BRUNSWICK, Ga. – It was Sept. 8, 2019, when the Golden Ray cargo ship capsized shortly after leaving the Port of Brunswick.
The vehicle carrier was loaded with more than 4,000 new cars.
Officials later found that the incident was caused by human error and miscalculation.
It triggered a complex rescue and multi-year salvage and environmental cleanup operation that cost more than $1 billion.
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The South Korean-owned ship, the Golden Ray, was heading to Baltimore when it rolled onto its side in St. Simons Sound in the early morning.
Open watertight doors on the vessel made things worse when it started to capsize. As the vessel made a standard turn out of the port, it did not have enough stability to counteract the force.
Twenty crew members were trapped and freed within hours of the incident. But four engineers were trapped in the engine room — their dramatic rescue took longer.
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Immediate rescue efforts were complicated by fires on board and the risk of the ship sinking entirely. They had to cut through the hull to escape. It was a long 30 hours to freedom.
Because the ship could not be refloated, it was dismantled in place in what became the largest shipwreck removal in U.S. history. The effort involved using a massive crane, the VersaBar 10,000, to cut the 656-foot vessel into eight large sections.
The final section was removed in October 2021, more than two years later.
The capsized vessel contained over 300,000 gallons of fuel and hazardous materials, leading to oil spills that affected the sensitive marshlands and beaches in the area. Fires on the wreckage also released fuel-covered plastics, and debris from the 4,200 cars washed up on shore.
The NTSB investigated and faulted the ship’s operator for lacking effective procedures to verify stability calculations and to ensure watertight doors were closed.
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Local fishermen, crabbers, and business owners filed a federal lawsuit against the ship’s owner and the salvage company for the economic and environmental harm caused by the accident.
The suit was settled out of court in 2024 for an undisclosed amount.