girder on the bridge, damaging three of the ship’s four masts. The captain blamed what he characterised as an abnormally high tide.

In 1986, a freighter from South Korea scraped the underside of the bridge, destroying one of the ship’s radars. NYTIMES