It should have been one of the most beautiful sights in New York.
On the evening of May 17, 2025, the Mexican Navy’s tall ship Cuauhtémoc eased away from Pier 17 at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. Sailors stood high in her rigging as she headed out.
Eight minutes later, the ship was moving backward toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Her masts were far too tall to fit underneath.
Two cadets were killed and 19 people were injured. Here is what the investigation has revealed so far about how a ship ended up colliding with one of the most famous bridges in the world.
The Ship
The ARM Cuauhtémoc is a three-masted sail training ship built in 1982. Every year she carries Mexican Navy cadets on a long training voyage, and in 2025 that voyage was planned to visit 22 ports in 15 countries over about eight months, according to Wikipedia’s account of the collision.
That evening she had 277 crew members and cadets aboard, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The number that matters most is her air draft, the height from the waterline to the top of her masts: 158 feet. The Brooklyn Bridge’s vertical clearance is 127 feet at mean high water. Put simply, the ship could never pass under the bridge. She was never meant to go near it.
How a Big Ship Leaves a Pier
Getting a large ship away from a dock in a busy harbor is a team effort. In New York, the ship’s own captain and crew are joined by local pilots: a docking pilot, who handles the tricky maneuvers at the pier and directs the tugboats, and a sea pilot, who guides the ship through the harbor once she is under way. Both were aboard the Cuauhtémoc, standing with her captain on the open conning deck.
Tugboats push and pull to help a ship turn in tight spaces, especially one like the Cuauhtémoc that has a single 1,300-horsepower diesel engine for maneuvering. The East River adds its own challenge: it is a tidal strait with strong currents, and Pier 17 sits just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, so there is little room for error.
Eight Minutes: What Happened
The NTSB’s preliminary report, released in June 2025, pieced together the sequence:
- 8:16 p.m. The Cuauhtémoc’s lines are released from Pier 17, with a docking pilot, a sea pilot and a tugboat, the Charles D. McAllister, assisting.
- The docking pilot orders the ship to move astern (backward).
- Following the pilot’s orders, the tug stops pushing and backs away to reposition toward the back of the ship.
- The ship’s stern begins to swing toward the Brooklyn Bridge.
- 8:23 to 8:24 p.m. The ship’s backward speed nearly doubles, according to ABC News’ summary of the report.
- 8:24 p.m. Moving backward at about 5.9 knots, the upper sections of all three masts strike the underside of the bridge.
The tops of the masts broke off against the bridge. The ship kept moving, scraping along the stone embankment at the water’s edge.
The Human Cost
The two people killed were cadets from the Mexican states of Veracruz and Oaxaca. One of them was standing high in the rigging at the moment of impact. Nineteen others were injured, some seriously.
The bridge itself came through well. The NTSB found “no significant structural damage,” and traffic lanes that had been briefly closed reopened the same night. The Cuauhtémoc was not so lucky: damage to the ship was estimated at more than $500,000.
What Investigators Found
The NTSB’s preliminary report does not say what caused the collision. But it did point to several things investigators are examining:
- Commands passed through translation. The docking pilot gave orders in English. The captain acknowledged them, translated them into Spanish, and relayed them to a crew member on the deck below. Every link in that chain takes a little time.
- The ship’s machinery. The captain reported that the propulsion and steering systems were working properly. After the collision, inspectors found scraped paint on the ship’s left side and a rudder that was bent and turned sideways.
- Conditions. Visibility was clear, with westerly winds of 10 to 15 knots.
- Drug and alcohol tests for the pilots and the tugboat captain came back negative.
NTSB investigations often take more than a year. As of September 2026, we could not find a final report with a probable cause. We will update this article when it is released.
The Journey Home
About six months after the collision, the Cuauhtémoc returned to Mexico. She was welcomed at an official ceremony in Veracruz on November 23, 2025.
Why This Matters to Cruise Passengers
The Cuauhtémoc wasn’t a cruise ship, but every cruise begins and ends the same way she did: backing away from a pier, with pilots and tugs working alongside the crew. It’s one of the most carefully choreographed moments of any voyage, and this tragedy shows how quickly it can go wrong.
Bridges are part of that choreography. Every ship’s air draft has to be checked against every bridge on its route. When Royal Caribbean’s giant Oasis of the Seas left the shipyard in 2009, she had to pass under Denmark’s Great Belt Bridge, which clears the water by about 65 meters (213 feet). Her normal air draft was about 72 meters (236 feet).
The solution? She retracted her telescoping funnels and sped toward the bridge at around 20 knots, which made her sit slightly deeper in the shallow channel. She slipped underneath with less than two feet to spare, according to Wikipedia’s history of the ship. That’s the level of planning a bridge demands.
And like the cruise ships that keep breaking free from their docks in high winds, the Cuauhtémoc is a reminder that the most dangerous moments at sea often happen right next to land.
For passengers, the lesson is simple. During sailaway, follow crew instructions, stay out of restricted areas, and enjoy the view from where you’re told to stand. The people on the bridge are managing more than you can see.
Keep Reading
- Snap, Drift, Crunch: Why Cruise Ships Keep Breaking Free From the Dock
- 10 Cruise Disasters That Left Passengers Stunned at Sea
- The Day a Cruise Ship Nearly Lost Control
Sources
- gCaptain: NTSB Issues Preliminary Report on Mexican Navy Tall Ship Collision with Brooklyn Bridge
- ABC News: NTSB report reveals new details about deadly Brooklyn Bridge sailboat collision
- Wikipedia: Cuauhtémoc–Brooklyn Bridge collision
- Wikipedia: Oasis of the Seas
