Agencies will try Tuesday to dislodge the 1,095-foot Ever Forward cargo ship, the Coast Guard said.
In another apparent nautical mishap in the same area of the bay, an Anne Arundel County fire boat sank Monday afternoon. All four aboard were rescued and uninjured, a fire department spokeswoman said.
The cause of the sinking could not be learned immediately, and it was unclear whether the fire boat was on an assignment connected to the cargo ship. Positions given for the two vessels put them within two or three miles of each other.If Tuesday’s attempt to free the cargo vessel does not succeed, it appears that authorities plan to scoop more bay-bottom mud from around the vessel’s hull.“If required, additional dredging operations will commence,” the Coast Guard said.
The ship has been stuck in the bay for more than two weeks. It ran aground after departing Baltimore for Norfolk on March 13. Based on position data, it apparently missed a turn in the deep channel leading down the bay. It became lodged on the bay bottom north of the Bay Bridge. It is outside the channel and not considered an impediment to navigation.As a result, with a length that is about equal to three football fields, it may be more a spectacle than a threat to commerce. This is in contrast to an incident that occurred about a year ago, when a vessel from the same commercial fleet got stuck in the Suez Canal.
That ship, the Ever Green, affected shipping worldwide last year by blocking one of the world’s maritime chokepoints for almost a week before it was freed.