Ken Perry

The 1,095-foot-long cargo ship that has been mired in the mud of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay for the past three weeks will be partially offloaded in an attempt to get it unstuck.

Following two failed attempts to free it, U.S. Coast Guard officials said two large cranes and barges will be used to get some of the 5,000 containers off the Ever Forward in the hopes that the ship can then be pulled back into the channel.

Containers will start being offloaded this weekend or early next week. A few hundred containers will be removed in the hopes it will lighten the ship enough to get moving again.

Ever Forward belongs to Evergreen Marine Corp., the same company that owns the Ever Given cargo ship that caused massive global shipping delays when it blocked Egypt’s Suez Canal for six days in March 2021.

The Ever Forward is stuck in about 23 feet of water about 20 miles south of Baltimore, Maryland. It’s outside the deep-water shipping channel and not blocking ship traffic on the Chesapeake Bay.

The container vessel ran aground March 13 after leaving the Seagirt marine terminal in Baltimore. It was headed to Norfolk, Virginia, when it missed a turn, left the shipping channel and ran aground. The incident is under investigation to determine its cause.