Lights Against the Sea: North America's Atlantic Coast Shipwrecks and Lighthouses (1715–2026)

Timeline

Layers

Land · Sea within range of a lighthouse or lightship · Wrecks: 0.25+ per 100 km² in ten years · Wrecks: 0.7+ per 100 km² in ten years · Wrecks: 1.8+ per 100 km² in ten years

Events

• 31 Jul 1715, 1715 Spanish treasure fleet · 31 Jul 1715: Eleven Spanish ships carrying the silver of two treasure fleets home from Havana were driven onto the reefs of Florida's east coast by a hurricane in the early hours of 31 July. Survivors camped on the beach near Sebastian Inlet while Spanish divers salvaged what they could; treasure hunters have be…
• 14 Sep 1716, Boston Light lit · 14 Sep 1716: Keeper George Worthylake lights the candles of America's first lighthouse, on Little Brewster Island at the entrance to Boston Harbor.
• 26 Apr 1717, Pirate ship Whydah · 26 Apr 1717: Black Sam Bellamy's pirate flagship, laden with plunder, was caught in a nor'easter and broke up in the surf off Cape Cod. Cyprian Southack, sent to salvage the treasure, buried over a hundred bodies; the wreck was found again in 1984 and is the only fully authenticated Golden Age pirate wreck. Deat…
• 27 Aug 1725, Le Chameau · 27 Aug 1725: The French navy transport, carrying New France's new intendant, the governor-elect of Trois-Rivières and a large shipment of gold, silver and copper coins, was driven onto a reef by a storm as she neared Louisbourg. No one survived; divers found her gold and silver coins in 1965. Deaths: everyone ab…
• 1 Apr 1734, Louisbourg lighthouse · Apr 1734: The French light the first lighthouse in what is now Canada at the entrance to Louisbourg, the fortress port of Île Royale. Rebuilt in stone in 1738 after a fire, it was the first fireproof lighthouse in North America.
• 2 Oct 1758, Sambro Island light ordered · 2 Oct 1758: In its very first act, Nova Scotia's new House of Assembly taxes incoming ships to build a lighthouse on Sambro Island at the mouth of Halifax Harbour. It is now the oldest working lighthouse in the Americas.
• 9 Sep 1775, Newfoundland hurricane of 1775 · 9 Sep 1775: A hurricane, possibly the same storm that had struck the Carolinas a week earlier, fell on Newfoundland's fishing coast, sinking hundreds of boats and at least eleven ships with most of their crews. Bodies washed up on the beaches of Conception Bay; it is still counted among the deadliest Atlantic s…
• 17 Sep 1782, Graves's fleet hurricane · 17 Sep 1782: A British convoy under Admiral Thomas Graves, carrying French prizes home from Jamaica, ran into a hurricane off the Grand Banks. The captured French flagship Ville de Paris foundered with the Glorieux, the Hector and the Centaur, and the Ramillies had to be abandoned. Deaths: some 3,500 British sai…
• 1787, Humane Society huts · 1787: The Massachusetts Humane Society, founded in Boston in 1786, builds its first huts for shipwrecked sailors on lonely beaches; in 1807 it opens America's first lifeboat station at Cohasset.
• 7 Aug 1789, Lighthouse Act · 7 Aug 1789: In only its ninth act, the new US Congress takes over the country's lighthouses, beacons and buoys and pays for them from federal funds.
• 16 Nov 1797, HMS Tribune · 16 Nov 1797: The frigate tried to enter Halifax Harbour without waiting for a pilot, because her master boasted he knew the way. She struck Thrum Cap shoal, floated off in the night and sank near Herring Cove within sight of shore. Deaths: 228 of about 240 aboard; 12 survived.
• 1 Oct 1801, Sable Island Humane Establishment · Oct 1801: Nova Scotia's governor John Wentworth sets up a life-saving station on Sable Island, the 'graveyard of the Atlantic'; superintendent James Morris and his family settle there in October.
• 1820, First US lightship · 1820: The first American lightship is anchored off Willoughby Spit at the entrance to Hampton Roads, Chesapeake Bay; lightships would mark US shoals for 165 years.
• 13 Jan 1840, Steamboat Lexington · 13 Jan 1840: Built for Cornelius Vanderbilt, the fast Sound steamer caught fire on a January night run from New York to Stonington, where the train for Boston waited, when cotton bales near her smokestack ignited. One lifeboat was sucked into the still-turning paddlewheel and the others sank as they were lowered…
• 25 Feb 1841, First Fresnel lenses in the US · 25 Feb 1841: The Navesink Twin Lights above Sandy Hook are lit with lenses imported from France, the first Fresnel lenses in the United States, after Commodore Matthew Perry had been sent to study European lighthouses.
• 14 Aug 1848, Newell's life-saving stations · 14 Aug 1848: Congress votes $10,000 for surfboats, rockets and boathouses on the New Jersey shore between Sandy Hook and Little Egg Harbor, the first federal money for saving shipwrecked people. Congressman William Newell reported 158 vessels lost on that coast in ten years.
• 17 Apr 1851, Minots Ledge lighthouse swept away · 17 Apr 1851: The first Minots Ledge light, an iron-pile tower on a wave-swept ledge off Cohasset, had been lit for little more than a year when a spring gale broke its legs and threw it into the sea just before 1 a.m. The keeper was ashore; his two assistants had kept the light burning to the end. A granite towe…
• 3 Oct 1851, Yankee Gale · 3 Oct 1851: A sudden northeast gale trapped the New England mackerel fleet against the north shore of Prince Edward Island. At least 74 vessels were wrecked and 150 men drowned; it is the worst marine disaster in the Island's history.
• 31 Aug 1852, US Lighthouse Board · 31 Aug 1852: After years of complaints from shipping about the old Treasury administration, a board of naval officers, army engineers and scientists takes over US lighthouses and begins fitting Fresnel lenses across the coast.
• 27 Sep 1854, SS Arctic · 27 Sep 1854: The Collins Line paddle steamer collided in fog with the small French steamer Vesta and sank four hours later. Her six lifeboats held fewer than half those aboard, and crewmen seized most of the places: of the 88 survivors only 24 were passengers, all of them men. In 1855 Matthew Fontaine Maury answ…
• 12 Sep 1857, SS Central America · 12 Sep 1857: The 'Ship of Gold' was carrying California gold from Panama to New York when a hurricane opened her seams and put out her boiler fires. About a hundred passengers, mostly women and children, were rowed across to the brig Marine before she sank; the loss of some 30,000 pounds of gold deepened the Pan…
• 1859, Steam fog whistle · 1859: The world's first steam fog alarm, designed by Saint John engineer Robert Foulis, is installed on Partridge Island at the entrance to Saint John harbour in the fog-bound Bay of Fundy.
• 19 Feb 1860, SS Hungarian · 19 Feb 1860: The Allan Line steamer, bound from Liverpool for Portland, Maine, struck Cape Ledge off Cape Sable Island in a storm at night and broke up. No one aboard survived. The wreck finally moved the government to act on years of petitions, and the first Cape Sable lighthouse was lit in November 1861. Death…
• 31 Dec 1862, USS Monitor · 31 Dec 1862: Nine months after her duel with CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, the low-sided ironclad was under tow to the Carolinas when she foundered in a storm off Cape Hatteras. Her wreck, found in 1973, became the first US National Marine Sanctuary in 1975. Deaths: 16 of her crew.
• 27 Apr 1863, SS Anglo Saxon · 27 Apr 1863: The emigrant steamer, bound from Liverpool to Quebec, ran onto the rocks in dense fog just north of Cape Race and broke up within an hour. It was one of the worst shipwrecks in Canadian waters. Deaths: 237 of 445 aboard.
• 22 May 1868, Department of Marine and Fisheries · 22 May 1868: The new Dominion of Canada gives its Department of Marine and Fisheries legal authority; its Marine Service looks after the lighthouses and buoys of the Atlantic provinces.
• 1 Apr 1873, RMS Atlantic · 1 Apr 1873: Fearing he would run out of coal, the captain of the White Star liner turned for Halifax, misjudged his position in the night and drove onto rocks west of the harbour. Fishermen from Lower Prospect and Terence Bay rowed out at dawn to take survivors off the rocks and the rigging. Deaths: at least 53…
• 1874, Outer Banks life-saving stations · 1874: After Sumner Kimball reorganises the federal life-saving stations with paid crews in 1871, new stations rise along Maine, Cape Cod and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the 'graveyard of the Atlantic'.
• 1876, Florida Houses of Refuge · 1876: Five identical Houses of Refuge, about 25 miles apart, open on Florida's empty east coast, where shipwrecked sailors could otherwise die of thirst; Gilbert's Bar near Stuart survives as a museum.
• 24 Nov 1877, USS Huron · 24 Nov 1877: The navy gunboat ran aground off Nags Head in a gale shortly after 1 a.m. The Nags Head life-saving station was not manned until 1 December, and men drowned trying to swim through the surf to the beach. Together with the Metropolis wreck two months later, it pushed Congress to make the Life-Saving S…
• 31 Jan 1878, Steamer Metropolis · 31 Jan 1878: The old steamer, a Civil War gunboat bound from Philadelphia to Brazil, broke up on the bar about 100 yards from the beach, halfway between two life-saving stations. Rescuers on the beach could reach few of those clinging to the wreck. Deaths: 85 passengers and crew.
• 18 Jun 1878, US Life-Saving Service · 18 Jun 1878: After the Huron and Metropolis disasters, Congress makes the Life-Saving Service a separate bureau under Sumner Kimball, adds stations and lengthens the season; its surfmen would aid more than 178,000 people by 1914.
• 18 Jan 1884, SS City of Columbus · 18 Jan 1884: Bound from Boston to Savannah, the steamer passed the wrong side of the Devil's Bridge buoy at 3:45 a.m. and tore open her hull on the ledge below the Gay Head cliffs. Gay Head's lighthouse keeper and Wampanoag lifeboat crews rowed into the surf, and the revenue cutter Dexter took survivors off the…
• 4 Jul 1898, SS La Bourgogne · 4 Jul 1898: The French liner was steaming at full speed through thick fog when she rammed the sailing ship Cromartyshire, which had slowed down. La Bourgogne sank in forty minutes; until the Titanic it was counted the worst disaster on the North Atlantic. Deaths: 562 of 725 aboard; only one of some 200 women su…
• 27 Nov 1898, Steamer Portland · 27 Nov 1898: The Boston-Portland night boat sailed into the great blizzard later named after her and vanished with all hands; wreckage and bodies washed up on Cape Cod. The Portland Gale sank more than 150 vessels and killed over 400 people along the New England coast. Deaths: everyone aboard, about 192 people.
• 12 Dec 1901, Marconi at Signal Hill · 12 Dec 1901: On Signal Hill above St. John's, Guglielmo Marconi receives the first radio signal sent across the Atlantic, the Morse letter S from Poldhu in Cornwall.
• 15 Dec 1902, Glace Bay wireless station · 15 Dec 1902: Marconi's station at Table Head, Glace Bay, sends the first wireless message from North America to Europe.
• 18 Jan 1903, South Wellfleet wireless · 18 Jan 1903: From his towers on the Cape Cod bluffs at South Wellfleet, Marconi sends President Theodore Roosevelt's greeting to King Edward VII, the first transatlantic radio message from the United States.
• 15 Jun 1904, General Slocum · 15 Jun 1904: A paddle steamer chartered for a German church picnic caught fire in the East River; her rotten life jackets and fire hoses failed, and the captain kept going until he beached her at North Brother Island. It remains the deadliest disaster in New York harbour. A federal commission blamed the Steamboa…
• 17 Nov 1904, Cape Race wireless station · 17 Nov 1904: A Marconi station opens beside the Cape Race lighthouse on Newfoundland's southeast tip; in 1912 its operators relayed the Titanic's distress calls to the world.
• 23 Jan 1909, RMS Republic · 23 Jan 1909: Rammed in fog by the liner Florida, the White Star liner stayed afloat for a day while her Marconi operator, Jack Binns, sent the CQD distress call to the shore station at Siasconset. Ships homed in on the call and took off everyone else: the first great rescue made possible by radio. Congress passe…
• 11 Aug 1909, First American SOS · 11 Aug 1909: Drifting off Cape Hatteras with a broken propeller shaft, the steamer Arapahoe sends the new international distress call SOS alongside the old CQD, the first recorded American use of SOS.
• 24 Jun 1910, Wireless Ship Act · 24 Jun 1910: Congress requires large passenger ships leaving US ports to carry radio and a qualified operator, a year after the Republic rescue showed what wireless could do.
• 15 Apr 1912, RMS Titanic · 15 Apr 1912: Four days into her maiden voyage, the largest ship afloat struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. and sank in under three hours. Her lifeboats had room for barely half of those aboard, and the radio operator of the nearby Californian had shut down his set for the night ten minutes before the collision. The…
• 13 Aug 1912, Radio Act of 1912 · 13 Aug 1912: Four months after the Titanic, Congress passes the Radio Act, which licenses every radio station and operator; weeks earlier it had extended the shipboard radio rules to more ships.
• 7 Feb 1914, International Ice Patrol · 7 Feb 1914: After the Titanic, US revenue cutters begin watching the icebergs off the Grand Banks in 1913, and in February 1914 the patrol is formally organised under the new safety convention. No ship heeding the patrol's published ice limits has since collided with an iceberg.
• 31 Mar 1914, 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster · 31 Mar 1914: Sealers from the SS Newfoundland, sent across the ice to another ship, were caught by a blizzard and spent two nights on the open floe; 78 froze to death. Their ship had no radio, so no one knew they were missing. In the same storm the sealer Southern Cross vanished with every man aboard. In 1916 Ne…
• 29 May 1914, RMS Empress of Ireland · 29 May 1914: Outbound from Quebec, the Canadian Pacific liner was struck in thick fog by the Norwegian collier Storstad and sank in fourteen minutes. After the Titanic she carried lifeboats for everyone aboard, but there was no time to launch most of them. It is the worst peacetime shipwreck in Canadian history.…
• 28 Jan 1915, US Coast Guard · 28 Jan 1915: The Life-Saving Service and the Revenue Cutter Service merge to form the United States Coast Guard.
• 6 Dec 1917, Halifax Explosion · 6 Dec 1917: The French munitions ship Mont-Blanc collided with the relief ship Imo in the Narrows, caught fire and exploded at 9:04 a.m., flattening the Richmond district of Halifax. It was the largest man-made explosion the world had yet seen. Deaths: at least 1,782 people; some 9,000 injured.
• 24 Feb 1918, SS Florizel · 24 Feb 1918: Bowring's ice-strengthened passenger liner left St. John's for Halifax and New York in a winter storm and ran onto a reef near Cappahayden in the night. Only 44 people lived through the wreck, and the last of them were taken off 27 hours after she struck; the Peter Pan statue in Bowring Park remembe…
• 6 Aug 1918, Diamond Shoal lightship LV-71 · 6 Aug 1918: After taking in the survivors of a freighter sunk nearby, the lightship off Cape Hatteras radioed a warning that a U-boat was about. U-140 picked up the signal, came back, let the crew take to their boat and sank the lightship with gunfire: the only US lightship ever lost to enemy action. Deaths: no…
• 9 Sep 1919, SS Valbanera · 9 Sep 1919: The Spanish emigrant liner arrived off Havana as the 1919 Florida Keys hurricane struck, turned back to sea and disappeared. Days later a navy submarine chaser found her masts sticking out of the water near Rebecca Shoal; no body was ever recovered. Deaths: 488, everyone aboard.
• 1 May 1921, Radio beacons · May 1921: The US Lighthouse Service switches on radio beacons on the Ambrose and Fire Island lightships and at Sea Girt lighthouse; with a direction finder, ships can fix their position off New York in fog.
• 8 Aug 1922, HMS Raleigh · 8 Aug 1922: The new Royal Navy cruiser ran into fog in the Strait of Belle Isle and drove onto the rocks at L'Anse Amour fifteen minutes later. A dozen men drowned or died of cold abandoning ship; the rest sheltered ashore beside the lighthouse. Deaths: 12.
• 12 Nov 1928, SS Vestris · 12 Nov 1928: The Lamport and Holt liner, bound from New York for South America, began to list in heavy seas two days out and was abandoned in confusion before she sank. All the children aboard and most of the women were lost. The inquiries fed into the 1929 Safety of Life at Sea convention. Deaths: 111 of 326 ab…
• 15 May 1934, Nantucket lightship LV-117 · 15 May 1934: Steering for the lightship's radio beacon in thick fog, the White Star liner Olympic, Titanic's sister, ran down the Nantucket lightship and cut her in two. The lightship marked the western end of the transatlantic lanes, and liners homing on her signal passed dangerously close. The Cunard-White Sta…
• 8 Sep 1934, SS Morro Castle · 8 Sep 1934: Hours after her captain died suddenly, fire broke out in a locker on the Havana-New York liner and raced through her wooden fittings in a rising gale. Lifeboats left half-empty, and the burnt-out hulk drifted ashore at Asbury Park, where it became a grim tourist attraction. Its investigation shaped…
• 1 Jul 1939, Lighthouses join the Coast Guard · 1 Jul 1939: The US Lighthouse Service is merged into the Coast Guard, which has run all American lighthouses and lightships since.
• 19 Jan 1942, RMS Lady Hawkins · 19 Jan 1942: Sailing unescorted and zigzagging, the Canadian passenger liner was torpedoed by U-66 in the first weeks of Germany's U-boat offensive off the American coast. One lifeboat built for 63 carried 76 survivors for five days before the steamer Coamo picked them up. Deaths: 251 of 322 aboard.
• 18 Feb 1942, USS Truxtun and USS Pollux · 18 Feb 1942: A destroyer and a navy supply ship ran aground in a winter storm on the cliffs of the Burin Peninsula. Miners and villagers from St. Lawrence and Lawn hauled 185 sailors up the cliffs and nursed them; Lanier Phillips, the only Black survivor of Truxtun, later said the town's kindness changed his lif…
• 10 Apr 1942, SS Gulfamerica · 10 Apr 1942: On her maiden voyage the tanker was silhouetted against the lights of Jacksonville Beach, which was not yet blacked out, and torpedoed by U-123 about five miles offshore. The U-boat then shelled her as she burned. Sinkings like this forced the US to dim and black out its coastal lights in 1942, afte…
• 1 Jun 1942, Loran · Jun 1942: The first Loran radio navigation chain goes into service from Montauk Point and Fenwick Island, soon joined by stations in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; ships and aircraft can fix their position hundreds of miles out at sea.
• 14 Oct 1942, SS Caribou · 14 Oct 1942: The Newfoundland Railway ferry from North Sydney to Port aux Basques was torpedoed at night by U-69 while in convoy. Of the 137 dead many were civilians and children; the loss brought the war home to Canada and Newfoundland.
• 3 Feb 1943, USAT Dorchester · 3 Feb 1943: The troopship, carrying soldiers to the base at Narsarsuaq in Greenland, was torpedoed by U-223 shortly before 1 a.m. and sank in about twenty minutes. Four army chaplains gave their life jackets to others and went down with the ship, arms linked, praying. Deaths: 674 of 904 aboard.
• 1946, Ice Patrol takes to the air · 1946: The International Ice Patrol makes aircraft its main ice scouts, flying radar-equipped patrol planes from Argentia in Newfoundland instead of relying on cutters.
• 18 Feb 1952, SS Pendleton · 18 Feb 1952: In a nor'easter two T2 tankers, Pendleton and Fort Mercer, broke in half off Cape Cod on the same morning. Bernard Webber and three other Coast Guardsmen took the motor lifeboat CG 36500 over the Chatham bar and packed 32 men from Pendleton's stern into a boat built for twelve. Deaths: 9 of the Pend…
• 25 Jul 1956, SS Andrea Doria · 25 Jul 1956: Approaching New York in fog, the Italian liner and the Swedish liner Stockholm each saw the other on radar and misread the picture; Stockholm's bow tore into Andrea Doria's side at 11:10 p.m. She stayed afloat for eleven hours, and ships led by the Ile de France took off more than 1,600 people. As t…
• 1957, Loran-C · 1957: The more accurate Loran-C is introduced; by the 1970s solid-state receivers have become cheap and small enough for fishing boats and yachts.
• 1958, Sable Island station closes · 1958: With far fewer wrecks thanks to radio and better navigation, the life-saving station on Sable Island, run since 1801, is closed.
• 30 Jan 1959, MS Hans Hedtoft · 30 Jan 1959: On her maiden voyage home from Greenland, Denmark's new ice-strengthened liner struck an iceberg off Cape Farewell and sent a distress call; no rescuer reached her in time. Nothing was ever found except a single lifebelt. The airfield at Narsarsuaq in south Greenland, closed two months earlier, was…
• 26 Jan 1962, Canadian Coast Guard · 26 Jan 1962: Canada gathers the Marine Service's icebreakers, lighthouse tenders and rescue ships into the new Canadian Coast Guard.
• 10 Apr 1963, USS Thresher · 10 Apr 1963: The navy's newest nuclear attack submarine was lost during deep-diving tests off New England, the first nuclear submarine ever lost at sea. Her loss led to SUBSAFE, the US Navy's strict submarine safety programme. Deaths: 129, all crew and shipyard personnel aboard.
• 1968, Lighthouse automation · 1968: The US Coast Guard starts its Lighthouse Automation and Modernization Program to replace keepers with automatic lights; within about twenty years almost every American lighthouse runs unattended.
• 15 Dec 1976, Tanker Argo Merchant · 15 Dec 1976: More than 24 nautical miles off course, the Liberian tanker ran onto the Nantucket Shoals about 29 nautical miles south-east of Nantucket. Six days later she broke in two and her whole cargo, some 7.7 million gallons of heavy fuel oil, went into the sea; the wind carried most of it away from the coa…
• 15 Feb 1982, Ocean Ranger · 15 Feb 1982: Billed as the world's largest semi-submersible drilling rig, Ocean Ranger capsized in a winter storm on the Grand Banks after a wave broke a porthole and flooded her ballast control room. Rescue helicopters and ships arrived to find no survivors. A Royal Commission found an untrained crew and inadeq…
• 12 Feb 1983, SS Marine Electric · 12 Feb 1983: The aging coal carrier capsized in a winter gale; most of her crew died of cold in the winter sea before help came. Investigators found she had sailed with holes in her deck plating and hatch covers. Survival suits became mandatory on winter North Atlantic runs, inspections were tightened, and the C…
• 20 Dec 1983, Last lightship on station · 20 Dec 1983: Nantucket II leaves the Nantucket Shoals station, replaced by a large navigation buoy; she was the last US lightship on station. Light towers and buoys had already replaced lightships elsewhere, such as the Ambrose tower off New York in 1967.
• 28 Oct 1991, Andrea Gail · 28 Oct 1991: The Gloucester fishing boat was caught far offshore by the 'Perfect Storm' and disappeared with her crew. Her emergency beacon washed up on Sable Island nine days later. Deaths: all 6 crew.
• 17 Jul 1995, GPS fully operational · 17 Jul 1995: The US declares its Global Positioning System fully operational; when deliberate degradation of the civil signal is switched off on 1 May 2000, any boat can know its position to within metres.
• 1 Feb 1999, GMDSS replaces Morse · 1 Feb 1999: The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System becomes mandatory: ships must carry satellite distress beacons and automated radio alerting, ending the age of Morse code at sea.
• 1 Jul 2002, AIS transponders · 1 Jul 2002: New SOLAS rules require ships to carry the Automatic Identification System, which broadcasts each ship's name, position, course and speed; by the end of 2004 all large ships must have it.
• 8 Feb 2010, Loran-C switched off · 8 Feb 2010: With GPS in general use, the US Coast Guard turns off its Loran-C transmitters; the Cape Race station in Newfoundland also falls silent that year.
• 29 Oct 2012, Tall ship Bounty · 29 Oct 2012: The replica of the 18th-century Bounty sailed from New London into the path of Hurricane Sandy and foundered off the Outer Banks. Coast Guard helicopters lifted 14 crew from life rafts in the storm; Captain Robin Walbridge and Claudene Christian were lost. The safety board called the captain's decis…
• 18 Jun 2023, Titan submersible · 18 Jun 2023: OceanGate's carbon-fibre submersible imploded on a tourist dive to the Titanic; contact was lost after an hour and a half. After a four-day search, a robot found its debris on the seabed about 500 metres from Titanic's bow. A US Coast Guard inquiry concluded in August 2025 that the loss was preventa…
• 30 Dec 2023, Boston Light's last keeper · 30 Dec 2023: Sally Snowman retires as keeper of Boston Light, the last lighthouse in the United States with an official keeper, 307 years after it was first lit.
• 26 Mar 2024, Dali brings down the Key Bridge · 26 Mar 2024: Leaving Baltimore at night, the container ship Dali lost power, drifted out of the channel and struck a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which fell into the Patapsco within seconds. A mayday from the ship gave police just enough time to stop the traffic. The wreckage closed most of the port for…

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