Last week, the cargo ship Ever Given got stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, stopping at least 420 other vessels from passing through. After six days of refloating efforts, the ship was freed, in part thanks to the Worm Supermoon raising tides enough for the ship to escape. If that sounded like gibberish to you, here’s an in-depth explanation of what happened.
What is the Suez Canal? What’s the Ever Given?
The Suez Canal is a man-made sea-level waterway in Egypt, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and allows for ships to pass between Africa and Asia. Built in 1869, the canal is one of the world’s most used shipping lanes, primarily used by container ships and tankers. Basically, it’s a shortcut between Europe and Asia, and before it was built ships had to sail all the way around the bottom of Africa. The canal is 120 miles long, 78 feet deep and 672 feet wide.
The Ever Given is a container ship which was built in 2018. It is one of 11 container ships chartered by Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine which all have names starting with “Ever G–”. It is owned by Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha, registered in Panama, and is managed by German company Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement. (Truly Mr. Worldwide out here.) It is 1,312 feet long (one of the longest ships in service), 192 feet wide at its widest point, 107 feet tall (though only 47-52 feet of the boat goes under the water) and weighed more than 200,000 tons when it got stuck. It was carrying 20,000 shipping containers.
How did the Ever Given get stuck?
On March 23, the Ever Given was passing through the Canal, heading to the Port of Rotterdam in South Holland from the Port of Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia. As it passed by the village of Manshiyet Rugola, Egypt, the ship was hit by strong winds, causing the boat to hit the bottom of the canal. The front end of the ship (the bow) became wedged in one bank of the canal, and the back end (the stern) touched the other. Egyptian meteorologists have reported that, on the day of the grounding, high winds of more than 31 miles per hour and a sandstorm affected the area where the Ever Given got stuck. An investigation into what technical or human error could have caused the ship to run aground is still underway.
Why didn’t they just…?
Several memes came out in the week the ship was stuck, describing ways the Ever Given could be removed from the canal. One of them joked that a rope could be attached to each end of the ship, and then those ropes would be pulled by two trucks driving in opposite directions, which would pull the ship free. In reality, it took at least eight tugboats, a Komatsu excavator, and a particular phase of the moon to refloat the Ever Given.
Wait, the moon?
If you looked at the moon on Sunday and Monday of this week, you may have noticed the moon looked bigger than usual. That’s because this year’s first supermoon, the “Worm” supermoon, was visible on those days. A supermoon means the moon was slightly closer to the Earth. (It’s called the Worm supermoon because Native American tribes in the South U.S. call it that, due to it falling around the time that worm casts start becoming visible.) Because the moon was closer to the earth, and the moon is what controls the Earth’s tides, the supermoon caused a high tide that was 18 inches above the normal high tide, helping the Ever Given refloat. This, along with the human efforts, freed the boat.
Put it back?
As the Ever Given was freed from the Suez Canal, #putitback started trending on Twitter, with many people joking that the Ever Given should get stuck again, or a new ship should get stuck to take its place. Twitter user @SICKOFWOLVES yelled, “THERE WAS SOMETHING DEEPLY COMFORTING ABOUT THE BOAT BEING STUCK AND I WOULD APPRECIATE IT IF THEY COULD PUT IT BACK.”
Unfortunately, as funny as it would be to restick the ship, it’s not economically viable. The Ever Given getting stuck cost Egypt between $12 million and $15 million a day, and blocked hundreds of other cargo ships, which backed up the deliveries those ships were meant to make. Now that the Ever Given has been refloated and cleared to continue its journey, other ships, such as the YM Wish, are now free to sail through the canal. Hopefully, none of them will get stuck, but it would be really funny if they did.
Categories: Opinion
Leave a Reply