Here’s an image of a ship similar to that in your first image passing under the bridge. Plenty of space to spare. This is the busiest port in the Eastern seaboard of the US, thousands of ships would have passed under that bridge every week.
It wouldn’t really require any sort of precise timing, any explosion, terror related or just a tragic accident, on a ship that size when it’s moving through a port is going to have a devastating effect. They are hard enough to stop when you’ve got full control, disable any part of the control...
Could have been some catastrophic loss of power/control of the ship. In that case the pilot/captain would have just been a passenger unable to do anything at all.
Reports of several vehicles in the water according to various news outlets.