A pilot on board the cargo ship that crashed into the Baltimore bridge tried to swing it clear of a collision by dropping its port anchor to pivot it away, authorities said.

The pilot and a second on board at the time of collision will be interviewed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Thursday. The US Coast Guard also confirmed that the container ship's engines had undergone routine maintenance while in the Baltimore port.

At a news conference, officials said one of the Dali's pilots dropped the port anchor in an effort to pivot it clear of the Francis Scott Key bridge. Information recovered from the ship's voyage data recorder (VDR) showed power failed for just one minute and three seconds as it approached the structure, but that was enough for the collision to become seemingly unavoidable .

The recorder, which officials noted is "very basic" when compared to those on aircraft, stopped picking up sensor data during the outage but did record audio of the pilot giving steering commands and rudder orders and had enough information for the NTSB to create a timeline leading up to impact: An official also said that the Key Bridge was fracture-critical, which means "if a member fails that would likely cause a portion of, or the entire bridge, to collapse, there's no redundancy". NTSB board chair Jennifer Homendy also noted that according to the Federal Highway Administration, there are close to 17,500 fracture-critical bridges in the US.

She added: "It's pretty devastating, certainly, seeing not just what's going on with the cargo containers, but just looking at what was a bridge span - three bridge spans that is pretty much gone. It's just utter devastation." It comes after the bodies of two victims were recovered from a red pick-up truck that was found in the Patapsco River, around 25ft deep in the water.

The men recovered have been identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, who was from Mexico and lived in Baltimore, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, who was from Guatemala and lived in Dundalk, Maryland. ???? Tap here to follow the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts ???? Earlier on Wednesday, the first two missing construction workers were named as Miguel Luna, a 49-year-old from El Salvador, and Maynard Sandoval, a 37-year-old father-of-two.

Two other people are also still missing - all are presumed dead. The recovery mission is now a salvage operation as it is no longer safe for divers to navigate or operate around the debris and concrete in the port.

Read more:Everything we know about the disasterEnd of an era in Baltimore The victims, who were from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, were part of a crew filling potholes on the bridge's road surface at the time of the collapse. The Key Bridge carried the Interstate 695 highway over the Patapsco River southeast of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

US President Joe Biden has promised that he will visit Baltimore "as soon as possible.