Five Day Long Salvage Wins – Container Ship Indian Ocean Tugged From Mud in Elbe River
The container ships that got stuck in the River Elbe since last week is afloat again.
The world’s biggest container ships got stuck in the River Elbe since last week. The overnight and third attempt to rescue the vessel succeeded. The Indian Ocean container ship got stuck in the Elbe River for more than five days.
The salvage operation involved 12 tugs to pull the 1,300 foot long cargo ship to the busy port of Hamburg. About 2 a.m. local time the tugs started their 20-minute long rescue operation.
Built by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the cargo vessel is the first in the giant Triple-E class to run aground since their introduction in 2013.
Earlier the emergency crews planned the rescue effort by 4 a.m. on Tuesday boosting the water level by 1.2 meters above the average. Over the weekend they already pumped out all the heavy fuel oil from the vessel and started on removing ballast water and dredge the river bed around the vessel’s hull to ease the refloating attempt.
It was expected that the vessel might have suffered a failure in its steering gear and propulsion systems. But the German agency overseeing the salvage operation said all systems onboard were running fine overnight and the ship’s rudder was in full operation.
Source: WSJ
