If the anchor was down, I'm assuming it was dropped after collision.
I cannot find a better source just now, but if the following is true:
- The ship was guided by two tugboats part of its way through the harbor, but they departed before the end.
- The ship's propulsion was lost and never came back. The black smoke was from the backup generator.
- The harbor pilot ordered the ship's crew to drop the port anchor a minute or two before the impact. It doesn't say exactly when the anchor was, in fact, dropped or whether that was before the impact.
At 1:25 a.m., after the two tugboats detached and turned back, the Dali had accelerated to about 10 mph as it approached the Key Bridge. But just then, according to a timeline released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday, “numerous audible alarms” started sounding on the ship.
For reasons still being investigated, the ship’s powerful propulsion system stopped. The lights flickered out.
The ship had a “complete blackout,” according to Clay Diamond, head of the American Pilots’ Association, who was briefed on the account of the pilot of the Dali. (The chair of the NTSB, Jennifer Homendy, said officials were still trying to determine whether the power failure was complete.)
The harbor pilot noticed the ship starting to swing right, in the direction of one of the piers holding up the Key Bridge. At 1:26, he called for the tugs to return; he urged the captain to try to get the engine back up and directed the crew to steer hard left. As a last ditch measure, at 1:27, he ordered the crew to throw down the port anchor.
One of the tugboats, the Eric McAllister, turned around and raced back toward the ship.
But the failures onboard were cascading. The emergency generator had kicked on, sending a puff of thick smoke belching from the ship’s exhaust stack and briefly restoring the lights, radar and steering. It did not help. With no effective propulsion, the 95,000-ton ship had become an unstoppable object, drifting toward one of the most heavily traveled bridges in Baltimore. ...
The collapse had happened in seconds. Except for the stumps of the piers, the central span of the bridge had plunged into the frigid river — where divers would spend the whole day searching amid twisted metal for survivors — by 1:29 a.m.
