A car carrier broke away from its moorings, went adrift in the Bremerhaven harbour, hit one of the docks, and knocked over a crane weighing around 450 tons on Sunday evening.
The stern lines of the 227-meter long and 32-meter-wide ship ripped out of the pier at around 9 pm local time together with the bollard. The vessel in question is Wallenius Wilhelmsen’s 25-year-old car carrier Don Quijote.
.The vessel drifted from the west bank to the east bank at the Lloyd Werft shipyard and damaged the floating and dry dock, quay, and brought down a shipyard crane.
The Bremen police claimed that there was considerable damage to property estimated in the “high six figures” but fortunately no one was injured.
The ship was later secured by tugs and returned to the original berth. The cause of the incident is under investigation, but the Bremen police did say that one of the most likely causes was a storm that hit Bremerhaven.
