A vast container ship has run aground in the Suez canal after being
blown off course by a “gust of wind”, causing a huge traffic jam of
vessels at either end of the vital international trade artery.

The 220,000-tonne, 400 metre-long Ever Given – a so-called “mega
ship” – became stuck near the southern end of the canal on Tuesday.


Several attempts to refloat it have failed.


The Ever Given container ship has become stuck, blocking the Suez
Canal.

The Ever Given container ship has become stuck, blocking the Suez
Canal. Photograph: Julianne Cona/ Instagram

Early reports speculated the vessel suffered a loss of power, but
the ship’s operator, Evergreen Marine Corp, told Agence-France
Presse: “The container accidentally ran aground after a suspected
gust of wind hit it.


“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 Ever Given is one of a new category of ships called ultra large
container ships (ULCS), some of which were even too big for the
Panama canal that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, according
to one trade expert.

The ship, which is carrying hundreds of containers bound for
Rotterdam from China, is operated by the Taiwanese shipping company
Evergreen and registered in Panama.

Pictures taken from another ship in the canal, the Maersk Denver,
show the Ever Given lodged at an angle across the waterway. It
dwarfs the tugs sent in by the Egyptian authorities to try to free
it, and also a mechanised digger that appeared to be trying to
excavate ground in order to free the bow.

Julianne Cona, who posted the picture from the Maersk on Instagram,
had watched the drama unfold as her ship waited at anchor.




suez map
“Hopefully it won’t be too long but from the looks of it that ship
is super stuck,” she wrote. “They had a bunch of tugs trying to pull
and push it earlier but it was going nowhere … there is a little
excavator trying to dig out the bow.”

She added that after the Ever Given ran aground the ship behind her
vessel lost power and “almost hit us so it’s been a fun day”.

Ships have been grounded in the canal before. In 2017, a Japanese
ship became stuck but was refloated within hours. A more serious
incident occurred near the German port of Hamburg in 2016 when the
massive CSCL Indian Ocean ran aground and needed 12 tugs to set it
free after five days.

The shipping monitoring site Vesselfinder.com showed the stricken
ship surrounded by smaller tugs trying to free it from the banks.

The site also shows the traffic jam of other vessels at either end
of the canal. The trade monitor TankerTrackers.com tweeted that
there were “a lot of fully-laden” tankers stuck at either end of the
canal carrying Saudi, Russian, Omani and US oil.





Look at the size of the ship blocking the #SuezCanal if you zoom
into the bow of the ship you can see a digger for size reference
pic.twitter.com/428ha5ejav
— Brendan Cruise (@brendancruise) March 23, 2021
Normally ships form convoys to traverse the Suez north and south up
and down the canal. The Ever Given was part of a northbound convoy
when the incident occurred, according to shipping agent GAC.

“The ship was fifth in the northbound convoy. None of the vessels
before it were affected, but the 15 behind it were detained at
anchorages waiting for the canal to be cleared. The southbound
convoy was also blocked,” GAC reported.

The Suez canal is one of the most important waterways in the world
and links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and shipping lanes to
Asia. It is 120 miles (190km) long, and 79ft (24m) deep and 673ft
(205m) wide.

The canal can handle dozens of giant container ships a day so any
lengthy holdup could cause serious delays, although shipping experts
expected it to be freed quickly.

But Flavio Macau, a senior lecturer in supply chain management at
Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, said one problem was
that container ships had become much bigger in recent years, too big
even for the Panama Canal.

“Moving about 50 ships a day, the impacts of a stranded ship are
negligible unless it takes weeks to float it,” he said. “But that is
very unlikely and it should be over in a couple of days, tops.”

Mike Schuler, senior editor of the shipping news site gcaptain.com,
said it was not clear exactly what had happened but noted that there
was a lot of tugs being moved into place to free the Ever Given.

“There are a lot of tugs on the ship but it takes a lot of power to
move a ship of that size. The tide schedule could also come into
play because you get tides on the canal.”