Fremantle Highway: Disaster averted as burnt car carrier reaches port

More than a week after fire swept through a cargo ship carrying almost 4,000 cars in the North Sea, the crippled ship has been towed into port in the north-east of the Netherlands.

The charred hulk of the Fremantle Highway arrived at Eemshaven after a 64km (40-mile) journey from a position north of the island of Schiermonnikoog.

The ship had left Bremerhaven in Germany en route for Egypt when fire broke out on 25 July.

One of the crew died in the blaze.

The other 22 survived, and seven of them jumped into the sea to escape. All but two of the crew came from India.

For almost a week the fire burned aboard the 200m-long Panamanian-registered Fremantle Highway.

There were fears the ship might sink, raising fears of an environmental disaster in the waters of the Wadden Sea, designated a World Heritage site on the edge of the North Sea.

The Dutch coast guard stressed the cause of the fire on the 11-deck ship was unknown and authorities were careful not to speculate. But an audio recording emerged of one rescue worker suggesting it had started in the battery of an electric vehicle and "it appears an electric vehicle exploded too".

Of the 3,783 cars on board the ship, 498 were electric vehicles.

The fire started on an upper deck and salvage experts said that while four of the ship's decks were relatively undamaged in the hull, the eighth deck had partly collapsed because of the intensity of the fire.

Two days ago the Dutch infrastructure agency said it believed the fire was finally out. At that point authorities decided it should be brought into port as soon as possible because of imminent bad weather.

Local mayor Henk Jan Bolding said he understood the government's decision to bring it to Eemshaven: "To avoid environmental disaster the ship had to be brought into a safe harbour and this was near by."

Harbour master Pieter van der Wal, who's head of seaports in the region, said there was immense relief that the ship was finally safe.

"We've ensured that the Wadden Sea and the Wadden islands aren't hit by pollution and we're proud of that."

Now that the ship is safely in port, salvage work can begin.