All 180 aboard survive New Orleans cruise boat collision with tanker on the Mississippi

On Friday in New Orleans, a tanker that appears to have lost its steering rammed into a river cruise boat tied up at the dock with 180 people aboard. Video from the scene shows the far larger Atlantic Asphalt tanker striking the American Heritage, with metal and glass crashing and crunching. The cruise boat took on water, began to list within minutes, and flipped while emergency workers were still trying to get everyone off.

Passengers and crew went into the Mississippi, which was 66 degrees Fahrenheit (19 Celsius). Tugboat operators, workers from nearby, and police rushed in. Dozens of people, along with at least two police officers, were pulled out of the river and onto nearby ships. By the end, every person aboard had been found. At a news conference, as rescuers and others cheered, Mayor Helena Moreno said, "We have zero people unaccounted for, which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi." Thirty-two people were taken to hospitals, and none had critical injuries.

Devon Flanagan was working nearby at the Port of New Orleans when coworkers ran down the dock. He got out of his truck and saw the ship on its side with passengers in the water. "It was just chaos," he said. Ships, barges, and crews from other companies were all trying to help, he said, which made things somewhat convoluted while people were still in the water.

People who were not hurt were taken to a nearby auditorium, where cruise officials called a roll to confirm everyone was accounted for. Many had lost IDs and even car keys, and most were from out of town, Moreno said. Their needs were immediate: phone chargers, and in some cases phones themselves, so they could tell their families they were safe now that the crash had made national news. They also needed food, hotel rooms, and transportation.

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

The cause is not yet known. Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham said the tanker seemed to have had 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 aboard the tanker, and that it was "super bad luck" the strike came as passengers were disembarking. The tanker was heading upriver, moving slowly against the current, and had already made the difficult turn at Algiers Point. "For something like this to happen for an upbound ship indicates that something must have gone really badly wrong," Davies said. He noted that tankers carry local pilots who know the waters and the ship well.

According to the International Maritime Organization, the tanker is owned by Nave Shipping SA, registered in Monrovia, Liberia. MarineTraffic lists the company as a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a sprawling 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. It was also the world's largest military shipbuilder then. The corporation did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday afternoon. The tanker carries asphalt and bitumen, used in road construction and roofing.

The National Transportation Safety Board plans to investigate, but its members could not initially reach New Orleans because all flights nationwide were grounded by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers. The investigation into the steering failure is the next thing to watch.