Amid 40-knot winds and a sandstorm, MV Ever Given ran aground on the sandy banks of the Suez Canal at around 7 40 am local time on 23 March 2021. The Japanese-built and -owned Golden-class container ship, registered in Panama and leased by Evergreen Marine, a Taiwanese transportation and shipping firm, was on its way from Malaysia to Rotterdam. As it became wedged diagonally across the line of the southern section of the canal, at its narrowest point, all maritime traffic between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea was brought to a halt. As many as 369 vessels, including other container ships, oil tankers, and bulk carriers were stranded at either Port Said (Mediterranean), Port Said (Red Sea), or at the Great Bitter Lake in between, creating maritime traffic jams. The resulting holdup of goods and oil temporarily disrupted global supply chains, at an estimated cost of £7 billion a day, and oil prices began to rise. To avoid the likelihood of prolonged and expensive delays, some vessels then chose to take a 3,100-nautical-mile detour around the Cape of Good Hope to the North Atlantic, at extra cost and adding two weeks to their journey,
Then came the good news. Even as a number of ever-gloomier scenarios were being predicted, MV Ever Given was freed on 29 March, without any reported cargo damage or marine pollution, and traffic along the Suez Canal resumed at 7 pm local time. The combined efforts of the Suez Canal Authority and a team from Smit Salvage, a Dutch firm, had led to the partial refloating of the ship during high tide. To facilitate this manoeuvre, sand and mud had been sucked up by dredgers as well as excavated from around the port side of the ship’s bow over the preceding weekend. At the same time, water was pumped out of the front end of the ship. A flotilla of thirteen tug boats was then able to pull the ship free from the canal’s western bank. This operation thereby avoided an increasingly likely and time-consuming process of lightening the ship’s load before it could be moved.
The freeing of the ship was a priority as well as a matter of national pride in Egypt, the custodian of the 120-mile long canal ever since it was nationalised in 1956. The Suez Canal, completed in November 1869 and incorporating three natural lakes, provides the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia and accounts for about 12 per cent of total global trade. The canal is is a major source of foreign currency revenue for the Egyptian government and has benefited from continued investment by its owner into its upkeep and upgrade. It is normally a reliable waterway, allowing over 18,000 ships to sail through in 2020 and without incident.
The container ship is a potent symbol of our globalised economy. It is based on the concept of intermodalism, the streamlined transfer of goods between different modes of transport, which gave birth to modular shipping. Back in 1956, American trucking business owner Malcolm McLaren first came up with the idea of modular movement of freight, using a standardised, single-size, movable metal box to transport a wide variety of goods, with refrigeration units to preserve perishable goods, An entire integrated transportation system of trucks, ships, barges, wagons, warehouses, and lifting equipment such as cranes and forklifts was then built around this new form of shipping container, each with a unique identification number, in the process revolutionising global trade.
The success of containerisation spurred the growth in size of container ships, driven by lower intermodal transport costs, economies of scale, and growing demands for energy efficiency . The 224,000-tonne MV Ever Given is just one example of the immense size of today’s mega-container ships, which can only be handled by the largest of container ports. Its 1,312-foot length is about same as the height of New York City’s iconic Empire State Building or the length of four football fields placed end-to-end. But this massive size comes at a cost. According to several authorities on shipping matters, staffing numbers and the capabilities of on-board navigation equipment have both failed to match the growing size of container ships, and this may be part of the reason why MV Ever Given ran aground in the first place.
This incident is currently under investigation, making it too early to comment on the underlying reasons. The special interest in the incident comes from its being the first accidental and unintentional closure of the Suez Canal, at a time when the global economy is so dependent on container shipping, Prior blockades in 1956, and during 1967 to 1973, were driven by political events, and global trade was interrupted only to resume anyhow via alternative routes. The high stakes of container shipping and the high financial costs of disruption have brought about an early resolution of the problem caused by MV Ever Green. It seems, however, that we may be fast approaching the limits of size when it comes to the building of ever-larger container ships, To repeat a time-worn cliché, lessons will undoubtedly be learned.
Ashis Banerjee