American Military News March 24, 2022 Augusta Saraiva - Bloomberg News
The $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal doubled its capacity in 2016, allowing the world’s largest cargo ships to sail more easily to America’s East Coast from Asia. Now, one of those giant vessels has been stuck near the U.S. capital for more than a week.
Evergreen Marine Corp.’s ship Ever Forward ran aground in the Chesapeake Bay after departing the Port of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal on March 13 and hasn’t moved since, according to mapping data compiled by Bloomberg.
On Sunday, experts led by the U.S. Coast Guard launched a dredging operation to refloat the 334-meter (1,096-foot) vessel, which was en route to the Virginia International Gateway terminal in Norfolk. So far, the Hong Kong-flagged ship is not disrupting trade.
The Ever Forward was scheduled to call four U.S. East Coast ports after departing China on Feb. 2. Although the carrier has been operating the route for more than two decades, it was only recently that its U.S.-bound mega vessels ventured beyond the West Coast, said Sal Mercogliano, a professor of maritime history at Campbell University in North Carolina.
Such diversions accelerated as container carriers increasingly turned to the East Coast in the second half of 2021. That’s when supply-chain disruptions peaked on major transpacific routes, including the snarls at the country’s busiest ports — Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/03/coast-guard-is-trying-to-free-a-mega-ship-stuck-outside-dc/
