‘Something’s up’: Man who witnessed miracle on Friday asks why danger always finds this span of the river

Not long after 12 noon on Friday the 13th, about a mile upriver from the French Quarter, an Atlantic Asphalt tanker collided into the side of a docked ship, the American Heritage, causing it to capsize.

The boat’s crew and a reported 129 passengers were aboard the smaller vessel, preparing to leave for a seven-day cruise along the Mississippi River.

The 266-foot long American Heritage boat, originally named Queen of the Mississippi, was edged with four levels of white-railed viewing balconies and had a small red round paddlewheel in the back, though it was powered by two diesel engines.

It was no match for the 525-foot, 15,000-ton American Asphalt tanker. As it was hit by the nose of the forest-green tanker, the white riverboat tipped sideways and laid there, on its side.

“It was almost submerged immediately,” said Vernon Cook, who owns The Crescent City NOLA Creations Gallery in Riverwalk, where patrons stood on balconies, gawking at the river, where Coast Guard rescue cutters and a oranage rescue helicopter made passes up and down the river, searching for people in the water for much of Friday afternoon.

The American Heritage boat was about to embark on a comfortable cruise of the Mississippi River, for which passengers paid at least $4,150 per person for a trip up the river from New Orleans to Vicksburg, Mississippi and back, complete with regional cuisine, live music, and a fitness center.

From his gallery on the second floor, Cook has seen the boat dock and depart from the Port of New Orleans nearly every week for years now. From his assessment of those on the balconies, the cruise is mostly older people, he said. “It’s very, very, very, very crucial that they get these people out of this water,” he said. “The response was good, very quick, but the way the boat fell has got me worried.”

Word from the city and from the cruise company itself was that 129 passengers were aboard along with crew members. And there were reports that a dozen people had been rescued from the water. But were any stuck below deck, he wondered.

This span of the river has proven its dangers before, Cook said, looking out at the blue river, which was sullied with long fingers of a gray oil-like substance, likely carried swiftly downstream from the tanker, he said. “The currents here, they are powerful.”

Thirty years ago next month, the M/V Bright Field, an even bigger freighter loaded with grain lost engine power and slammed into the Riverwalk, tearing up portions of the mall and peeled off walls at the Hilton Riverside, so that guest rooms were visible.

Three years ago, in April 2022, near the Crescent City Connection Bridge, three children – Brandy Wilson, 14, Ally Berry Wilson, 8, and Kevin Poole, Jr. – were swept into the river after Brandy slipped and the others tried to save her, but the current was too strong.

Cook grew up near where the kids went in. “I got whipped for swimming in this river when I was a kid. And ironically, my dad and my brother drowned in this water,” he said. The two of them, Kenneth Harrison Sr., 49, and Kenneth Harrison Jr., 23, were on a crabbing trip in Bayou Bienvenue in the Lower 9 in April 2001, trying to get crabs for a Good Friday crab boil. When one of the younger man’s shoes went in the water, he jumped in to get it and was sucked under by fast-moving currents. “Blew my brother under,” he said. 

When his father jumped in, the currents grabbed him too. After two days of searching by boat and helicopter, a fisherman spotted their bodies more than two miles away, Cook said.

So on Friday, when he heard and saw the orange rescue helicopter, he reacted instinctively. “I said, ‘Something’s up,’” he said. As he saw the accident scene from outside the Riverwalk, he wondered how the tanker lost control and why here.

“They have to figure out what’s going on,” he said. “Imagine when those big cruise ships are there. It could even be worse,” he said. “It seems like every accident that has taken place in the history of New Orleans, it’s been in this turn right here.”

About an hour later, at a press conference, Mayor Helena Moreno announced that everyone aboard the American Heritage was accounted for, with 32 people in the hospital with “non-critical injuries.” Thanks to a swift response by emergency workers, every passenger and crew member had made it to shore before the paddlewheel went fully underwater, she said, calling it “a miracle on the Mississippi.”