The Motor Vessel Tindle was coming into Port Tampa Bay when it lost power.
The Tindle is roughly 1000 feet long, carrying just under 100 thousand tons of cargo. The Tindle is 10 years old, carries 8,600 TEUs. TEU stands for 20-foot equivalent. It is a measure of containers. Most containers you see everyday are being towed by Semi-tractors, on a trailer chassis. Those are typically 40 feet long, so 2 TEUs. (That is sort of mid-sized by today's standards. It isn't even a Neo-Panamax size, though it is large to the Port of Tampa.)
People, who know nothing about shipping see a story like this and think "sabotage," or "conspiracy," or something. The truth is, that humanity is moving a tremendous amount of cargo. Or why do you think the rebuilt the Panama canal? Hint: not because it was a truth or dare. We are moving all of that cargo, and yet we are not perfect.
This is the What is Going on With Shipping? video Containership Loses Power Entering Tampa Bay | Pilot Utilized Tugs to Stop the Ship. Sal Mercogliano covers a bit of the conspiracy nuts take on all of this. He calls the increase in cargo activity, Volume and Velocity.
Now ships lose propulsion all the time. People don't understand, but it does happen, but when it happens during a maneuver like Tindle coming into the dock in Tampa that is critical, ... that is the moment when you don't need to what's called drop the plant, because now all of a sudden you've lost propulsion.
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