Brand New Chinese Cruise Ship Comes in Contact with Bridge

The top portion of a newly-built cruise ship allided with the suspended part of a bridge in Wenzhou City, part of China’s Zhejiang Province.

The allision resulted in damage to two of the luxury liner’s stacks and an obvious graze in the bridge structure. Luckily, there were no injuries on either end of the accident, and bridge traffic was also unaffected.

The Mingzhu (Pearl) No. 7 was travelling along the Oujiang River that flows underneath the bridge on Wednesday morning. Witnesses report that the main structure of the bridge swayed slightly once the collision occurred. Additional assessments of the bridge’s damage and a full investigation into the incident are being conducted by local maritime safety authorities.

The height of the ship, its draught and the tidewater's level is also being evaluated. The unpowered vessel designed as a floating hotel was launched at a nearby shipyard earlier in the week.

The USD$44.24 million vessel is the first unpowered luxury vessel independently built by Wenzhou's local shipbuilders, Wenzhou Mingzhu Yacht Co., Ltd. At 158 meters in length and 30 meters wide, the 33-meter ship could lodge up to 1,000 passengers. The vessel weights 8,600 tons and its low drought is only 5.5 meters. The cruise ship is designed by Changjiang Ship Design Institute based in Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province. The vessel is scheduled to be put into use before October 1, still as originally planned.

Photo (thumb): "Yangtze Angel" Luxury Tour Ship, also from Changjiang Ship Design Institute