Costa Concordia Shipwreck / Wikipedia Commons

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Engineers successfully lifted the large ship on Monday but progress was slower than expected, according to NBC News.

An international team of 500 engineers worked to pull the shipwrecked vessel this morning from the coast, 20 months after the ship overturned.  Over 6,000 tons of force was used to help pull the ship while underwater cameras recorded the progress.

The cameras did not reveal any remains of the two people who were not recovered from the accident in January 2012, Sergio Girotto, a project manager for contractors told the Associated Press.

The project of raising the ship is expected to be completed by next spring.

Reach Executive Producer Rachel Scott here.