It was a frightening ferry ride Wednesday night for hundreds of Staten Island commuters. The ferry slammed into the dock, injuring 15 people.

It’s called a hard landing and this one sent commuters to the floor of that ferry and into each other. It’s not the way you want to arrive home after a hard day of work.

The John J. Marchi hit the slip at the St. George ferry landing carrying just under 800 Staten Island-bound passengers at the tail of the Wednesday evening rush.

A worker at the terminal saw it approach, but fail to slow before impact.

“The boat come fast boom bang bang bang bang, then everybody go inside. Nobody outside,” Nalla Nagan said.

For homebound passengers it was a sudden intrusion into a familiar routine.

“It’s like hitting a wall in a car,” passenger Daniel Kusrow said. “Luckily I was sitting down, but unfortunately other people I’m sure were standing up and were unbalanced ’cause it really was a jarring impact.”

It was enough to bend and twist the heavy metal railing along the gangway still visible from inside the terminal. Firefighters arrived mindful of the horrible carnage that resulted from the infamous ferry wreck here six years ago.

This was, thankfully, very different. The ferry apparently lost power as it entered the slip.

The ferry boats have propellers at both ends. As they approach the dock they are supposed to reverse thrust and slow down. Losing power at the wrong moment is like pulling into your garage with no breaks.

“What we saw was superficial damage and we saw some damage to the dock itself,” FDNY Deputy Chief James Leonard said. “We had 15 total injuries and that included two NYPD officers and also three crew members and 10 passengers.”

The crew has submitted to routine drug tests but at this point the cause appears to be mechanical.

“Everyone was where they were supposed to be and then end result has been, thankfully, not too bad. There were people injured, but thankfully it was minimized,” said James DeSimone of the Department of Transportation.

In 2003, a Staten Island ferry with about 1,500 people aboard slammed into a Staten Island pier at full speed, killing 11 people in one of the city’s worst mass transit disasters.

Authorities later determined that the ferry pilot had been taking painkillers and was suffering from extreme fatigue.

DeSimone’s last statement referred to the 2003 incident where crew members were not where they were supposed to be. That was not the case Wednesday night.

The John J Marchi is out of commission, but is just one of nine Staten Island ferries and should not impact the Thursday morning commute.

(Source: WCBSTV)