“In the situation like Baltimore,” he continued, “it was a perfect storm of everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong at the exact time where it shouldn’t have gone wrong.”

But the Key Bridge collapse is not the first time a wayward ship resulted in tragedy. In 2015, the U.S.-flagged cargo vessel SS El Faro lost propulsion in the middle of a hurricane and sank near the Bahamas along with its 33-person crew. Six years later, a 623-foot bulk carrier lost steering and crashed into an office barge on the Lower Mississippi River, injuring one person and causing $6 million in damage.

Ships that experience a loss, or disruption of, power or propulsion in American waters are required to report the incident to the Coast Guard, which produces reports explaining the problem and what caused it.

The Sun examined more than 1,300 such incident reports for freight ships from the beginning of 2021 to date. More than half involved a vessel’s loss or reduction of propulsion, power or steering. Forty-three happened in the Coast Guard sector encompassing Maryland before the Dali, for which the agency hasn’t released a report.

Although that figure represents what is likely a small fraction of overall vessel traffic to Baltimore, it’s still “too many,” Roth-Roffy said, “because every time you lose propulsion, it’s a nightmare.”

Many of the vessels lost propulsion near shipping terminals in port. For some, it happened while sailing in the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. All of them were on journeys requiring them to pass beneath the Key and Bay bridges at some point — twice, in all but two cases. Those two ships were en route to the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, which also requires bridge navigation.

“The hardest part and most dangerous part of any transit for any of these ships is when they come into port, because God forbid something happens, that’s where there can be a devastating impact just like we saw in the Key Bridge crash,” said Roland Rexha, secretary/treasurer of The Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association, a maritime union with roots in Baltimore and a training school in Easton.

The freighters that lost power or propulsion ranged from 567 to 1,203 feet, more than 200 feet longer than the Dali. Fifteen hailed from countries labeled “high” or “medium” risk flag administrations by the Coast Guard in 2023 because their ships failed comparatively high proportions of inspections at American ports over the last several years and were temporarily barred from going to sea.

Nineteen ships that lost propulsion in Maryland waters had experienced similar issues on another occasion in the approximately three-year range of reports The Sun reviewed.

The MSC Tomoko, a 1,089-foot Mediterranean Shipping Co. container ship from Panama that experienced reduced propulsion “in the vicinity of” the bay bridge in February 2022, had lost propulsion five days earlier in New York, according to the Coast Guard. A 650-foot U.S. government vehicle carrier, the Cape Wrath, lost propulsion in the Chesapeake Bay because of “equipment failure” — one of five reported problems over about as many years.

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