Tanker Strike Capsizes Riverboat in New Orleans, All Accounted For

A tanker struck the docked riverboat American Heritage at the Port of New Orleans at about 12:30 p.m. local time on Friday, November 13, and the riverboat capsized as passengers were getting off. Mayor Helena Moreno said crews took 32 people to hospitals, none with critical injuries, and every person aboard was accounted for. She called that outcome a miracle on the Mississippi.

The boat had tied up about two hours earlier at the end of an eight-day Mississippi River cruise, and about 129 passengers were aboard with the crew when the tanker hit. The American Heritage is a five-story paddlewheeler built in 2015 by Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland. It carries up to 150 passengers. As people disembarked, the boat began taking on water, rolled over and put passengers into the river.

The tanker was the Atlantic Asphalt, a Marshall Islands-flagged asphalt and bitumen carrier about 520 feet long, owned by Nave Shipping. It hit the riverboat near mile marker 96, just below the Crescent City Connection bridge. Governor Jeff Landry said the bridge was not hit. Coast Guard Captain Melanie Burnham said the tanker appeared to have suffered some type of loss of steering, and a river pilot was driving the tanker at the time. The exact cause isn't known.

The rescue pulled in the whole port. The New Orleans Fire Department sent 23 units and 57 personnel, and Harbor Police, city police, emergency medical crews and the Coast Guard worked the scene with them. Some passengers were brought into the Port of New Orleans Administration Building at 1350 Port of New Orleans Place for triage. American Cruise Lines said guests and crew were evacuated and that it was in close coordination with the Coast Guard and local authorities.

The Coast Guard closed the Mississippi River to all vessel traffic between mile markers 93 and 96 while responders worked. That's a three-mile stretch of one of the busiest commercial waterways in the country, and the closure held through the afternoon while crews assessed the capsized boat. The riverboat had arrived from Natchez, Mississippi, earlier on Friday before it docked to let passengers off.

President Donald Trump praised the Coast Guard, law enforcement and first responders in a post on Truth Social, and he noted that nobody was killed. Landry said his office was in close contact with local officials and that he was headed to New Orleans. The praise and the travel both point to the same fact: the count could have been far worse, and officials know it.

The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a Go Team to investigate, and investigators are expected on scene Saturday morning. Representative Steve Scalise noted the board's travel could run into the nationwide flight ground stop that shut down U.S. departures on Friday afternoon. The team's first job is the tanker's steering: what failed, when it failed, and what the pilot and crew did in the minutes before a 520-foot ship reached a docked boat full of people.

Update, Saturday: The NTSB's Go Team is traveling to New Orleans by road rather than air — the investigators are driving in after Friday's nationwide ground stop disrupted flights, the board said, and a board member isn't traveling with the team. Investigators are expected to arrive Saturday. The federal investigation now runs alongside the Coast Guard's, into how a tanker that lost steering reached the docked riverboat.