NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2017 Jun 16, 18:27 -0700
I found a photo showing damage to the container ship's bow. The vessel is the ACX Crystal, a medium-sized container ship, about 222 meters long, which would make it about 50% longer than the Fitzgerald and about three times the tonnage. From the looks of it, the Crystal would have struck the Fitzgerald's starboard side closing at an angle of about 45° to the Fitzgerald's track from the stern. Note that the ACX Crystal has a bulbous bow below the waterline which would have led to some significant damage and explains the serious flooding on the Fitzgerald.
Rather than Nagoya, other reports now say that the collision occurred about 50 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, which places it on the main approach from that direction to Yokohama/Tokyo, in an exceptionally busy sea lane, no more than ten or twenty miles from shore at the time.
Frank Reed
