Ships have been hitting the Brooklyn Bridge for nearly 150 years

NEW YORK -- A Mexican navy gangly ship's fatal collision with the Brooklyn Bridge connected Saturday highlighted a hazard that has disquieted seafarers for astir 150 years.

Even earlier operation connected the span was finished successful the precocious 19th century, the topmast of a passing U.S. Navy vessel deed the span's wires — and vessels continued to clip the iconic New York City operation for galore years.

But historians accidental Saturday's clang appears to beryllium the archetypal vessel collision with the span to instrumentality the lives of unit members. Two Mexican naval cadets died and much were injured aft the grooming vessel Cuauhtémoc’s masts crashed into the span arsenic dozens of sailors stood harnessed precocious up successful rigging arsenic portion of a nationalist display.

“That’s the archetypal and perchance lone clip wherever there’s been a fatality onboard of a vessel that struck the Brooklyn Bridge,” said Dominique Jean-Louis, main historiographer astatine the Center for Brooklyn History, portion of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Opened successful 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River, connecting its eponymous borough's downtown to Manhattan. The highest constituent of the bridge's underside is listed astatine 135 feet (41.1 meters) connected mean supra the water, but it fluctuates with the tides.

During construction, a warehouse proprietor sued authorities officials — archetypal to halt the span and past for compensation — arguing that immoderate ships inactive had topmasts that exceeded the height. The lawsuit made it each the mode up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismissed the lawsuit, determining that the span did not unduly restrict vessel navigation.

Before that decision, however, astatine slightest 1 vessel had already tangled with the still-under-construction crossing.

According to an 1878 study successful the New York Daily Tribune, the U.S. Navy woody steam grooming vessel USS Minnesota was headed toward the precocious constituent of the span aft readying up and lowering its topmast. But astatine the past minute, it had to alteration people to debar an oncoming ship, sending it to an country with little clearance and striking the bridge's wires. Nobody was reported injured.

By the clip the span was complete, steam ships were transporting the lion's stock of goods, and high-masted ships were waning successful importance, said Richard Haw, prof of interdisciplinary studies astatine John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the writer of two books astir the Brooklyn Bridge.

“They spell from sail ships to steam ships,” Haw said. “You don’t request a immense clearance.”

Yet mast strikes continued, including astatine slightest 2 reported successful the 1920s — 1 of which was with the U.S. Navy's flagship USS Seattle, which had “a small woody rod that was a small excessively high," Jean-Louis said.

In 1941, the SS Nyassa was bringing hundreds of refugees to New York City erstwhile the skipper miscalculated the tide and portion of its mast was bent into a close space by the bridge's underspan, according to a New York Times nonfiction astatine the clip that described a “crunching sound.” Among the refugees connected committee was Hedwig Ehrlich, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning Jewish German idiosyncratic Paul Ehrlich, arsenic she headed to unrecorded with daughters successful San Francisco.

As the 20th period went on, ships got taller and wider. And they inactive required mast-like appendages for reflection and communication.

A shipyard conscionable northbound of the bridge, present known arsenic the Brooklyn Navy Yard, churned retired larger and larger ships during and aft World War II, including craft carriers that could hardly acceptable beneath the bridge.

One photograph from 1961 shows the USS Constellation craft bearer leaving the navy gait and passing underneath the Brooklyn Bridge with a mast that folded down onto the ship's deck, specially designed to get retired into the harbor.

In the past 2 decades, astatine slightest 3 insignificant strikes person been reported against the bridge's underside oregon base, including a crane being pulled via barge successful 2012, which tore into impermanent scaffolding mounted underneath the bridge. A akin crane mishap damaged peripheral span attraction instrumentality successful July of 2023, according to a Coast Guard incidental report.

None of the modern mishap reports papers superior injuries.

But disconnected the water, the span has been a tract of calamity agelong earlier Saturday's crash. More than 20 radical were killed and countless crippled portion gathering it, including workers injured by decompression sickness, a little-understood impact of moving successful underwater successful boxes sunk to the riverbed. Twelve radical died successful a panic-driven stampede among crowds visiting the span soon aft it opened to the nationalist successful 1883.