You may have heard this story about the cargo vessel Ever Given:
More than 400 vessels were left waiting at either end of the canal when the 400m-long Ever Given became wedged across it on 23 March.
But Egypt's Suez Canal Authority says the shipping traffic jam is now over.
Officials have opened an investigation into the incident and expect to made their findings public early next week.
The results could have major legal repercussions, as various parties seek to recoup the costs of the repairs to the ship and the canal, as well as the salvage operation.
About 12% of global trade passes through the 193km (120-mile) canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and provides the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe.
The cause of the grounding of the Ever Given is under investigation but… just kidding!
No reason to investigate, we know the cause:
Egypt's First Woman Ship Captain Marwa Elselehdar Blamed For Suez Canal Blockage Despite Not Being On Boat
Elizabeth Blackstock/ Jalopnik
April 4, 2021
The saga of the Ever Given was a beautiful one while it lasted—is there anything funnier than a large boat getting stuck in the narrow Suez Canal?—but it’s had lasting supply chain effects that are pretty miserable. And that’s not even as bad as the flack that one woman—Marwa Elselehdar—is getting for a role she didn’t even play in the event.
Elselehdar, 29, is Egypt’s first-ever female ship captain, and when the Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal, she realized that people were placing her at the center of the fiasco. People were using social media to share a doctored screenshot of an Arab Times headline that claimed she was at the helm of the ship at the time it was stuck…
The news came as a shock to Elselehdar, who was working as a first mate on the Aida IV vessel near Alexandria, which is hundreds of miles away.
It’s a mystery as to why the first female ship’s captain in Egypt would be associated with the mishap.
It’s a puzzler all right…
About sexism in the workplace Why do we have very few women in the maritime industry?
Rohey Samba/ The Standard
NOVEMBER 23, 2018
To begin with, and I won’t beat about the bush with this one, the reason we have very few women in the maritime industry is obvious. The men don’t want us, women, there. It is a boy’s club. Whilst gender activists may call for the gender neutral term seafarer for all they want, the term seaman remains the most used term ever, even with the promulgation of the term seafarer by the International Convention on the Standards for Training Certification & Watch keeping (STCW 95) and the Maritime Labour Convention 2000 among others. Ladies are not given the same level of training, yet their competence is continually questioned, especially in third world countries like ours where we struggle to get cadetship training on board ships owned by good shipping companies. Where women secure placement as cadets in shipping companies, there are usually no measures in place to guarantee their protections against the male seafarers/superiors on board ship. Rapes, molestations and other sexually deviant behaviours, which result in slut shaming of female cadets are not unheard of. Thus I conclude by noting that women seafarers are not given a level playing field, yet their credentials are steadily quizzed.