Salvage crews cutting a wrecked cargo ship into giant chunks along the Georgia coast Tuesday lifted away the third big section to be severed from the vessel since demolition began four months ago.
The South Korean freighter Golden Ray has remained partially submerged off St. Simons Island since the ship capsized Sept. 8, 2019, after leaving the Port of Brunswick with 4,200 cars in its cargo decks. The crew was rescued safely.
The multiagency command in charge of removing the ship opted to cut it into eight huge pieces, each weighing up to 4,100 tons, and load them into barges. Cuts are made using a towering crane with winches and pulleys attached to a length of anchor chain that rips through the hull like a dull sawblade.
Cutting has progressed slowly at the wreck site 80 miles south of Savannah since demolition began on Nov. 6. Before the latest section was loaded onto a barge Tuesday, only the two ends of the ship had been removed.
But cutting away the third section took only a week, and workers are trying to make the remaining cuts more efficient by removing strips of steel plating from the ship’s hull along paths prepared for the chains to cut. About 100 battered cars have been plucked from inside the ship using a big mechanical claw, but most of the vehicles are being lifted out as part of the severed segments.
