Cruise ship remains on its side as investigators probe crash
New Orleans port sues to seize tanker that struck cruise ship
The Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans sued Friday to make sure federal investigators can seize the tanker that lost its steering and slammed into a docked river cruise boat in the city. The lawsuit said the Atlantic Asphalt caused at least $1 million in damage to the port’s terminal, and a judge issued a warrant Friday giving federal officials control of the ship for now. The tanker has been towed away from the site.
All 197 passengers and crew on the American Heritage cruise ship survived Friday’s crash, as did the crew on the tanker. Officials said 32 people were brought to the hospital, including two police officers thrown into the Mississippi River when the boat rolled. None of the injuries were critical, and eight remained hospitalized Saturday.
The first warning for people on board the American Heritage was the tanker blasting its horn several times as it floated toward the cruise ship, passenger Joe Knab told WDSU-TV. The hit was hard, and the ship immediately started leaning. The crew gathered everyone on the third deck to put on life vests and start getting them off the boat, but the ship suddenly rolled and sent Knab and about 100 other passengers and crew into the river, where the water was 66-degree Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius).
Tugboat operators, other cruise ship captains, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help. “It’s fine now, but it was a little scary there at the time. I thought I was drowning because I kept bobbing underneath — and the water doesn’t taste very good,” Knab told the television station, still in the jeans he was wearing on the boat, now covered in mud. Knab said he thinks he was in the water about 15 minutes and credited his 20 years in the Navy: “They taught us not to drown.”
Knab was wearing a shirt from a Hilton hotel where the passengers gathered, and the rest of his belongings were in the river. Somehow his cellphone still worked. He hoped to get on a plane soon back to Wichita, Kansas, but he was not sure how Friday’s nationwide ground stop was going to throw another problem at him.
New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll said putting life vests on the passengers as they waited to get off the boat likely saved a number of lives when the ship turned into the water. “Whether it’s 10 feet of water or 200 feet, having those vests, having that population put those vests on and kind of float upriver while we retrieve them — I think was the best factor of success,” Montroll said.
The American Heritage was finishing an eight-day cruise to several Mississippi River destinations. It could take weeks to move the cruise ship, which remains turned on its side against a terminal in the Mississippi River, Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham told reporters Saturday. The first step is to make sure the 16,000 gallons (60,500 liters) of fuel on the boat are removed safely, she said.
Traffic has been limited on the Mississippi River, but Burnham said boats should be able to move both upstream and downstream soon. The tanker appeared to lose steering, but the exact cause of the crash is not known, Burnham said. The National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to New Orleans.
The Atlantic Asphalt is a 520-foot-long (160-meter-long) vessel sailing under a flag for the Marshall Islands, with a final destination in New Orleans, according to MarineTraffic. The ship is owned by Nave Shipping SA, registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization, and Nave Shipping was one of the defendants in the lawsuit filed Friday. MarineTraffic reported that Nave Shipping is a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate. China State Shipbuilding Corp. didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.
The tanker specializes in carrying large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid substance often used for road construction and roofing, according to MarineTraffic.