A cargo ship which ran into a sunken freighter in the English Channel has begun its voyage back to port, under its own power.

The Nicola began its journey to Germany after tugs pulled her clear of the Tricolor, which sank at the weekend with �30m of luxury cars on board.

A spokesman for the salvage company involved said: "If she is able to go to Hamburg under her own power the damage cannot be overly extensive, otherwise she would have been towed by one of the attending tugs."

The initial priority for our salvage team is to plug any holes oil can leak from Smit Salvage

Later on Monday the British Navy vessel Anglesey was due to arrive at the scene, to join a French navy boat already alerting passing ships to the danger posed by the 55,000-ton Tricolor.

The collision involving the 95-metre Nicola happened at around 0040 GMT on Monday, about 20 miles east of the Kent coast.

Dutch firm Smit Salvage has a team of experts in the area and hopes to send its divers to start checking the Tricolor for oil leaks, possibly overnight.

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The Tricolor shipwreck

The Nicola, which is registered in the Dutch Antilles and weighs 3,0000 tonnes, had been travelling to La Coruna in northern Spain when the collision happened.

The Tricolor is still lying in the Channel

None of its seven crew members were injured.

Mark Clark, from the UK Coastguard, said the Nicola eventually came free at around 0900 GMT.

He told BBC News: "There have been three tug boats in the area and, with the rising tide, they have hooked on to her and she came off."

The boat was anchored to one side as an inspection of the damage took place and the crew waited for instructions from the German owners, Weedendamm.

Mr Clark said the Nicola appeared to have suffered little damage and its seven crew members, who had remained on board, were not injured.

Bad weather

The wreck of the Tricolor has been in shallow waters since a collision with the cargo freighter Kariba in thick fog on Saturday.

No-one was injured and a rescue team quickly retrieved the 24-member crew and took them to safety.

Bad weather has hampered salvage efforts and British and French authorities are keen to see whether any oil is leaking from the Tricolor.

A Smit Salvage spokesman said it believed it was possible that some oil was spilling from the engine rooms.

"The initial priority for our salvage team is to plug any holes oil can leak from and then the 2,000 tons of bunker oil will be removed," he said.

'Catastrophic'

Tricolor's Norwegian owners have been under immense pressure to move the ship, which is lying just below the surface of the water in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

The damaged Kariba is now anchored back in Antwerp

Mr Clark said the French authorities, in whose waters the accident occurred, would want to look closely at how they had guarded the sunken vessel.

In addition to the �30m value of the BMWs, Volvos and Saabs on board, the Tricolor itself is worth about �25m.

Mr Clark said: "Because of the radar system we use we have reduced collisions to one or two a year.

"But when something like this happens it can be catastrophic."

A spokesman for the French coastguards said: "It's a real problem, the wreck is out of range in a zone we can't monitor.

"But at the same time it's a navigation channel used by all shipping entering or leaving Zeebrugge."