TSB investigates grounding of Anna Desgagns in St. Lawrence River

The sealiftship M/V AnnaDesgagns suffered "not much damage," after runningaground Sundayin the St. Lawrence River, says GroupeDesgagns.

The cargo vesselwasquickly brought to port and the vessel is expected to be released by late afternoon, saidBenoit Chass, a vice president with the company.

"The vessel will be released shortly and there should be no further impact because there's no damage to the hull. There's no other damage to the vessel that were sustained by this incident."

Chass says the vessel ran into problems because of an issue with a hydraulic steering pump, which has now been sent for testing and replaced.

TheM/V AnnaDesgagnsis set to deliver goods to Northern Quebec and Nunavut later this month and the company is optimistic that the vesselwill make up the lost time.

"At this moment we expect to be able to catch up by steaming faster along the Labrador coast... weather and ice permitting."

Transportation Safety Board looks into cause

Eric Collard,a spokesperson with the Transportation SafetyBoard, saidthe incident is being investigated.

"We've arrived on site.We've been on board since this morning," he said Monday.

"We started collecting some information and we will be conducting some interviews this afternoon. We're looking to get as much information as possible."

Collard said the TSB will try and get as much data as it can on the incident, includingdownloading electronic data from the vesselif it's availableand speaking with witnesses or crew.

Collard saidhe can't say how long that investigation will take.

"Itreally depends on how much data we can get and how much of the information we can get from the vessel," he said. "I wish there was a sample timeline, but every occurence is different."

The Desgagnsis set to arrive in Iqaluit on July23.