A cruise ship suffered a blackout in Sydney Harbor just weeks before a similar scenario in the United States caused the deadly collapse of the Baltimore Bridge.
The MS Borealis, a 238 meter long cruise ship, set sail from Sydney’s White Bay Cruise Terminal in Rozelle on February 28.
The ship lost power about 50 minutes after passing under the Sydney Harbor Bridge while navigating the Western Channel near South Head late at night.
The Fred. The Olsen Cruise Lines ship then diverted for ‘a mile…under piloting’ before coming to rest at anchor for several hours while power was restored, said a source with knowledge of the Port Authority’s report on the incident. The Sydney Morning Herald.
The MS Dali crashed when it suffered a similar power outage shortly after leaving the port of Baltimore in the US on Tuesday, causing the cargo ship to lose course and crash into a concrete support pier of the bridge. Francis Scott Key.
Much of the 1.6-mile-long bridge collapsed into the Patapsco River. Six maintenance workers who were on the bridge are missing and presumed dead.
The cruise ship MS Borealis (pictured) suffered a similar power outage in Sydney Harbor in February.
Police dive boats work around part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge structure after the boat collided with the bridge on Wednesday.
Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines has since confirmed the Sydney incident.
“Shortly after departing Sydney, Australia, at 11.50pm (AEDT) on 28 February, our ship Borealis lost power for a short period of time,” a spokesperson said.
‘Our onboard technical team worked hard to establish the cause and restored all systems quickly. The ship was returned to full operational power and continued its world cruise itinerary as planned.
It is understood that a tugboat that had been guiding the ship through Sydney Harbor was unable to reconnect its cable after the cruise ship suffered the blackout.
The risk of what happened with the Francis Scott Key Bridge being repeated on the Sydney Harbor Bridge is highly unlikely as the bridge structures are very different.
The Sydney Bridge has two support piers located on land on either side of the harbour, unlike the Baltimore Bridge, which had piers in the water.
Professor Wije ‘Ari’ Ariyaratne, director of bridges and structures for New South Wales between 2000 and 2019, told the newspaper that Sydney Harbor Bridge engineer John Bradfield had opted for a ‘two-pillar arch’ to avoid structures in the water.
“We have very strong sandstone anchoring the bridge,” he said.
The White Bay cruise terminal opened in 2013 to accommodate smaller cruise ships and replace Darling Habour’s Pier 8, which closed for the redevelopment of Barangaroo.
The Borealis suffered an electrical failure one hour after passing under the Sydney Harbor Bridge
At each end of the Sydney Harbor Bridge are two pairs of 89-metre-high towers that were not part of the original design. Granite blocks were later added to assure the public that they would not fall. The Sydney Harbor Bridge appears in 1930 under construction.
The largest cruise ships dock at the foreign passenger terminal at Circular Quay.
There is a bridge with a clear height of 49m over White Bay which would present a hazard if larger ships attempted to dock there.
A spokesman for the NSW Transport Minister said the state’s commercial waterways had “some of the most robust procedures in the world”, supported in Sydney Harbor by experienced tugboat operators.
Risk management company DNV in a 2022 report found that 12 incidents of cruise ship blackouts were reported globally in 2019, unusual considering the thousands of ships they operate.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines for comment.
In the United States, the main operations of the port of Baltimore remain closed.
Supply chain experts say other ports along the East Coast They are likely to absorb much of Baltimore’s traffic, averting a crisis. But not without longer shipping times and disruption.
“Ultimately, most trade through Baltimore will find a new home port,” Moody’s Analytics economist Harry Murphy Cruise wrote in a blog post.
The Secretary of Transportation of the United States, Pete Buttigieg, reiterated on Wednesday that it was too early to estimate how long it would take to clean the partial structure of the 15-meter-deep Patapsco River Canal Bridge, which leads to the port’s main terminal.
The port’s location makes it a key destination for the transportation of goods. The Maryland Ports Administration says the facility is within an overnight walk of two-thirds of the U.S. population and is closer to the Midwest than any other port on the East Coast.
The Singapore-flagged MS Dali was sailing along the Patapsco River en route to Sri Lanka when it suffered a complete power outage and the lights went out.
Three minutes later, the container ship collided with a bridge pylon, plunging almost the entire structure into the water.
The bridge was up to code and there were no known structural problems, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said.
The cargo ship Dali, almost 300 m long, sailed from the port of Baltimore towards Sri Lanka
The metal truss-style bridge has a suspended deck, a design that contributed to its collapse, engineers say. The ship appeared to crash into a concrete main pier, which rests on the ground underwater and is part of the foundation.
The Grace Ocean Pte Ltd ship, owned by LSEG, measures 289 meters and was packed with containers, but was capable of carrying twice as much cargo.
Security investigators have recovered the ship’s black box, which can tell them the ship’s position, speed, heading, radar, bridge audio and radio communications, as well as alarms.