Cranes to Remove Containers from Ever Forward

By Cheryl Costello

The Coast Guard is hoping the third time’s the charm for the container ship lodged more than 20 feet into the mud outside the shipping channel on the way out of Baltimore. They’re resorting to removing containers from the 1,095-foot-long ship, using cranes on barges to offload them from both sides.

In its third week stuck on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, Ever Forward finds itself in an unusual economic situation. A rarely used concept known as general average will put the owners of the cargo in the containers on the hook for a portion of salvage costs.

Bay Bulletin was on the water this week as these new developments were announced. The Coast Guard had been pursuing a refloat plan that included five tugboats and two barges to try to pull Ever Forward out of the silt fully loaded down with containers. The incident commander had told us previously that trying to offload containers from the ship in the middle of the water could “never be as safe as the way it’s designed to be loaded or offloaded” with giant cranes installed at the Port of Baltimore.

But the Coast Guard now says some of the ship’s 5,000 containers will be removed from right where the ship is, near the Craighill Channel. Dredging to a depth of 43 feet will continue, and two crane barges were to be installed beginning Wednesday to remove the containers. Once the ship is lighter, tugs and pull barges will make another attempt to refloat it. After the cranes move the containers onto barges, the barges will then return to Seagirt Marine Terminal at the Port of Baltimore to unload.

The Coast Guard expects the operation to take two weeks, but weather could impact that timeline.

“With how deep they’re dug into the mud, I think everyone expected this to be a long operation,” says Captain Kaitlyn Bize of the Annapolis School of Seamanship, our sister company. “Probably removing some of the containers to lift the boat off the seabed a little bit is the only thing that’s going to wedge it out of the mud.”

This follows two unsuccessful attempts with five tugboats pushing the ship last week. Since then, the shipping company, Evergreen, declared a general average. It’s not often employed, but it reaches far back into history.

Annapolis-based maritime attorney Todd Lochner explained the general average to us, saying the owners of the containers on board will have to bear part of the cost of salvage if they want to see their cargo again.

“There is a lien on the cargo and theoretically the owners of that ship do not have to release that cargo to those who are to receive it until the lien for the general average occurs,” Lochner says.

Lochner says general average is an old practice. “The concept with general average goes all the way back to ancient Greece, when in order to solve problems like this you would jettison some of the cargo in order to have the vessel lighter. That’s originally where it came from. But now it includes all the salvage operations being referred to.”

And now that a costly offloading process is getting underway, that general average number will just grow exponentially. “Practically, the ship’s owner doesn’t really want to hold onto that cargo because there will be charges that they incur at the destination port as well,” Lochner explains.

But he says the companies who want their cargo won’t likely pay the general average without a legal fight. “In order to avoid paying general average, the cargo interest at some point will argue the ship was unseaworthy for some reason.”

Ever Forward has been grounded since March 13, with what the Coast Guard calls “general cargo”. Bay Bulletin will be closely watching to see if taking the weight off the top helps to refloat the massive ship.

If there’s one positive to come out of this predicament, it’s an influx of dredge spoils to the Bay’s Poplar Island restoration project. Read more in our story about how this salvage operation is advancing the successful Poplar restoration.

Stay tuned to the CBM Bay Weekly Facebook page for the latest information in this evolving salvage situation.