600-foot cargo ship capsizes off the coast of georgia

The Golden Ray, a massive vehicle-transport ship, was spotted flipped on its side in the St. Simons Sounds off the coast of Georgia on Sunday morning.

The Coast Guard was notified around 2 a.m., and responded to the ‘disabled ship’ which was listing over 45 degrees with its propeller out of the water.

Twenty people were evacuated from the ship before rescue operations were delayed by a fire breaking out, leaving four crew unaccounted for.

The Golden Ray, built in 2017, had departed from Brunswick, GA about an hour before the Coast Guard call, carrying more than four thousand vehicles eventually destined for the Middle East.

The Georgia Port Authority confirmed that the ship did not hit any kind of obstruction, and that the capsizing was likely due to an issue with the vessel itself. Improper distribution of the weight of the many vehicles the ship carried might have caused a lean as it attempted to turn in the Sound.

A half-mile safety perimeter was established around the ship, and the Department of National Resources gave a news release stating it had deployed an emergency spill crew in case the ship’s fuel leaked into the water.