
Hayes Gardner of The Baltimore Sun reports that a Dali-sized cargo ship ‘briefly lost engine power’ Monday as it left Port of Baltimore. He writes:
Another big ship lost power near Baltimore. This time, nothing went disastrously wrong.
A 965-foot cargo ship “briefly lost power” as it departed the Seagirt Marine Terminal at the Port of Baltimore early Monday morning, but it was able to return to its berth according to Maryland Port Administration spokesperson Richard Scher.
The ship, a Liberia-flagged vessel named the Bellavia, departed Baltimore around 2:30 a.m. but almost immediately ran into trouble. Marine tracking data indicates the ship was going roughly 2 mph and made very little progress — no more than 1,000 or 2,000 feet — before it turned around and returned to a berth at Seagirt. […]
A vessel without power underscores potential dangers that massive ships can pose to the infrastructure in and around ports. In addition to the calamity of the Key Bridge collapse, a 997-foot ship lost control of its engines and sped through the harbor in Charleston, S.C., one month ago, prompting the closure of a bridge there.
Since the Key Bridge disaster, the Coast Guard has launched a probe to “examine the implications of larger, more complex vessels and evolving maritime traffic patterns on port infrastructure.”
Read more here.