All 180 aboard New Orleans cruise ship survive tanker collision on the Mississippi River

A tanker that appeared to have lost its steering rammed into a docked river cruise boat in New Orleans on Friday, with 180 people aboard the smaller vessel. Video from the scene shows the much larger Atlantic Asphalt tanker striking the American Heritage while metal and glass crunched and broke apart. Mayor Helena Moreno said all 180 aboard survived.

The boat began listing within minutes and flipped while emergency workers were still trying to get everyone off. It took on water, and passengers and crew went into the Mississippi River. Tugboat operators, nearby workers and police rushed to help. Dozens of people, along with at least two police officers, were pulled from the 66-degree river (19 degrees Celsius) onto nearby ships.

At a news conference, Moreno said no one was unaccounted for, calling it "a miracle on the Mississippi" as rescuers and others cheered. Thirty-two people were taken to hospitals, she said, but none had critical injuries.

Devon Flanagan was working at the Port of New Orleans when coworkers rushed down the dock. He got out of his truck and saw the ship on its side and passengers in the water. "It was just chaos," he said. Ships, barges and other companies' crews were trying to help, he said, which was a little convoluted because people were still in the water.

Those who were not hurt were taken to a nearby auditorium, where cruise officials called a roll to confirm everyone was accounted for. Many lost IDs and even car keys, and most were from out of town, Moreno said. They needed phone chargers, and some had no phones at all, she said, and they needed to tell their families they were safe. They also needed food, hotel rooms and transportation.

The American Heritage was built in 2015 and operated by American Cruise Lines. It has five stories and can carry up to 150 passengers. It was finishing an eight-day cruise to destinations in Louisiana and Mississippi, with its final stop in New Orleans, according to MarineTraffic. The 520-foot (160-meter) vessel sailed under a Marshall Islands flag.

The cause is not known. Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham said the tanker seemed to have "some type of loss of steering." Martin Davies, a maritime law expert at Tulane University, said it was too early to say what went wrong, but the videos suggest a catastrophic system failure on the vessel, and "super bad luck" that it hit as passengers were departing. The tanker was heading upriver, slowly against the current, he said. "For something like this to happen for an upbound ship indicates that something must have gone really badly wrong." Local pilots guide tankers there, and this one had already made the difficult Algiers Point turn before the crash, Davies said.

The tanker is owned by Nave Shipping SA, registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization. MarineTraffic lists it as a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a state-owned conglomerate that in 2022 accounted for nearly a quarter of the global commercial shipbuilding market, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and was the world's largest military shipbuilder. The company did not respond Friday afternoon to an emailed request for comment. The tanker carries asphalt and bitumen, used in road construction and roofing.

The National Transportation Safety Board plans to investigate, though its members were initially unable to reach New Orleans because all flights nationwide were grounded by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers. The investigation will be the place to look for an answer on the steering.