Freighter freed in Detroit River

A freighter was freed from the Detroit River on Tuesday after being stuck for about a day and a half, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

"It is free," Lt. j.g. Adeeb Ahmad, a Coast Guard spokesman, told The Detroit News in midafternoon.

The Barbro G "has been successfully refloated & will now securely anchor nearby," the Coast Guard announced on X, formerly Twitter. "A 3rd-party class society will assess the ship’s sea-worthiness to decide if it can proceed on its journey to Italy."

Meanwhile, Coast Guard investigators were expected to continue examining what caused the initial grounding.

Efforts had stalled to refloat the freighter earlier on Tuesday morning. A Coast Guard salvage team postponed an 8 a.m. refloating plan to call for a third tug boat to assist.

Barbro G, a 623-foot Portuguese freighter, ran aground outside the Belle Isle Anchorage early Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard said in an X post. Two tugboats were sent to the vessel that day, which was carrying 21,000 tons of wheat to Italy.

Barbro G's insurance provider was still finalizing a contract for the third tugboat by 11 a.m. Tuesday, Ahmad said, adding the Coast Guard's main priority for the refloat was safety.

Despite delays, the freighter drew streams of onlookers on the Detroit Riverwalk on Tuesday morning as the two tugboats already there circled the ship.

Some snapped pictures at snow-laced Milliken State Park in the 20-degree cold.

The Coast Guard reported no injuries, pollution or impact to commercial traffic at the freighter's grounding site, which did not happen in a shipping lane.

This incident came more than six months after another freighter, the M/V Mark W. Barker, got stuck for more than four hours in the Detroit River on May 17 after running aground just feet from the Belle Isle shoreline.

The Barker, a 639-foot Great Lakes freighter carrying 21,000 tons of salt, was heading from Cleveland toward Lake St. Clair and eventually Milwaukee when it became stuck around 8 a.m. that day not far from the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on the island's east end.

Initial Coast Guard investigations show no connection between the two groundings and haven't identified dredging as the primary cause for either, Ahmad said. "We don't believe the two separate groundings are related."

Barbro G will return to Belle Isle for re-anchoring, where a third party will assess the boat's seaworthiness, Ahmad said.

Coast Guard investigators will then board the vessel to continue looking into the cause of the grounding.