Calcutta: Salvage company personnel were on Tuesday able to access the cargo ship and inspect it for the first time since it caught fire last Wednesday night.

Four members of SMIT, the company hired by Shreyas Shipping and Logistics that owns MV SSL Kolkata, boarded the cargo ship now anchored about 10 nautical miles or 18km from the coasts of the Sunderbans.

Another SMIT team from The Netherlands will access the ship on Wednesday, said Indian Coast Guard officials, who are keeping watch on the ship.

The intensity of the fire has reduced considerably and the salvage team could see the flames. But there was smoke too and it was still very hot because of the blaze.

"The salvage team made a preliminary survey and checked the draught of the vessel among other things," a Coast Guard official said. "Eleven personnel from SMIT will again access to the ship on Wednesday and carry out a thorough inspection before taking necessary measures," he said.

The members of the salvage team used a raft to reach the ship and then climbed aboard with special ladders and ropes. They spent about one- and-a-half hours on the ship but did not access the hold because of high temperature and fear of toxic gases.

"There is no longer any chance of oil spillage. But whether the vessel has suffered structural damage can be assessed only after detailed inspection," the official said.

Officials involved in the operation said there are at least seven containers with hazardous chemicals on the ship.

A marine commando and several crew members of MV SSL Kolkata were air-dropped into the vessel on Sunday so that it didn't drift to the Sunderbans coast or into the Bangladesh waters. But they had to be pulled up after four explosions.

The salvage team reached near the burning ship on a platform support vessel on Tuesday morning. The platform support vessel could be taken within one nautical mile or nearly 2km of MV SSL Kolkata.

"The salvage team is also trying to find out how the ship can be dragged out of the shallow waters and taken to a port," an official said. He said there was no chartered route for navigation of vessels in that part of Bay of Bengal. The vessel could not be anchored after 22 crew members were rescued by the Coast Guard on Thursday and had drifted away from the chartered route.

"The additional salvage team from The Netherlands will be taken by a Coast Guard ship from Haldia to MV SSL Kolkata on Wednesday morning. One more support vessel is likely to join the operations on June 24," inspector-general Kuldeep Singh Sheoran, the commander (northeast) of the Coast Guard, said.