Engineering officials in Italy say they have succeeded in lifting the cruise ship Costa Concordia free of rocks, 20 months after it ran aground.
Efforts to right the ship, one of the largest and most daunting salvage operations ever undertaken, are continuing through the night.
The vessel has been detached from rocks and moved on to a platform constructed on the sea bed, officials said.
Thirty-two people died when the ship ran aground off the Tuscan coast.
The bodies of two of those killed in the January 2012 disaster, by the island of Giglio, have never been found.
There are hopes that they may be located during the operation, although officials said on Monday there was no sign of them so far.
Engineers have never tried to lift such a huge ship - over 951 feet long (290m) - so close to land.
By Monday evening, the vessel had rotated by 20-21 degrees, the officials said.
This means that there is another 44-45 degrees to go before it is upright.
However, the officials hope that once it has risen by 24 degrees, the ship will begin righting itself thanks to gravity and to metal boxes attached to the side and filled with water.
The start of this huge operation was potentially the most problematic phase, and the stage that worried the engineers the most, says the BBC's Alan Johnston at the scene.
But now the ship has been broken away from the reef on which she has been lying, the hope is that it will now be possible to rotate the wreck more easily, he adds.
The Italian Civil Protection Authority said the sea and weather conditions had mostly been right for the attempt, but the operation had to be delayed by three hours because of an overnight storm.
Huge challenge
The storm delayed the positioning of a barge carrying a remote control room close to the shipwreck, from where engineers were using pulleys and counterweights to move the Concordia from the steep underwater incline it is resting on.
Sergio Girotto, an engineer working on the project, told reporters on Monday the operation was going smoothly.
Source: BBC
