The Suez Canal saga was ended today after the container ship blocking the channel was set free and towed up the waterway by a fleet of tugboats, nearly a week after causing a traffic jam that strangled global trade.
The bow of the 220,000-ton Ever Given was finally dislodged from the canal bank on Monday after tugboats had straightened the vessel in an early-morning operation and dredgers had vacuumed away huge chunks of sand.
The salvage team made a major breakthrough by dislodging the ship's stern and straightening its position, taking advantage of a high tide brought on by a 'supermoon'. Photos and tracking sites showed the Panama-flagged vessel being pulled up the waterway on Monday afternoon, opening the door for billions of dollars' worth of goods to resume their progress through the shipping lane.
Salvage teams were blaring their foghorns in celebration as they pulled the Ever Given towards the Great Bitter Lake, a wide stretch of water where Egyptian authorities say the ship will undergo technical inspections.
Egypt's president Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi had earlier declared that 'Egyptians have succeeded in ending the crisis' despite the operation's 'massive technical complexity.'
But it was unclear how long it would take to deal with the backlog, with the world's largest container firm, Denmark's Maersk, warning that 'it could take six days or more for the complete queue to pass'.
Satellite photos today showed an armada of cargo ships still stuck in a jam six days after the Ever Given got jammed in the Egyptian shore in high winds - with £6.5billion of global trade being held up each day. The bow remained wedged in the canal bank for several more hours after the stern was freed, but the tugboats finally wrenched it out after the high tide returned later on Monday - allowing the ship to float again.
The fully laden vessel was hauled over the canal bank at around 3pm and the head of Egypt's Suez Canal Authority announced shortly afterwards that shipping traffic had resumed in the waterway.
'She's free,' an official involved in the salvage operation said.
Evergreen Line, which is leasing the Ever Given, confirmed the ship had been successfully refloated and said it would be moved and inspected for seaworthiness.
The ship was due to head to Rotterdam after transiting the canal on its way from Asia, but it was unclear whether it would continue to the Dutch port after its inspection or head elsewhere for repairs.
The Ever Given's managers, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM), said there had been no reports of damage to the cargo.
Peter Berdowski, the head of a Dutch salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, celebrated the successful operation by saying: 'We pulled it off!'
'I am excited to announce that our team of experts, working in close collaboration with the Suez Canal Authority, successfully refloated the Ever Given, thereby making free passage through the Suez Canal possible again,' he said.
The Dutch firm said the operation carried out under 'the watchful eye of the world' had required 13 tug boats and the dredging of approximately 30,000 cubic metres of sand.
Egyptian authorities have said they can accelerate convoys through the canal once the Ever Given is out of the way, with canal chief Admiral Osama Rabie vowing that 'we will not waste one second'.
He said it could take from two-and-a-half to three days to clear the backlog, while another Egyptian source said more than 100 ships would be able to enter the channel per day.
But other estimates say it could take up to 10 days to clear the traffic jam, and Maersk said the knock-on disruptions to global shipping could take weeks or even months to unravel.
The tailback of ships carrying everything from crude oil to cattle had reached 425 by the end of the drama with vessels waiting in a queue at the two ends of the canal, in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
Dozens more are taking the alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip - adding some two weeks and thousands of miles to journeys and threatening delivery delays.
With canal transits stopped, Egypt has already has lost over £69million in revenue, according to the data firm Refinitiv.
About 15 per cent of world shipping traffic transits the Suez canal, which is an important source of foreign currency revenue for Egypt.
Old sections of the canal - opened in 1869 and widened since - have been reopened to ease the congestion, but there is only one lane on the southern end where the ship was stuck.
Shipping giant MSC told customers that it 'expects this incident to have a very significant impact on the movement of containerised goods'.
The obstruction could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East, with Syria already rationing the distribution of fuel in the war-torn country amid fears of delayed shipments.
Romania's animal health agency said 11 ships carrying livestock out of the country were also impacted, while the charity Animals International warned of a potential 'tragedy' affecting some 130,000 animals.
Global container shipping was already in crisis because of disruptions caused by the pandemic, sending shipping costs rocketing because of limited space aboard the vessels.
Egypt's president al-Sisi had ordered preparations for some of the ship's 18,300 containers to be removed if dislodging efforts had failed.
Taking containers off the ship likely would have added even more days to the canal's closure, and required special equipment that would not have arrived until later in the week.
But as the high tides came in last night, diggers set to work removing parts of the canal's bank while specialist tugboats also joined efforts to float the giant ship.
The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, which were called in to work alongside tugboats already on scene, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez on Sunday.