OSTEND, Belgium – Next to the salvaging equipment being used to raise the sunken car carrier Tricolor from the seabed, the three-million-kg hulk of scrap metal itself appears tiny. Three ships – the yellow Hercules, black Giant 4 and white Rambiz – tower almost 100 metres (330 feet) above the waves as they lift the first and probably trickiest cut-off part of the Tricolor. Its wreckage has obstructed the English Channel, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, since December.

Salvaging equipment has got ever bigger over the decades as shipping accidents have grown worse and more complicated, salvagers say. “Accidents became fewer but at the same time more severe,” says 59-year-old Kees Muller, one of the
directors of Multraship Salvaging, a family-run company for 225 years.

Story for Reuters