On videos filmed by eyewitnesses, the vessel can be seen traveling at a fairly high speed towards the bridge. When the enormous masts reach the bridge span, they break and fall down onto the deck – while the vessel continues to drive forward. On the road above, heavy traffic is moving.
Two people have died. 19 people are injured, two of them critically, according to New York's Mayor Eric Adams.
"Earlier this evening, the Mexican navy's sailing vessel Cuauhtémoc suffered a power outage and crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge", Adams writes on X.
After the collision, the vessel drifted towards the riverbank.
Got stuck
No one from the crew fell into the water during the accident, according to the Mexican navy in a statement. Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum expresses sorrow.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of two crew members on the training vessel Cuauhtémoc", she writes on X.
Eyewitnesses Sydney Neidell and Lily Katz tell that they saw two people being carried on stretchers from the sailing vessel to a smaller boat. In connection with the accident, at least one person got stuck from one of the masts, they claim.
saw someone getting stuck and I couldn't see properly, but we managed to zoom in on my mobile and it was someone who was hanging from a harness from the top for at least 15 minutes before they managed to rescue the person, says Lily Katz to AP.
90 meters long
The 142-year-old bridge is not believed to have suffered any serious damage in the collision. The traffic was initially closed off but was reopened after an inspection.
The vessel Cuauhtémoc belongs to the Mexican navy. The 90-meter-long and 12-meter-wide sailing vessel is a training vessel within the navy's military education and is used every year in a sailing trip that concludes the cadet education.
This year's sailing trip departed from the Mexican Acapulco on April 6 with 277 people on board, according to the navy. The plan was for the trip to be 254 days, 170 of them at sea, and for the vessel to visit 22 harbors in 15 different countries.
