BREAKING: One of the world’s biggest ships got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, blocking traffic
March 24, 2021
(WSJ) On Tuesday morning, the Ever Given sailed into the placid waters of the Suez Canal, the 120-mile-long link on its journey from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean as it carried thousands of tons of cargo bound for the Netherlands. Then something went wrong. By midmorning, the massive ship — one of the largest in the world at more than 1,300 feet long, more than twice the height of the Washington Monument — was wedged sideways across the canal.
Dozens of boats piled up into a marine traffic jam on the crucial shipping lane as tugboats and diggers tried to free the vessel.
“Ship in front of us ran aground while going through the canal and is now stuck sideways,” Julianne Cora, an engineer on the Maersk Denver, wrote on an Instagram post showing her ship stuck behind the Ever Given. “Looks like we might be here for a little bit.”
Early on Wednesday morning, the ship was “partially refloated” and moved along the banks of the canal, according to an update sent to The Washington Post by GAC, a port agent that cited sources with the Suez Canal Authority.
The vessel is being towed to another position, and traffic in the canal will be back to normal soon, GAC said in a statement.
The Ever Given, which is operated by the Taiwanese firm Evergreen Marine and flagged in Panama, belongs to a modern class of massive cargo ships and can carry up to 220,000 tons of containers. In 2015, the Suez Canal underwent an $8.5 billion expansion to accommodate the ships and to set up two-way traffic headed both north and south — but its owners never envisioned one of those mega-ships blocking the whole route, experts said.
“The Egyptian government certainly did not expect the route to be blocked both ways by a single ship,” said Flavio Macau, a supply chain management expert at Edith Cowan University in Australia, in an interview with The Washington Post. “You can call it ... karma, bad luck, or a lack of engineering oversight.”
Either way, that’s what happened on Tuesday morning after the Ever Given left Suez, Egypt, south of the canal, and headed north, according to GAC, a shipping logistics firm. Around 7:40 a.m. local time, it somehow ran aground.
“The container accidentally ran aground after a suspected gust of wind hit it,” Evergreen Marine told AFP. “The company has urged the shipowner to report the cause of the incident and has been in discussions with relevant parties including the canal management authority to assist the ship as soon as possible.”
The accident quickly led to a backup in the busy canal — and nearly some other accidents, according to Cora.
“Right after they ran aground the ship behind us lost power and almost hit us,” she wrote on Instagram.
It was quickly clear that getting the Ever Given back on track would be a mammoth operation. Photos and satellite maps show its bow along the canal’s eastern boundary, while its stern nearly touched the western edge.
“From the looks of it that ship is super stuck,” Cora wrote on Instagram. “They had a bunch of tugs trying to pull and push it earlier but it was going nowhere.”
She added, “There is a little excavator trying to dig out the bow.”
Tug boats scrambled to try to “re-float the vessel,” according to Leth Agencies, which offers services to ships transiting the canal.
By Wednesday morning, they’d finally succeeded in dislodging the ship from the banks, GAC said, and tugs were working to get it back on its way.
Global shipping firms rely on the Suez Canal to move millions of tons of cargo and oil every day on the shortest route between Asia and Europe. Satellite maps early on Wednesday showed dozens of boats idling in the Red Sea and Mediterranean waiting for the canal to reopen.
Macau said that a delay of a day or two in the canal wouldn’t noticeably impact global shipping.
“Most ships waiting to cross the Canal at this time are tankers. Oil stocks are high across the globe and should be fine,” he said. “This is not the Canal’s busiest time of the year. Autumn and summer in the Northern Hemisphere would be more problematic.”
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