The hits literally keepcoming for the shipping industry. A massive cargo ship, the Cap San Antonio, crashed into a ferry dock at the Port of Santos in Brazil on Monday, and an investigation is now underway to find out what happened, per CNN Brasil.
The report states that both the Port Authority of São Paulo and the Brazilian Navy are looking into the cause of the crash, which was bad enough that ferry crossings between the cities of Santos and Guarujá were briefly suspended.
The collision backed up cross-traffic at the port and caused long delays, according to The Maritime Executive.
CNN explains that the collision happened as the Cap San Antonio was on its way to the Port of Paranaguá, in Paraná. Luckily (and surprisingly), no one was hurt in the collision but the crash did quite a bit of damage to the ferry dock and the cargo ship, too.
The ferry dock was destroyed, per CNN, and the hull of the Cap San Antonio was breached. Video footage from multiple sources clearly shows ballast water spilling out of the ship’s hull, which means that the breach was bad enough to puncture the hull plates and the tanks in the cargo hold.
The Maritime Executive also reports that the Cap San Antonio was sailing empty when it crashed, which explains why the ballast tanks were full. The ship’s owner is Hamburg Süd, a 150-year old shipping company, that has not yet released a statement explaining why the big ship crashed.
And this is one big ship! Just for scale, the Eiffel Tower is 1,063 feet tall now, according to official figures. The Cap San Antonio is even bigger than that, at about 1,093 feet long overall. This huge ship can travel at a speed of 21 knots, or about 24 miles per hour. I mean, it’s not like container ships are trying to break water speed records, but when you think about all that mass, gliding along like that, it’s still terrifying to imagine what it could do in a collision.
The videos are a testament to that as the ferry dock and a few other vessels are left bobbing helplessly in the wake of the Cap San Antonio.
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