The 1,095-foot container ship Ever Forward is still stuck in the Chesapeake, and the Coast Guard just announced that salvors will have to unload some cargo containers in an effort to refloat it.
Two separate attempts to move the ship by a series of pull barges and tugboats, plus continuing dredging, have all failed. The ship, which draws more than 42 feet, is hard aground in 24 feet of water.
The Ever Forward ran aground on Sunday, March 13, after leaving Baltimore, heading for Norfolk, Virginia, with a pilot on board. AIS data indicate it was running about 13 knots when it left the dredged Craighill Channel and stopped suddenly outside the Patapsco River.
The Coast Guard is still investigating how that happened.
Under the latest effort to refloat the ship, two cranes will lift containers from both sides of the Ever Forward and put them on barges, which will then shuttle them to the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore. Then they will be offloaded by cranes on land.
The Coast Guard said that “a portion” of the estimated 5,000 containers on the Ever Forward would be removed in the next ten days or so, before the tugs would be called back for another attempt to refloat the ship.
“The new strategy offers the best chance of successfully refloating the Ever Forward,” the Coast Guard said. Read more:
