This past Sunday on June 2, 2019, the 13-deck MSC Opera cruise ship came crashing into Venice, Italy’s VTP cruise terminals. The ship had been coming in for mooring when it had experienced an engine problem and couldn’t control the ship. As the ship had realized that it could not slow down anymore, it sent a message out immediately and two tugboats came to assist as much as they could.

The tugboats could only help the ship slow down so much therefore, when the ship had come in to the mooring area, it could not stop in time and the tugboats couldn’t help slow the ship down. The MSC Opera then had slammed into the dock along with running over a local river boat that gave charters. The ship slowly came to a halt as it went through a pier and injuring a few people. The river boat was hit from the back and quickly moved out of the way by the cruise vessel. There were multiple crew members on the river boat and luckily enough to get out of the situation unharmed, but had to jump off the boat to escape injuring themselves.

The Venice government has had an ongoing issue with cruise ships going through terminals because of their size and how capable they are of maneuvering through the terminals. Unfortunately, because of their size, the time it takes them to get through the terminals takes a lot longer than any other boat. The MSC’s crash was just more evidence to change the route for all cruise vessels through Venice. The government stated that they are going to come up with a solution to this problem. Besides taking more time than normal to get through the cruise terminals, the ships also have waves that could damage the infrastructure of the buildings in Venice. The cruise ships are becoming more dangerous for the city on water and in order to fix this, change needs to happen.