The Brooklyn Bridge Has Long Been a Hazard for Ships

A Mexican navy tall ship's fatal collision with the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday highlighted a hazard that has worried seafarers for nearly 150 years. While historians say Saturday's crash appears to be the first boat collision with the bridge to take the lives of crew members, vessels have clipped the iconic New York City structure for many years—including even before construction on the bridge was finished in the late 19th century. A history from the AP:

• The bridge itself: Opened in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River, connecting its eponymous borough's downtown to Manhattan. The highest point of the bridge's underside is listed at 135 feet on average above the water, but it fluctuates with the tides.
• A legal fight: During construction, a warehouse owner sued state officials—first to stop the bridge and then for compensation—arguing that some ships still had topmasts that exceeded the height. The case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the lawsuit, determining that the bridge didn't unduly restrict ship navigation.
• The first incident: Before that decision, however, at least one ship had already tangled with the still-under-construction crossing. According to an 1878 report in the New York Daily Tribune, the US Navy wooden steam training ship USS Minnesota was headed toward the high point of the bridge after planning ahead and lowering its topmast. But at the last minute, it had to change course to avoid an oncoming ship, sending it to an area with lower clearance and striking the bridge's wires. Nobody was reported injured.

• Clearance changes: By the time the bridge was complete, steamships were transporting the lion's share of goods, and high-masted ships were waning in importance, said Richard Haw, the author of two books about the Brooklyn Bridge. "They go from sailships to steamships," Haw said. "You don't need a huge clearance."
• But more incidents: Yet mast strikes continued, including at least two reported in the 1920s—one of which was with the US Navy's flagship USS Seattle, which had "a little wooden pole that was a little too high," says Dominique Jean-Louis, chief historian at the Center for Brooklyn History, part of the Brooklyn Public Library. In 1941, the SS Nyassa was bringing hundreds of refugees to New York City when the captain miscalculated the tide and part of its mast was bent into a right angle by the bridge's underspan, according to a New York Times article at the time that described a "crunching sound."
• More recently: In the past two decades, at least three minor strikes have been reported against the bridge's underside or base, including a crane being pulled via barge in 2012, which tore into temporary scaffolding mounted underneath the bridge. A similar crane accident damaged peripheral bridge maintenance equipment in July 2023, according to a Coast Guard incident report.

(A New York-based harbor pilot was operating the Mexican navy ship when it hit the bridge.)