- A cruise ship crashed into a concrete wall along the River Danube in Austria on Friday.
- A police statement said, “the ship was suddenly no longer able to maneuver.”
- 11 people were hospitalized and another 6 suffered less serious injuries.
A Bulgarian cruise ship carrying over 140 passengers crashed into a concrete wall along the River Danube in Austria.
The incident occurred late on March 29 in the northern Austrian town of Aschach an der Donau, local police said Saturday.
Eleven people were injured and taken to hospital as a result of the crash. Six others suffered less serious injuries that did not require hospital treatment.
The ship had set off from Passau, a German city on the Austrian border, but further down the river when leaving the lock chamber, “the ship was suddenly no longer able to maneuver,” and its right bow and left aft crashed into the lock walls, the statement read.
The second-in-command of the ship, who had been at the helm during the crash, “pressed the emergency switch, whereupon the electronics started up again.” He was then able to steer the ship out of the lock.
The ship was later docked at the quay wall and emergency services were notified.
The exact cause of the temporary loss of steering is unclear. The ship was able to continue its journey toward Linz, Austria.
An Austrian police statement indicated the collision was linked to a failure of the ship’s electronics.
After the ship crashed, “The second captain of the ship, who was operating the helm at the time, immediately pressed the emergency switch, whereupon the electronics started again and he was able to steer the ship out of the lock,” the police statement said.
It added: “After checking the ship it turned out that the electronics worked again after the emergency switch was reset, which is why the ship could continue its journey.”
Earlier this week, a container ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, collapsing a section of the 1.6-mile-long structure and killing six construction workers.
Citing the container ship’s recovered data recorder, officials said the power went out on the Dali for just one minute and three seconds as it approached the bridge, Sky News reported, but that was enough for the collision to become unavoidable.
In 2023, in the worst disaster on the Danube in more than half a century, a cruise boat hit and sank a smaller boat, killing 25 South Korean tourists and two crew. The captain was sentenced to five years in prison in Hungary for his role in the accident.
The River Danube is Europe’s second-largest river in Europe. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest south into the Black Sea. Cruise ships on the river attract huge numbers of tourists every year.