After a five-week hiatus, containerships have started to call again at the port of Baltimore on the US east coast. Yesterday saw the arrival of the 2,872 teu MSC Cargo Passion III, able to navigate its way to berth through a recently opened 12 m deep channel. The ship was carrying around 1,000 containers and is the first boxship to call at the ninth largest American port since the Dali containership smashed into a bridge on March 26, killing six road maintenance workers and bringing most of the port to a standstill. As soon as this ship leaves port, the deeper channel will be closed temporarily as salvors work to move the stricken Dali vessel. According to a release by the authorities leading the port’s clean-up operations issued on Friday, one month to the day since this year’s most high-profile shipping accident, 171 commercial vessels had transited the four alternate channels. As of Friday, 137 containers of the estimated 180 necessary to access the portion of the bridge atop the Dali had been removed. To address the estimated 50,000 tons of wreckage at the Francis Scott Key Bridge site, the Unified Command has assembled a substantial fleet of diverse vessels and equipment which includes 36 barges, 27 tugboats, 22 floating cranes, 10 excavators, one dredger, one skimmer, and three Coast Guard cutters. As of three days ago, more than 3,000 tons of wreckage and debris had been removed from the site for disposal or recycling. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1_95_0_1_2'); }); TagsFrancis Scott Key Bridge United States