- Container ship Ever Forward has been freed from thick mud in the Chesapeake Bay on Sunday.
- The vessel was refloated by two barges and five tugboats, more than a month after it ran aground.
- Evergreen said the ship will return to Baltimore, reload the cargo, and resume its initial journey.
A container ship, named Ever Forward, was finally freed on Sunday after being stuck in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, for more than a month.
Evergreen, the container shipping company that owns the ship, said in a statement that the Ever Forward was refloated after multiple attempts.
"The Ever Forward was successfully refloated by salvor who has been working closely with the US Coast Guard, competent authorities of the State of Maryland, and local service providers to remedy the ship's grounded status in Chesapeake Bay," the statement said.
The ship was refloated by two barges and five tugboats. Unlike its sister ship, the Ever Given, which created a blockage last year in the Suez canal for a week that disrupted the global supply chain, the Ever Forward ran aground outside the main navigation corridor.
The Baltimore Sun reported that once refloated, the ship was weighed down by water tanks to ensure safe passage under the Chesapeake Bay bridge, per The Guardian.
The company said that after underwater inspections, the ship will travel to the Port of Baltimore and reload the cargo that was discharged when it got stuck, and it will resume its previously scheduled voyage.
The 1,096-foot Ever Forward is a Hong Kong-flagged vessel, which had been traveling from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia. The grounding of the ship did not cause any damage and there was no indication of fuel leakage or pollution, according to the statement.
The cargo, which was continuously offloaded until Saturday, was taken to Baltimore's Seagirt Marine Terminal. Salvage experts determined the process necessary to refloat the ship, The Guardian reported.
Last year, it took almost a week of dredging and digging to free the huge Ever Given vessel. The incident prompted the Egyptian authorities to seize it on April 13, 2021, and hold it for months.
The Ever Given had finally arrived in Rotterdam on July 29 with more than 20,000 containers on board – 106 days after it first got lodged.
As for the Ever Forward, Evergreen said in the statement that it is "deeply appreciative of the efforts put forth by Donjon-Smit, the salvor, the US Coast Guard, competent authorities of the State of Maryland, and the service providers that were engaged, all of whom worked hard to bring this event to a successful conclusion."