SAVANNAH, Georgia. – When rescuers began to dismantle the capsized Golden Ray, a 70-story office building-sized wreck with 4,200 cars on its cargo decks in early November, they predicted that the demolition could end at the end of the year. New Year Day.
Four months later, the job is still far from over.
Both ends of the cargo ship were cut and loaded by barges into a pair of giant pieces. But about three-quarters of the ship remains stranded on its side on St. Simons Island, off the coast of Georgia, where the South Korean freighter capsized shortly after leaving port on September 8, 2019.
“There has been nothing but trouble here,” said Andy Jones, a resident of St. Simons Island who heads to the wreck site on his small fishing boat most days to monitor the demolition and post updates on a canal from YouTube. “It’s a disappointingly slow pace.”
Rescue experts decided more than a year ago that the Golden Ray, measuring 656 feet (199 meters) in length, was too big to be removed intact. They established a plan to split the ship into eight huge pieces, each weighing up to 4,100 tons (3,720 metric tons).
They mounted the wreck with an imposing crane with a winch and pulley system attached to 400 feet (122 meters) of anchor chain that acts like a blind saw blade, tearing the ship’s hull with brute force.
From start to finish, each individual cut should last for a single day. Taking into account the time required to load each separate section of the ship on a barge and prepare for the next slice, the command of several agencies overseeing the effort predicted that the job would take eight weeks.
It turned out to be much more difficult.
The first cut started on November 6 and lasted three weeks. The survey of the bow section of the ship revealed spoiled cars and SUVs in neat rows and layers on the inner deck. The second cut started a month later, on Christmas Day, and was completed in a week.
The crews spent the whole of February trying to make a third cut in the ship’s engine room, a section fortified with thicker steel. After the tension in the cutting device forced extensive maintenance, the rescue team stopped with the cut only partially completed.
They spent days moving the crane to the other end of the ship, where they started cutting a new section on May 7, while rethinking plans to complete the unfinished section.
The ship’s steel proved to be more resistant than expected, slowing down the process, and crews have been taking breaks to perform extra inspections and maintenance, said 2nd-class Coast Guard officer Michael Himes, spokesman for the multi-agency command he oversees demolition.
“If people are wondering when this is going to be done, we are doing it as quickly and safely as possible,” said Himes.
He said it is possible that the last piece of the ship will go to the junkyard in June, the first month of the Atlantic hurricane season. Workers took steps to make the cut more efficient, using torches to remove strips of liner from the ship’s hull and form a guide for the cutting chain. They are also using a large mechanical claw to pull cars out of the ship and lose weight before the sections are cut and lifted.
Conservationists worry the longer the shipwreck remains on St. Simons Sound, the greater the pollution threat it poses to the region’s watercourses, beaches and salt marshes.
The wreck site is surrounded by a mesh barrier designed to contain debris for cleaning as soon as the large sections are removed. Boats equipped with skimmers and absorbent barriers are on hold to clean up any oil spills or other pollutants.
Even so, bumpers, tires and other car parts falling from the ship were found on the beaches. Birds were found covered with oil. And while most of the fuel has been drained from the ship’s tanks, there is concern that about 44,000 gallons (166,500 liters) remaining may spurt out as soon as the cutting current breaks through the ship’s fuel line.
“The longer something stays in the water, on the ship or in these cars, it breaks down,” said Susan Inman, coast guard for the conservation group Altamaha Riverkeeper. “You have lead paint on your ship. You have all these plastic, hydraulic fluid parts. Many of these things will last for years. “
When the demolition of the Golden Ray began in November, the project had already been delayed for several months because of a hurricane season and a handful of coronavirus infections among members of the rescue team.
Ironically, the wreck site commanders insisted on removing the ship in large pieces because it was supposed to be faster. A year ago, the command fired its original rescue contractor for wanting to dismantle the ship into smaller pieces, saying it would take too long. The rejected company filed a lawsuit in a federal court, but a judge refused to suspend the bailout after agreeing that there was no time to lose.
Paul Hankins oversaw the planning of a smaller scale demolition of the Golden Ray until his employer, Donjon-SMIT, lost his job to a competitor. He has since left the company. If his team had not been fired, Hankins said, the overturned ship would now be a souvenir off the coast of Georgia.
“We would have finished,” said Hankins. “Here we are, a year later, and they are nowhere near.”