Eight upstate boats lost their tethers and floated down the icy waters of the Hudson River on Friday morning, closing several bridges and snarling rush-hour traffic as they bobbed down the waterway, officials said.

The maritime mayhem began early in the day when large chunks of ice caused the barges and tugboats to break away from their moorings and start traveling downstream near Troy and the Port of Albany, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

At least one of the boats crashed into the Congress Street Bridge, and the Captain JP, a cruise ship, got lodged under an Amtrak rail bridge for hours, needing two tugboats to come to its rescue, officials said.

Officials worked for hours to wrangle the boats back to their docks. Basil Seggos, commissioner for the NYDEC, told WNYT.com that corralling all of the boats was like a “coordinated ballet.”