Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) has hired the company that freed the giant container ship Ever Given last year when it ran aground in the Suez Canal for nearly a week, disrupting global trade for months, to do the same with its vessel stranded near the US capital.
The Taiwanese carrier has enlisted Donjon-Smit LLC to free the Ever Forward, the vessel that has been stranded in Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore since Sunday night, Evergreen said in a statement yesterday.
The salvor company is a joint venture between Donjon Marine Co and Smit Salvage Americas Inc, a subsidiary of the company based in the Netherlands that ended the six-day saga in the Suez Canal in March last year.
Photo courtesy of Evergreen
The firm was also hired to help with a vessel that caught fire carrying about 4,000 luxury vehicles in Europe last month.
The Donjon-Smit team is working alongside naval architects, divers and the US Coast Guard to free the ship, Maryland Port Administration executive director William Doyle said on Thursday.
There has been no fuel leakage, injuries or apparent damage to the vessel, and trade is moving into and out of Baltimore uninterrupted, Doyle said.
Experts at the scene are assessing the vessel’s grounding condition, the weight of the cargo on board and the tidal range at its location as part of their efforts to devise a refloating plan, Evergreen said.
The Hong Kong-flagged ship became stranded after departing the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal on Sunday night and has not moved since, mapping data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
The 334m vessel was scheduled to arrive at the Virginia International Gateway terminal on Wednesday next week.
The schedule is probably “optimistic,” because the Ever Forward is “stuck pretty good” compared with its sister ship, which only had its bow stuck, said Nathan Strang, director of ocean trade-lane management at logistics firm Flexport Inc.
However, the vessel is not blocking traffic, and although it might cause “annoyance and frustration,” it is unlikely to disrupt global trade in the same way the Ever Given did, Strang said.
Evergreen shares closed down 3.75 percent in Taipei trading yesterday. The shares have declined more than 11 percent this week.
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