To­day marks the in­au­gu­ra­tion of Brook­lyn Bridge 142 years ago in 1883. We re­mem­ber in prayer and stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the fam­i­lies of the cadet and the ma­rine who died and the 22 per­sons who were in­jured last Sat­ur­day night when the 297-foot-long Mex­i­can Navy train­ing ship, the Cuauhté­moc, with 277 crew mem­bers on board, crashed in­to the Brook­lyn Bridge at around 8.25 pm.

The top parts of the 147-foot-tall ship’s three masts snapped as they hit the bot­tom of the bridge that con­nects Brook­lyn to Man­hat­tan. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the ship’s crew were seen dan­gling per­ilous­ly from ropes to which they had har­nessed them­selves. The name Cuauhté­moc trans­lates to “De­scend­ing Ea­gle” and refers to the name of the last Aztec Em­per­or in 1521.

The two who died are 20-year-old cadet Améri­ca Yamilet Sánchez, who was study­ing en­gi­neer­ing at the Mex­i­can naval acad­e­my, and 22-year-old ma­rine Adal Jair Mal­don­a­do Mar­cos. They both fell from the masts to the deck. Mex­i­can au­thor­i­ties said “its naval ship was on a train­ing cruise called the ‘Bi­cen­ten­ni­al of the Con­sol­i­da­tion of In­de­pen­dence at Sea’. It was meant to dock in New York for just a few days as part of a cul­tur­al ex­change be­fore set­ting off to Ice­land to con­tin­ue its jour­ney...The cause of the col­li­sion is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the New York Po­lice De­part­ment, the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board and the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment” (NBC News). The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is like­ly to take months.

On Sat­ur­day, the Cuauhté­moc, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been on four suc­cess­ful glob­al trips, had wel­comed vis­i­tors since May 13 and was mov­ing from the Sea­port to Bay Ridge, in south Brook­lyn, to an­chor and re­fu­el be­fore set­ting sail for Ice­land, as part of a 15-na­tion glob­al good­will tour, when the crash oc­curred. AP News re­ports that the tide had just turned, and a fast cur­rent was head­ing up the East Riv­er as a 10 mph wind set in. The ship was ma­noeu­ver­ing in tur­bu­lent wa­ters when it be­gan trav­el­ling in re­verse and hit the bridge stern first. “There are al­so ques­tions about whether a tug­boat es­cort peeled away too soon and should have been rigged to the ship or stayed with it un­til it head­ed out to sea...mis­takes can be cost­ly in the heav­i­ly tran­sit­ed New York har­bour, where nar­row, curvy chan­nels, winds howl­ing off the jagged Man­hat­tan sky­line and whirlpool-like ed­dies can com­bine to make for dif­fi­cult pas­sage.”

The May­or of New York City, Er­ic Adams, said, the ship’s cap­tain lost con­trol be­cause of a me­chan­i­cal is­sue, caus­ing the naval train­ing ship’s tall masts to hit the bot­tom of the bridge con­nect­ing Brook­lyn to Man­hat­tan. “Sal Mer­cogliano, a for­mer mer­chant mariner who has pow­ered mul­ti­ple ships through the New York har­bour, said all those ‘worst-case sce­nar­ios’ — the ship’s height, a strong cur­rent, heavy wind and the ab­sence of a more con­trolled tug­boat es­cort — all con­tributed to the tragedy” (Bri­tan­ni­ca). May­or Adams said that af­ter a pre­lim­i­nary in­spec­tion, the bridge was re­opened just af­ter mid­night. He said: “We can con­firm that the bridge sus­tained no dam­age.”.

It is worth not­ing the his­to­ry of this bridge, which took 14 years to com­plete. On Memo­r­i­al Day on May 31, 1883, a week af­ter the bridge was opened, 12 peo­ple died and 36 were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured due to a stam­pede on the bridge. “... A large crowd flocked to the bridge, caus­ing a pedes­tri­an bot­tle­neck ... When a woman fell down the stairs, an­oth­er woman screamed, in­duc­ing pan­ic in the crowd. Ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, ‘In a mo­ment the whole stair­way was packed with dead and dy­ing men, women and chil­dren piled up­on an­oth­er in a writhing, strug­gling mass’” (Wikipedia).

The Brook­lyn Bridge, con­sid­ered to be “a bril­liant feat of 19th-cen­tu­ry en­gi­neer­ing,” was the first sus­pen­sion bridge to use steel for ca­ble wire. It was the longest bridge in the world “un­til the com­ple­tion of the Firth of Forth can­tilever bridge in Scot­land in 1890.”

It is the work of Ger­man-born Amer­i­can civ­il en­gi­neer, John Au­gus­tus Roe­bling, who died of tetanus at the be­gin­ning of the bridge’s con­struc­tion, as a re­sult of an ac­ci­dent on site. His son, Wash­ing­ton Roe­bling, “suf­fered a crip­pling at­tack of de­com­pres­sion sick­ness (cais­son dis­ease) af­ter tak­ing over as chief en­gi­neer.” Con­fined to his apart­ment, he “con­tin­ued to di­rect op­er­a­tions with the help of his wife, Emi­ly War­ren Roe­bling...At least 20 work­ers were killed dur­ing con­struc­tion, and many more suf­fered de­com­pres­sion sick­ness” (Bri­tan­ni­ca).

May all those who lost their lives rest in peace.