Tug boats refloat grounded ship

Three commercial tug boats took an hour to pull the vessel off a sandbank and are towing it to an anchorage in an area called The Downs, three miles off the coast of Deal, a spokesman said.

He said: "I'm pleased to say that the removal of the vessel has been a success. Surveyors from the MCA and investigators from the Marine Accident Investigation branch will go on board once it is anchored and carry out their investigations."

The ship is expected to stay at its anchorage for most of Thursday while the the teams work out how the vessel, which was carrying more than 42,700 tonnes of cargo, ran aground.

Earlier, the MCA said they only had "one shot" at moving the ship at high tide on Wednesday evening because the tide would drop over the next few days.

The 90,465-tonne German-registered vessel called LT Cortesia had 27 people on board. It ran into difficulties on the Varne Bank towards the middle of the Channel at 5am on Wednesday. None of the crew was injured and there have been no pollution leaks, the MCA said.

MCA spokeswoman Rosie Tapping said the container ship was registered as carrying hazardous cargo, but the exact nature of the materials on board was unknown.

She said: "It has got 4,148 containers on board, above and below deck. It is carrying a mix of cargo. As yet we don't know what it is exactly, but it would not all be hazardous. It might just be one container."

She said all vessels entering the Dover Strait are obliged to report to the Dover Coastguard if they are carrying any hazardous materials, even a single container. She added: "'Hazardous' could mean a wide range of different things -it could mean perfume."

A Dover coastguard said it was a mystery why the container ship suddenly ran aground. He said: "We haven't a clue why it ran aground. The vessel had come down normally, made an alteration to its route and then went aground. The weather has been fine and its traffic pattern was OK until the last minute when it went aground."