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Watching this video of the 5,998-ton Seagrand, a Russian cargo ship, slowly (we sped up that GIF up there, for fun) crash into the Gwangan Bridge in Busan, South Korea earlier today is one of those kinds of things that makes you want to yell at your screen. How does something like this happen? Everything involved is huge and either slow or stationary. What does it take to fuck up in such a grand and preventable manner? It seems a drunk captain helps.


Here, you watch for yourself:

At first I was wondering if, somehow, the crew just, uh, forgot they had those huge cranes on deck and thought they could somehow clear the bridge? That seemed pretty impossible, though.


The massive ship hit the bridge and caused some damage to itself and the lower part of the bridge, though thankfully nobody was injured. The ship then backed away, perhaps hoping nobody noticed, but the vessel was intercepted by the Korean Coast Guard (KCG).

The KCG questioned the crew about what the hell happened, and found that the captain had a blood alcohol level of 0.086 percent. In case you’re not familiar with the blood alcohol limits for piloting cargo vessels, the maximum allowed is 0.03 percent.

It’s legal to consume alcohol on a ship as long as you’re not the one steering; as yet, it’s not clear if the Cap’n Drunk was at the helm.

Under an hour or so before hitting the bridge, the Seagrand hit a cruise ship and prior to impacting the bridge the coastal navigation service contacted the ship to warn them about running their big-ass ship into the bridge, but the captain reportedly didn’t understand English well and may not have understood.


I mean, even if your English is terrible you’d think a panicked message from the port and a bridge filling up your view out the window might be enough to give a hint about what’s going on, but, you know, dude was pretty drunk.

The captain was detained by authorities and the owners and operators of the ship, VostokMorService and LLC SK Grand Shipping have been contacted.


In case you’re worried, the 1,400 tons of iron pipes carried on the ship made it to the port of Busan just fine, though.