Efforts failed Tuesday to refloat the huge cargo ship that is stuck in the Chesapeake Bay, the Coast Guard said.
Seagoing agencies will try again Wednesday to free the Ever Forward from the bay floor, a Coast Guard spokeswoman said.
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Five tugboats tried to “push and pull” the 1,095-foot container ship off the bay bottom, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Kimberly Reaves, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard’s Mid-Atlantic district.
But, she said Tuesday night, they had “no luck.”
They will try again Wednesday when tides are expected to be higher and may make the effort easier. The “few extra feet of water” could help, Reaves said.
After several days of dredging mud from around the hull, authorities made their first effort Tuesday to refloat the ship, working from around noon until evening, Reaves said.
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The Ever Forward ran aground after leaving Baltimore for Norfolk on March 13. It apparently missed a turn in the deep channel leading down the bay.
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It became lodged on the bottom north of the Bay Bridge. The site where it ran aground was outside the channel, and it has not been considered an impediment to navigation.
But it is readily visible from shore on the western side of the bay and has become something of a spectacle. Its deck, the length of three football fields, is stacked high with cargo containers, many of them green.
It was unclear Tuesday night whether the hours of effort to free the vessel held up shipping in the bay.
World attention was focused a year ago on a ship in the same commercial fleet, the Evergreen line, that became stuck in the Suez Canal.
The grounding of that ship, the Ever Given, disrupted global maritime traffic by blocking a key shipping route for almost a week before it was freed.
Early Wednesday, the VesselFinder website listed the Ever Forward as having a speed of zero knots. Its status was listed as aground.