The Brooklyn Bridge didn’t sustain any “significant structural damage” when a Mexican navy tall ship collided with it over the weekend, a National Transportation Safety Board official said Monday.

At a news briefing, NTSB board member Michael Graham said a bridge team from the agency’s Office of Highway Safety worked with the city Department of Transportation to conduct a survey at the crash site.

“They have affirmed, at this point, that there is no significant structural damage to the load-bearing elements of the bridge,” Graham said. “There is some damage on one of the travelers, which they use to access and survey the bridge at this point, but nothing structural from the bridge is an issue at this point.”

The cause of the crash will take time to determine, he added, noting that the NTSB’s “first day on scene was this morning.”

“We are here to gather perishable evidence, and that’s what we will be doing the whole time that we will be on scene, and that will take as many days as it needs to be,” he said. “This is the start of a long process.”

After the crash, police told the Associated Press the cause was possibly related to a mechanical problem, as the ship was moving quickly under motor power in the opposite of its intended direction when the collision happened.

Asked about the possibility, Graham said NTSB officials “[didn’t] know where [police] got that data from.”

“We haven’t even had a chance to access the engine, so we don’t know that. We haven’t had a chance to look and see if there’s any recorded data or anything like that, so we’re not sure where they got that from,” he said. “But that will be part of the investigation too — if somebody has information like that, where did they get it from? We don’t know at this point.”

The NTSB is asking anyone with videos of the crash to email witness@ntsb.gov, Graham said.

“And we ask that you email us not the video, but that you have some,” he said. The agency will respond with a link to upload footage, he added.

The ship had departed less than five minutes before its masts crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge, according to a timeline laid out by investigators.

Less than a minute before the Cuauhtemoc training vessel sped backward into the bridge on Saturday, a radio call went out asking for help from any additional tugboats in the area.

Brian Young, the NTSB's chief investigator of the deadly crash, said the ship had reached 6 knots by the time is struck the bridge, which is roughly 6.9 mph. The call asking for assistance from other nearby tugboats was made approximately 45 seconds before the crash.

Officials didn’t say where the call asking for assistance from other boats came from.

NTSB officials said they have not yet been granted permission to board the ship and they have not yet interviewed the captain or the tugboat and harbor pilots who were on the scene during Saturday's crash.

Many crew members on the tall ship have flown home from New York, officials said Monday.

Seven officers and 172 cadets who were aboard the Cuauhtemoc arrived early Monday at the port of Veracruz, where Mexico’s naval school is, the Mexican navy said in a post on X. Two cadets remained in New York getting medical treatment. They were in stable condition, the navy said.

Two members of the Cuauhtemoc's crew suffered fatal injuries Saturday when the ship's tall masts struck the Brooklyn Bridge's main span after the ship departed a Manhattan dock where it had been open to visitors for several days.

Footage of the collision shot by horrified onlookers show the ship moving swiftly backwards and then grinding beneath the 142-year-old bridge as its topmasts snapped off. Multiple cadets in the ship's crew were aloft, standing on the ship's yards when the collision happened. Several were left dangling by safety harnesses as the masts partially collapsed.

A tugboat that had helped the ship get out of its berth could be seen on video trying to get ahead of the vessel as it headed toward the bridge but couldn't overtake it in time.

The crippled Cuauhtemoc remained at a dock in Manhattan.

At least 19 of the ship's 277 sailors needed medical treatment, according to officials. Among those killed was América Yamilet Sánchez, a 20-year-old sailor who had been studying engineering at the Mexican naval academy. Her family has said she died after falling from one of the Cuauhtemoc’s masts.

The Cuauhtemoc arrived in New York on May 13 as part of a global goodwill tour. The vessel, which sailed for the first time in 1982, had been docked and welcoming visitors in recent days at the tourist-heavy South Street Seaport. It was next bound for Iceland.

The ship's main mast has a height of 160 feet, far too high for the span of the Brooklyn Bridge at any tide.