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questinthrow

What was the ship captain's plan here? Just ram through the bridge?

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Usually, a harbor pilot guides the vessel when entering and leaving the harbor.

The pilot is a former captain with a lot of local experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_pilot

[Edit: The association of Maryland Pilots even has the bridge on their homepage https://www.mdpilots.com/]

Did the pilot screw up? Was the pilot ignore? Did the captain take over? Was there a technical fault that disabled steering?

There could be a lot of possible reasons for this incident.

It's clearly visible in the video that the ship loses power twice before the collision.

That could be an effect of aggressive attempts to regain control rather than the cause, though.

In most cases the pilot is there as an advisor, the captain/master is still in command of the ship.

Looks like the captain might have had little control and/or been distracted, what with the ship being on fire at the time.

The smoke was likely from the engines running at full reverse to avoid the collision. But the ship lost power (you can see its lights going out in the video) and thus the ability to steer.

It looks like it's smoking nicely, yes..

Appeared disabled in the video, this was not planned.

The captain was disabled or the bridge? I dont understand how you set a course through a bridge like that

A course is set through the middle, side thrusters, rudders, and|or engines fail or falter, and current drifts the ship into the bridge pylon.

Ships in water tend to move and keep moving, engines and thrusters work to vector that motion into a desired direction - when things fail motion doesn't cease and courses aren't maintained.

https://imgur.com/a/OXDh1mM

Here’s an image of its path

The best quote from Mass Effect:

Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!

Gravity is a harsh mistress..

"this hurts you, Shephard"

The ship, most of its lights go out a minute of two before the collision, and it also seems to be emitting black smoke (from the funnels / engine exhaust?) as well.

The lights on the ship all go out about 5 minutes before impact. They come back on and appear to go out again as impact gets closer. It looks like the ship suffered a catastrophic failure that affected the controls.

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