THE Herald of Free Enterprise was fully afloat and back in the outer harbour at Zeebrugge for the first time since she capsized seven weeks earlier.

She slowly rose from the seabeds and moved with the incoming tide as salvage workers pumped thousands of tonnes of sea and silt from her flooded lower car deck.

It took three hours to carry out the pumping operation in the vessel, which was estimated to still have 25 bodies on board.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.