By now, all of you have heard about the giant container ship, stuck sideways in the Suez Canal and various attempts to dislodge and re-float it. The vessel ran aground in the Suez Canal at around 8 am local time on Tuesday March 23 and attempts to free it so far have been unsuccessful. Experts fear that it might take several days, even weeks, to unblock the canal and restore normal operations.
The 400 m long container ship EVER GIVEN, was built in 2018, and is currently leased by Evergreen Marine Corp from the Japanese company Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd. It is currently sailing under the flag of Panama and was en route to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The container ship is longer than the width of the Suez canal which is about 313 m.
Here is a satellite image of the ship in its current stuck position.
Here is the full route of EVER GIVEN; its previous stop was at the port of Tanjung Pelepas in Indonesia.
The picture in the first image was taken from the container ship MAERSK DENVER, which was right behind EVER GIVEN. Looks like all of the ships in that section of the canal have now been towed out of the canal, including the MAERSK DENVER, as seen in the map below.
Of course, there are many ships stuck in the traffic jam North and South of the Suez Canal. Some of them might decide to re-route around Africa.
How did the ship end up like this?
The Taiwanese company www.evergreen-line.com which operates the ship said that “gusting winds of 30 knots caused the container ship to deviate from its course, suspectedly leading to the grounding.” Other reports mention a dust storm and low visibility. Another report attributed the accident to a (power) blackout on the vessel, as posted on the website of the shipping agent GAC Egypt. That post has now been deleted. As is required for all transits, there were two experienced canal pilots from the Suez Canal authority onboard the vessel. The ship's 25-member crew (all crew members are Indian nationals) are safe and sound.
Brendan Greely at ft.com explains the bank effect which could have contributed to the mishap. When a ship gets too close to the bank, it displaces water and causes pressure differentials, which make the rear of the vessel rotate towards the bank. Larger ships make the effect stronger. There was a strong wind from the West Tuesday morning, which the pilot probably compensated for by heading slightly to the left, into the wind. Just before the mishap, the (big fat) ship lurched left, perhaps because of a lull in the wind. The bank effect came into place, the ship rotated right and soon thereafter ploughed into the right bank; the stern kept rotating until it hit the left bank. I am guessing that the pilot did not notice the rotation due to poor visibility or did not react fast enough.
Some more images of the front of the gigantic grounded ship -
How to refloat the stuck giant ship?
Dislodging the ship will be a difficult task. The cross-section of the canal is as shown below — it is wedge shaped, not U shaped; the depth of the canal gradually decreases towards its banks. EVER GIVEN is about 400 m long, 59 m wide and 15.7 m deep, while the canal is 313 m wide and 24 m deep at its deepest point. The canal is only 225 m wide where the depth is 11 m or more. The bow and stern of the ship are both wedged into the sandy sloped banks on either side of the canal.
Excavators have been hard at work, clearing some of the sand around the bulbous bow, while tugboats have been trying to pull the ship loose.
But as you can see from the image below and the red colored part of the ship near the water line, the front of the ship is severely impaled into the sloping bank and has risen several feet. It is very much like a beached giant whale. It will probably take lot more than that tiny excavator and a few tugboats to loosen the ship. But it was worth a try, until the heavy equipment arrives.
Dredging and heavy lift experts Boskalis sent a team this morning to the site and are evaluating the situation.
As reported in nos.nl/… , CEO Peter Berdowski said that it might take days or weeks to free the ship as it is not really possible to pull loose the ship.
According to Berdowski, next steps might include removing water, oil and perhaps containers to lighten the load. Dredging the sand around the bottom of the vessel would also help. He added — “But the more secure the ship is, the longer an operation will take. It can take days to weeks. Also consider bringing in all the equipment we need, that's not around the corner."
High tide on Sunday and Monday, if we wait that long, might also lend a hand.
A similar salvage operation in the past
The container ship CSCL Indian Ocean (similar in size to the EVER GIVEN, 19,100 TEUs) got similarly stuck in a sandbank in the River Elbe , while approaching Hamburg, Germany on Feb 3, 2016. Took 6 days to free her, undamaged, in a salvage operation during spring tide. Required unloading her fuel (6,000 tons) and 12 tugboats with a combined bollard pull of over 1,000 tons. Two Boskalis dredgers removed 65,000 cubic meters of sediment near the vessel. Tugs from SMIT Salvage (a subsidiary of Boskalis), Fairmount and Kotug Offshore participated in the salvage effort. Containers were not removed, but that would have been the next step, had the operation failed. www.maritime-executive.com/...
About Container ships and the Suez Canal
Here is what a large container ship looks like. Standard 20 foot and 40 foot containers are neatly stacked below and above the deck. The containers are around 8 feet wide and 8.5 feet tall. The EVER GIVEN is one of the larger ships and is capable of carrying 20,388 TEUs (Twenty foot (container) Equivalent Units) with a gross tonnage of 219,079. Containers are temperature and humidity controlled as requested by customers.
The bulbous bow shown below modifies the water flow around the hull and helps reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency, range, speed and stability.
On an average day, over 60 vessels traverse the 193 km length of the Suez canal, ferrying billions of dollars worth of goods every day across countries. It takes 12 to 16 hours to transit the canal. Lloyd’s values the canal’s westbound traffic at roughly $5.1 billion a day, and eastbound traffic at around $4.5 billion a day. Approximately 12% of total global trade transits the canal. A prolonged blockage will have economic repercussions around the world.
While you ponder about how you might free this ship, here is a fascinating video of a trip through the Suez canal in a container ship. The EVER GIVEN accident location is around the 2:43 mark in the video.
Here is another beautifully crafted video by Jeff which takes you on a longer trip including stops for loading and unloading at ports.
There is a whole world out there outside our personal experiences where these giant container ships transport our food, energy, clothes, furniture, cars, iPhones and medical supplies across the oceans, more efficiently than ever before (yes, that means fewer jobs).
What do you think? Do you have any ideas on how one should go about dislodging this ship? Surely, you have fixed a sticky situation before ;)