The major accident on one of the busiest waterways lines – Eurogeul, four years ago has marked the world of maritime transport. Sailing from the Belgian Zeebrugge’s by the Finnish port of Kotka, Baltic Ace, a transport ship full of cars, collided with Corvus J, a container ship 65 km away from the Dutch coast. The crash killed 11 crew members, a total of 1,400 cars (mostly Mitsubishi from Japan and Thailand) ended at the bottom of the North Sea. Since an enormous amount of fuel remained inside the sunken decks, this accident was on the brink of disaster. The Baltic Ace falls into the category Roll On Roll Off (RoRo) ships, sailed under the Bahamian flag, and is manufactured in Poland. Cars that were transported were allegedly destined for the Russian market.

What is even more interesting is the process of cleaning the seabed and removing the wreckage of the ship, which lasted nearly four years. The company Royal Boskalis Westminster with its partner Mammoet Salvage have signed an agreement with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment (Rijkswaterstaat), which were pledged to draw around 540,000 liters of fuel from the wreck until 31.12.2015, remove the cars and raise the entire wreck from a depth of 35 meters. The work was worth a whopping 67 million euros. The project started in April 2014 and consisted of two phases; first extraction of fuel and two, raising the wreck from the bottom.

Of course, there were many difficulties. The priority was to draw fuel from the bottom of the Baltic Ace without endangering the marine environment. They used the so-called hot tap method by which the fuel in the tanks was heated first and then removed through a pipe from the tank. The removal of the fuel lasted two weeks. This followed the removal of the deck. Initially it was planned cut into six parts, but the nature of the situation has forced the experts to increase the number to eight. Cutting was carried out in an extraordinary way, and most importantly successfully. Finally the wreckage of the sunken cars was removed. This process lasted for almost four years.

The sea floor is cleaned ahead of schedule – by the end of October 2015, and in mid-November of the same year the shipping line was re-opened to marine traffic. This method was also used to rescue the MV Tricolor, a car carrier which sank in 2002 in La Manche as well as the Russian submarine Kursk (K-141). The professionalism with which this incredible project was carried out is seen on the following video: