On Sunday, April 17, the Ever Forward was refloated in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, 35 days after it went aground immediately after leaving the Port of Baltimore.
“Refloating the Ever Forward, which was hard aground outside of the navigation channel along the entire length of the ship’s hull, required extensive coordination of responders and involved the development and implementation of a comprehensive salvage plan, including dredging and push-and-pull tugboat operations,” the US Coast Guard said in a statement, coordinating the salvage efforts with the Maryland Department of the Environment and Evergreen Marine Corp.
The Ever Forward, a 1,095-foot-long vessel built-in 2020, was carrying 4,964 containers when it came aground on March 13. The laden ship became trapped in mud, and two previous attempts to refloat the container ship failed because recovery teams were unable to “overcome the ground force of the Ever Forward in its loaded configuration,” according to the Coast Guard.
Dredging to a depth of 43 feet was carried out, and crane barges were employed to transfer 500 containers from the vessel. The containers were returned to the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal and unloaded.
The Ever Forward was liberated around 7 a.m. Sunday with the assistance of two pulling barges and six tugs.
“The breadth and complexity of this response were unprecedented, as an incident of the magnitude and duration of the Ever Forward grounding is an uncommon occurrence,” stated Capt. David O’Connell, commander of Coast Guard Sector Maryland-National Capital Region.
The Ever Forward would be towed to the Annapolis Anchorage Grounds for inspection before reloading the 500 containers at the Port of Baltimore and continuing its intended route to the Port of Virginia, according to the Coast Guard. There was no mention of a berthing date at the Port of Virginia.
The Ever Forward’s anchoring gained international attention due to the spectacle it generated in the Chesapeake Bay, as well as its name. Another Evergreen container ship, the Ever Given, interrupted the global supply chain in March 2021 when it became trapped in the Suez Canal for a week.
Before sailing to Baltimore, the Ever Forward, which has a carrying capacity of 11,850 twenty-foot equivalent units and is employed on the Ocean Alliance’s Asia-US East Coast route, stopped in Colon, Panama, and Savannah, Georgia.
