Just before the collision, Nick Corso took his phone out to capture the backdrop of the ship and the bridge against a sunset, Instead, he heard what sounded like the loud snapping of a “big twig." Several more snaps followed.
People in his vicinity began running and “pandemonium” erupted aboard the ship, he said. He later saw a handful of people dangling from a mast.
“I didn’t know what to think, I was like, is this a movie?” he said.
The Mexican navy said in a post on the social platform X that the Cuauhtemoc was a training vessel. It said a total of 22 people were injured.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum lamented the loss of the two crew members.