Key Bridge Was Also Hit by a Ship in 1980, With Limited Damage

The massive cargo ship that lost control and slammed into a major Baltimore bridge on Tuesday was not the first to do so. The same bridge was also hit by a wayward cargo vessel in 1980.

On Aug. 29 of that year, a container ship named the Blue Nagoya drifted into a pier that supported the structure, the Francis Scott Key Bridge, after losing control about 1,800 feet away, according to a 1983 report by the U.S. National Research Council.

When the Blue Nagoya hit the Key Bridge, it destroyed some protective concrete, yet did not topple the structure. So what was different this time?

The two vessels were traveling at roughly the same speed. The Blue Nagoya was moving at about six knots, or nearly seven miles per hour, when it made impact. The ship that hit the Key Bridge early Tuesday morning, the Dali, had been clocked at just under seven knots, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Wednesday.

The full story of how and why the 1.6-mile-long bridge collapsed could be years away. Investigators were still collecting evidence at the site on Wednesday.

For now, structural engineers have said that no bridge would have been able to withstand that kind of direct hit from a cargo ship weighing 95,000 tons, as the Dali did. But they have also noted that the bridge had no obvious protective barriers that might have redirected or prevented a ship from crashing into its piers in the first place.