📰 Newspapers

'Miracle on Mississippi' - All rescued after cruise ship hit by tanker in New Orleans

'Miracle on Mississippi' - All rescued after cruise ship hit by tanker in New Orleans

The collision leaves 32 people in hospital with non-critical injuries, but no-one unaccounted for.

Some 130 people on a cruise ship docked in New Orleans have been rescued after it was struck by a tanker.

The cruise ship, American Heritage, was left lying on its side in the Mississippi River after it was hit by the cargo vessel, Atlantic Asphalt.

The collision left 32 people from the stricken riverboat in hospital with non-critical injuries, but no-one unaccounted for. Officials hailed it as a "miracle on the Mississippi".

The exact cause of the crash remains under investigation, but US Coast Guard Captain Melanie Burnham said: "There seems to be some type of a loss of steering."

New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno told a news conference that all credit in the rescue effort went to first responders who "literally jumped right in to help".

"We have zero people unaccounted for which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi," Moreno said.

Calls about the collision came in around 13:30 EST (18:30 GMT) on Friday when people began trying to help passengers escape the boat as it took on water, Port of New Orleans Chief Melanie Montroll told a news conference.

There were about 129 passengers, in addition to crew members, on the American Heritage at the time of the collision, according to Port of New Orleans.

In brief

Some 130 people on a cruise ship docked in New Orleans have been rescued after it was struck by a tanker. The cruise ship, American Heritage, was left lying on its side in the Mississippi River after it was hit by the cargo vessel, Atlantic Asphalt. Officials hailed it as a "miracle on the Mississippi". "We have zero people unaccounted for which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi," Moreno said.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to BBC News — Top Stories. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at BBC News — Top Stories ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.