The Costa Concordia's hull was removed Monday from the Italian reef it had been stuck to since it capsized last January.
Engineers are now optimistic that they can rotate the ship upright and tow it away after the structure did not move for the first three hours as crews worked on it near Italy's Giglio Island Fox News reported.
Giovanni Andolfi, a 63-year-old resident who has worked on tankers and cruise ships throughout his career, watched the liner's removal.
"There is a little tension now," he told Fox News. "The operation is very complex."
Six-thousand tons of force were put on the ship using a combination of pulleys and counterweights.
"We saw the detachment from the reef thanks to undersea cameras," engineer Sergio Girotto said.
Thirty-two people perished when the cruise ship banged into a reef and flipped over after the liner's captain directed the ship too close to Italy's Giglio Island. The latest engineering project didn't turn up any evidence of two bodies that were never recovered.
According to Fox News, Girotto said images from underwater cameras showed the ship's side of the hull that was in the water endured "great deformation" because it sat on the reef for a long time, and was beaten by waves and flattened under the ship's 115,000 ton weight.
Initial plans for the hull's removal called for would have moved the ship three degrees vertically leaving the vessel roughly 62 degrees of being able to become upright.
Although the shift was small, it was significant enough for it to be visible as the part of hull which was underwater, was covered in slime, and able to be seen above the waterline. Engineers thought the ship's removal was originally going to take up to 12 hours, and were prepared to work into the nighttime hours.
