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 morning using an alternate shipping channel that opened less than two hours earlier.

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. The Balsa is headed to Saint John, Canada, where is should arrive by early next week.

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.

The disaster blocked 11 large cargo ships from being able to leave the port.

Five of the vessels currently stranded, including a large car carrier, are currently 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 include a small bulk carrier and a ship carrying aluminum, he said.

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.

Here’s some of what we know:

— The nonmilitary vessels trapped behind the wreckage are berthed around the harbor from Seagirt Marine Terminal and the Canton industrial waterfront to a coal pier in Curtis Bay.

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