Here is a Captioned Video Allegedly Showing That The Cargo Ship Is Being Hacked
(redstatenation.com)
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Nope, not buying it. Every large vessel like this has two steering "houses." Main steering located on the bridge, and Aft Steering located below decks just forward of the screws (propellers) but just aft of Main Emgineering. When the bridge signals a turn (when the pilot turns the wheel) Aft Steering Watch is actually the person turning the rudders and adjusting screw speed, as Aft Steering Watch also controlls the ship's propulsion.
No large ship is controlled thru "fly by wire technology," meaning that main or even aux steering/propulsion is controlled mainly by computer. Their are redundancies in place to keep the steering and propulsion systems essentially hack proof.
HOWEVER, in the event of a Main Engine Loss and the ship loses all power, you can maintain rudder control, BUT you have no ability to arrest forward momentum. This means that you can steer the rudders all you want to attempt a turn, but you are at the mercy of the surface and subsurface water currents. If the currents are moving in any direction at a reasonable speed (5+ kn), a powerless ship is at the mercy of "Mother Nature." If you attempt to steer the ship in a certain direction, all you effectively do is turn the stern section which ends up just turning the ship sideways. This is why most large vessels will wait until the tides are at their weakest before navigating a narrow passage like Baltimore's. If they lose power and can't get it restored in time, the currents will run that ship aground, either into the shore, a sandbar, or a structure like a bridge or sea wall.
In the video, you can clearly see the ship suffers a catastrophic power loss (loss of all power), aux power comes on line (ship's aux lighting lights), they get the engines fired back up (BOTH smoke stacks billowing black smoke), but then a curious thing happens in that the ship suddenly turns to starboard and maintains a relative heading right into the bridge's support structure.
IMO, had they just kept the ship moving in the direction it was heading BEOFRE making that last starboard turn, the ship may have passed harmlessly under the bridge where it should've been in the first place.
Whatever the case may be, I don't believe this was a hacking attempt meant to purposely steer this ship into the bridge. If it was possible to take over a ship in this manner, we would've seen it happen long ago and no ship, civilian or military would be safe, or any deep water harbor for that matter.