BALTIMORE — The first of 11 ships trapped for a month behind the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge left the Port of Baltimore Thursday using an alternate shipping channel that opened earlier in the morning.

The Balsa 94, a cargo ship, sailed just before 10 a.m. with the help of two tugboats, passing chunks of the fallen steel bridge and the still grounded Dali freighter that crashed into and destroyed the span March 26.

At nearly 350 feet long, it was the smallest of the stranded vessels. The Balsa 94 is headed to Saint John, Canada, where it’s scheduled to arrive by early next week.

It was followed shortly before noon by the Saimaagracht, a Netherlands-flagged general cargo ship, then by the Wallenius Wilhelmsen vehicle carrier Carmen just before 2 p.m, sailing under the flag of Sweden.

Coast guard officials said Thursday the channel had a depth of 38 feet, not 35 feet as originally announced. It is the deepest yet of four temporary alternate routes in and out of the port. But the new Fort McHenry Limited Access Channel, for commercially essential vessels, will stay open only through 6 a.m. Monday, or through Tuesday if weather adversely affects transit.

“The primary focus of this four-day period is to allow the ships that have remained within the Port of Baltimore since the March 26 incident to leave,” port officials said in a statement Wednesday.

The port has been blocked to most vessel traffic since the Dali struck a bridge support column March 26, causing the 1.6-mile bridge to collapse and killing six construction workers.

Five of the vessels stranded in the Baltimore harbor, including a car carrier, were expected to get out during the four-day window, said Capt. David O’Connell, the Coast Guard’s Captain of the Port for the Key Bridge Response Unified Command. Inbound vessels are expected to include a small bulk carrier and a ship carrying aluminum, he said.

“We’re working to strike a balance between enabling temporary access to support commercial activity and undertaking necessary measures to fully reopen the Fort McHenry Channel,” O’Connell said in a statement Thursday. “This limited access deep draft channel will provide a window for five of the deep draft vessels currently unable to depart the port as well as some smaller deep draft vessels to transit.”

Four of the 11 cargo ships docked at berths in the port have no “immediate” plans to depart just yet. They are part of the U.S. Maritime Administration’s Ready Reserve Force, a fleet established in 1976 to quickly supply American troops around the world. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration said Wednesday that he knew of no immediate plans to move those ships from the port.

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