Ship grounding refers to a process in which a ship is deliberately laid ashore or grounded in shallow water to land crew or cargo or for repair or maintenance. In some exceptional cases, the ship accidentally hits the shore and it is called “running aground”. However, a recent “running aground” of a ship in the Suez Canal blocked it completely causing unprecedented upheaval in container ship traffic, tremors in global supply chains and countless memes on social media that broke the internet. Could such a thing happen in today’s age and time?
It was difficult to grasp how one ship could hold trade between Europe and Asia to ransom. Let us try to understand the gigantic expanse of shipping trade and its yet-to-be-resolved limitations. Information about the Suez and the science behind container ship dynamics will also aid our comprehension of this accident that shook the world.
WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY?
The Ever Given is one of the largest Golden Class container ships in the world. The standard intermodal container is designated as 20 feet long (6.1 m) and 8 feet (2.44 m) wide. Based on this inexact division of cargo capacity, a unit called “twenty-foot equivalent unit” (TEU) has been derived that measures the container ship’s capacity.
The Ever Given capacity is 20,124 TEU. On 23 March 2021, it ran aground while travelling from Tamjung Pelepas (Malaysia) to Rotterdam (the Netherlands). The transnational nature of the Ever Given can be appreciated if we realise that it was built and owned by the Japanese, leased to the Taiwanese, registered in Panama (the Ever Given carried a Panamanian flag) under the technical management of a German company but was being navigated by an all Indian crew when it was laid ashore.
According to experts, navigating a boat and steering a car is completely different. On a boat, you don’t always go where you are pointed. Evergreen Marine, the company that operates the Ever Given told the media that the ship was “suspected to have met with a sudden gust of strong wind, which caused the ship’s body to veer from its course and accidentally run aground”.
Although it is not uncommon for ships to hit the shore, only to be tugged away later, in this instance hauling the Ever Given stretching about 1300 feet long approximately equal to the height of the Empire State Building and weighing around 200,000 metric tons, was not going to be an easy task. The other difficulty was that the area in which the ship hit the canal bank is made of ripraps, which are stacked boulders that catch waves and protect the sand and mud from being eroded.
What happened on that fateful Wednesday was that the Ever Given barged through the riprap jamming its bow bulb (front of the ship that remains below the waterline) in the soft sand. This was more than grounding; it was almost like being trapped and bolted by a net of boulders. It swerved and placed itself in such a way that the entire canal was blocked and there was no way a single ship could pass through.
The Ever Given was finally set free on 29 March 2021, six days after it blocked the Suez Canal. The ship insurers and the Suez Canal authorities called the largest tugboats, diggers, front-end loaders and the best ship salvage experts from the Netherlands. Experts say it was a combination of the sun, full moon and an extraordinary high tide that finally helped the ship escape from the clutches of the riprap and be pulled away to resume its onward journey.
THE NEO SUEZ CRISIS
After President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal (July 1956) that was earlier owned by France and Britain, Israel attacked and captured the Sinai peninsula after which British and French paratroopers landed on the Suez Canal only to be confronted by Egyptian forces. The Egyptians effectively blocked the canal and so all-shipping traffic was closed from October 1956 until March 1957. Global geopolitics changed forever after that and in the words of a historian – “the crisis signified the end of Great Britain’s role as one of the world’s major powers”.
The Suez Canal (Qanatus-Suways in Arabic) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. It offers a direct route through the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans through the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans. The Suez Canal reduces the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres. The canal was constructed from 1859 to 1869 under the regional authority of the Ottoman Empire. The length of the waterway is 193 kilometres. More than 18500 ships passed the canal in 2020 (about 51 per day on average).
According to the New York Times and other media agencies, the Suez Canal carries 12% of the world trade, 7% of the world oil and 30% of the daily container traffic. The supply chain impact because of the blockade was of goods worth around $ 9.6 billion daily and trade losses of around $ 6-10 billion a week. Some estimated that a huge backlog of ships was developing on both sides of the canal and that ripple effect on the global supply chain would last months.
The Suez Canal also supports the Egyptian economy by about $ 5 billion annually through toll-collections. The neo Suez crisis was surely a “hand of God’ that showed how a simple accident can bring the global logistics ecosystem on its knees. On a lighter note the thousands of memes that broke the internet showing images of a tiny digger trying to clear the way for a gigantic container, showed the creative nature of social media that used the occasion to drive homes themes ranging from motivation to nationalism.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
In the container / merchant ship business, there are the ship owners and charterers who want to lease ships for a specified period. Historically, hiccups in the global supply have raised the freight rates and profits of ship owners. The entire Suez episode brought home the fact that container-shipping routes that affect global supply chains pass through critical chokepoints.
Can such an accident happen again? Because of hydrodynamics, ships can no longer get longer. They can only get wider and one can stack them taller. However, this exposes them even more to the vagaries of strong wind and their control is not easy, especially at such narrow chokepoints as the Suez.
If we analyse the situation from a theistic perspective, it is an affirmation of the fact that man is helpless before God despite all claims of “conquering the skies and the oceans”. And, yet we continue to wallow in our denial of the Creator and His right to frame and regulate our lives through his immutable laws. This condition is best described by the Holy Qur’ān as – “Or as darkness on a vast, abysmal sea. There covereth him a wave, above which is a wave, above which is a cloud. Layer upon layer of darkness. When he holdeth out his hand he scarce can see it. And he for whom Allah hath not appointed light, for him there is no light.” (Surah An-Nur, verse 40)