A giant container ship had a close encounter of a rather too intimate kind with harbor cranes and another vessel in Busan, South Korea, on Monday.
That must have been a wild ride for the crane operators! I guess they had no choice but to stay put in their cabs, pray, and hope for the best. That would probably be safer than trying to climb down in a hurry, from that high up, when they saw that floating behemoth heading in their direction. No word on whether there were any casualties.
Peter
Fortunately, the crane operators were probably not in there. There is a long period of time from the ship mooring up to actually pulling containers. There is no need to pay for an operator to be up there.
Also, this type of event is not unheard of. There are plenty of videos on YouTube showing just this type of incident. Another reason to not have anyone sitting up there.
Am I a horrible person for hoping that the responsible party/parties were literally keel-hauled as punishment?
Way too fast on the approach… Ship was light (see the amount of rudder showing). Not enough control by the harbor pilot/tugs= a 100million dollar mess.
The voices were speaking Tagalog (Philipipines). The camera man did say that cranes were unmanned. He also was wondering why the propeller was spinning at full speed near the end of the clip. The rest of the conversations were variations of, “She’s gonna hit!”
stew
Ship driver got one hellOVA PARKING FINE, I betcha!
https://gcaptain.com/caught-on-camera-containership-takes-out-crane-in-busan-south-korea/
No injuries, but they hit two more cranes and another ship.
Per one account the operator of the collapsed crane suffered an injured ankle trying to escape the wreckage.
Kept trying to see the aft tug: near as I can see, she was NOT backing down hard!! My guess is she probably lost her engine(s) and, so, was NOT helping; just getting dragged along behind.
She should have been backing down full! That would NOT have prevented the stern from clearing part of the dock, but it would have lessens the angle a bit.