Cutting gear set up for Tricolour wreck

An operation to remove the wreck of a huge car carrier which has blocked part of the English Channel for more than six months was due to move into its main phase today.

Cutting equipment which will slice the 50,000-tonne Tricolor “like cheese” before it is taken ashore piece-by-piece was shortly expected to leave Zeebrugge in Belgium.

Over the next few weeks a team, which includes Dutch experts Smit Salvage, will oversee the operation to remove the ship, which has been lying about 30 miles east of the Kent coast since it sank in December.

A specially-designed diamond wire cutting system is expected to divide the 190-metre long wreck into nine sections, which will then be taken ashore separately by huge barges for scrap.

Such a wire system was also used in the lifting of the Russian submarine Kursk from the Barents Sea in 2000.

French coastguard authorities have approved the plan, which includes measures to warn ships during the operation and the requirement of an anti-pollution vessel to be on the scene.

It is thought the removal could take until the early autumn, depending on weather conditions.

Preparatory work for the operation has been carried out in the past few months after a contract to remove the wreck was agreed by the ship’s Norwegian owners, Wilhelmsen.

The vessel, which was carrying 2,862 BMWs, Volvos and Saabs worth £30m (€43.3m), sank after colliding with the Bahamas-registered container ship Kariba in thick fog on December 14, 2002.

Two other ships later collided with the wreck, as did a salvage tug in late January, leading to a spillage of oil thought to have affected a number of seabirds.

Shortly after the ship sank, the French authorities ordered that the wreck be removed from the Channel because of the danger it posed to shipping in the area.

Both the French and British coastguard are still constantly broadcasting messages to warn captains in the Channel of the partly-submerged vessel.