There was “panic on the ship,” Brooklyn resident Nick Corso, 23, who was standing near the water, told AFP.
He had been poised to take a photo, but when he realized what was happening he switched to video.
“Lots of screaming, some sailors hanging from the masts, looked like panic happening on the ship,” he said.
The Mexican Navy said in its statement that no one had fallen into the water, and that no rescue operation had been launched.
The ship had been departing New York at the time and flags fluttered in its rigging, while an enormous Mexican flag waved off its stern.
The Cuauhtémoc, built in 1982, was sailing to Iceland when it crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1883.
The incident is the second deadly ship crash into a US bridge in little over a year, after a fully laden cargo vessel smashed into a bridge in Baltimore, Maryland in March 2024, causing it to collapse and killing six road workers.
