Researching the global shipping industry, I saw how modern mega-vessels offer the efficiency consumers demand, at a price
However grim and difficult life these days is, I’d still prefer to be sitting on dry land in lockdown than trying to do a three-point turn on the Suez canal with a 400-metre cargo ship under my control. Wouldn’t you? The grounding of the Ever Given container vessel in the Suez canal has provoked both hilarity and genuine concern. Vessels have got stuck before in the canal: at its narrowest, the “ditch in the desert”, as crew on the container vessel I travelled with in 2010 told me, is only 300 metres wide. It’s tight. That’s why ships must wait at either end to be sent through in a slow convoy. But the Ever Given is longer than the canal is wide, and it is stuck sideways. A simple shunt off the banks will not work.
The blockage is costly in all sorts of ways, as well as embarrassing for the Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, the company that operates the ship. The Suez canal was opened in 1869, after the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps employed forced labour to improve rudimentary pre-existing canals (that had been in existence probably since the time of Pharaoh Senusret III) and created an essential thoroughfare for marine traffic, expending many lives in the process and taking 10 years.
