Suez Canal: How are they trying to move the Ever Given?
Efforts to shift a container ship stuck in the Suez Canal have been partially successful, but more still needs to be done to free it completely.
The Ever Given, operated by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine, is the length of four football pitches and had been lying right across the southern end of the canal since Tuesday.
The Ever Given is 400m (1,300ft) and had been wedged diagonally across a canal not much more than 200m (656ft) wide.
Ship tracking software on Monday shows the ship's stern has now been successfully moved off the western bank but with it bow remaining close to the eastern shore.
A group of tugs remains in position around the vessel.
They've been using cables or placing themselves directly alongside the stricken ship, attempting to free the ship.
Alongside the tugs, dredgers have been digging out sand and mud from under the bow of the vessel.
These dredgers are a familiar sight on the Suez Canal, says maritime expert Sal Mercogliano, and are used to continually dredge the waterway to keep it navigable.
"Large machines stick down into the water and basically pull dirt up from the bottom, which you can then deposit onshore."
The company which manages the running of the vessel, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) says an additional specialist "suction dredger" was brought in, able to shift 2,000 cubic meters of material every hour.
If efforts to free the bow of the ship continue to prove difficult, a further option would be to remove fuel, water and cargo.
Draining fuel from the ship's tanks would help, but is unlikely to be sufficient without other load-lightening measures.
A ship the size of the Ever Given can carry as many as 20,000 twenty-foot containers and an operation to remove these by crane would be highly challenging.
Apart from the difficulties associated with getting suitable cranes close enough to the ship, the process could cause damage and even unbalance the ship.
"You would have to bring large floating cranes - but anything you do right now you would have to determine how it would affect the ship's stability," says marine expert Sal Mercogliano.
"Worst case scenario is that she breaks in half because of [uneven] weight distributions."
(Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/56523659)
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