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He could see it coming.
A sailor who tried to warn his colleagues before their Mexican navy training ship smashed into the Brooklyn Bridge recalled the moments of sheer panic before the deadly crash — and the helplessness of having his screams go unanswered.
“It was very, very ugly,” the unnamed boatswain said in a chilling audio interview this week with Mexican news outlet Milenio.
As the Cuauhtémoc drifted off course May 17, the sailor recalled in Spanish how the majestic training vessel was creeping closer and closer to the 142-year-old bridge, which he referred to as “the dock,” before the ship’s masts slammed into its historic span, killing two cadets and injuring 19 others.
“When the linemen — I mean, I don’t know how they maneuvered, but they literally threw us against the [bridge], and I saw clearly how we were going, I mean, heading toward the [bridge],” the man said in Spanish.
“I started yelling at them, ‘Hey, we’re going against the [bridge]! We’re going against the [bridge]!’ but no one reacted,” he said.
Distress calls from the Cuauhtémoc went out 45 seconds before the deadly collision, which happened less than five minutes after the ship set sail, officials said.
“It was too fast. When we came to see it, we were against the [bridge]. The three masts broke, and that was it,” the man explained.
Multiple sailors harnessed up in rigging were sent flying into the air, while the rest of the them scrambled in the chaos.
“Obviously, we had all the cadets up there, and there were too many injured,” said the boatswain, the sailor in charge of overseeing a ship’s equipment and crew. “I think a cadet fell from the bridge, which is the highest point up to the deck, so she is in very serious condition and it is not known if she will survive.”
América Yamilet Sánchez, 20, died from injuries she sustained in the wreck. A second cadet, 23-year-old Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, was also killed.
“The decks of the ship were covered in blood,” he continued. “All three masts were destroyed, the cables burst – I mean, it was horrible, honestly.”
As the boat crumpled, the sailors scrambled to rescue cadets tangled in the rigging, he said.
“The boatswains had to go up and lower them, and then the masts were bending, so we were going up and with the broken masts, we were up there trying to lower people little by little…they couldn’t get down.”
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
In total, there were 277 crew members on board — 213 men and 64 women — most of whom were cadets from the Heroica Escuala Naval Militar, the Mexican navy’s officer training academy in Veracruz.
English (US)