Stranded container ship refloated after a month

A giant container ship stranded for a month in the Chesapeake Bay, on the east coast of the United States, was refloated on Sunday, April 17.

The “Ever Forward”, owned by the Taiwan-based Evergreen company, ran aground in some six meters of mud a few hundred meters from shore on the night of March 13, after failing to make headway into deeper water.

US media reported that the ship was floated around 7:00 a.m. local time (11:00 GMT) on Sunday, after almost 500 of the 5,000 containers on board were removed to lighten the ship and take advantage of the highest tide of the month.

The US Coast Guard had been trying to refloat the “Ever Forward” for weeks with the help of tugboats and dredgers.

The ship, which measures approximately 335 meters in length and has the capacity to transport almost 12,000 containers, is one of many that ply the busy waters of the Chesapeake.

The bay is a gigantic estuary, the largest in the country, whose shores are home to both the city of Baltimore and the Port of Virginia, the second and third largest ports on the east coast of the United States, respectively.

The misfortune of the “Ever Forward” in Chesapeake is reminiscent of that suffered by another container ship with a similar name, the “Ever Given”, which got stuck on a sandbank in the Suez Canal in March 2021, blocking traffic on that route for almost a week.