Cutting to begin on Tricolor

The wreck has been a major hazard

Work to cut up the wreck of the sunken freighter Tricolor in the Channel is to begin.

The ship, carrying thousands of luxury cars, has been a major obstacle to shipping in the Channel since its sinking in December.

The three-month operation to salvage it will be one of the biggest ever staged and will involve carving up the vessel using a cutting cable

The Norwegian-registered wreck - which had a cargo of nearly 3,000 BMWs, Saabs and Volvos - is in 35 metres of water about 30 miles east of the Kent coast at Ramsgate since it sank in December 2002.

The salvage consortium has two platforms, on either side of the ship, floating cranes for lifting it and semi-submersible barges to take away the sections of the Tricolor.

Click here to see how the ship will be raised

After being delayed, cutting should start on Saturday, although bad weather is still a risk.

About 200 workers, divers and engineers, will work on the operation, which will use some of the methods used to raise the Russian submarine Kursk in October 2001.

The cable used to cut off the nose of the Kursk will also be used to slice up the Tricolor into pieces weighing between 500 and 1,500 tonnes.

These will be raised by the cranes and put on the barges to go to Zeebrugge in Belgium.

How the Tricolor will be raised - and how it sank

In pictures

The cutting cable will be drawn through tunnels excavated underneath the ship and will be pulled in a sawing motion to cut the freighter into nine pieces.

The Tricolor was headed for Southampton when it was in a collision with the container ship Kariba.

The 24 crew were able to escape but the sunken ship became a major hazard, being hit by three ships.

The cargo of cars are likely to end up in the scrapyard.

"We expect some of them to fall into the sea but we will pick them up. Back on land we will remove any environmentally damaging material and send them to scrapyards," said shipping company spokesman Lars Walder.

"They may be top of the range, but eight months in salt water will have rendered them totally unusable."

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