Thread: For those who stopped following once the ship was floating again, the troubles of the giant container ship Ever Given did not end on March 29. Here's a rundown of what has happened since. #SuezCanal
Once the behemoth ship was dug free from the banks of the #SuezCanal, Egypt's Suez Canal Authority impounded the ship and detained it in the Great Bitter Lake that lies between the northern and southern stretches of Canal. It has been there ever since.
goo.gl/maps/tSbavyLBp…
Initially, the Suez Canal Authority claimed $916 million in damages against Shoei Kisin, the Japanese company that owns the Ever Given. The company and the ship's insurer, UK Club, have been negotiating with the SCA over this compensation claim for weeks.
reuters.com/world/middle-e…
While all of this is happening, most of the 25-member Indian crew of the vessel are effectively trapped on the ship. Five of them whose contracts were up in April were allowed to leave, but the rest will likely have to remain as the case works its way through Egyptian courts.
The compensation suit turns on competing accounts of how and why the ship turned off course and ran aground. Both sides seem to agree that high winds and sandstorms were part of the problem, but that turns out not to be the whole story.
The Suez Canal is notoriously difficult to navigate, all the more so in a gigantic containership. As various news outlets discovered at the time of the disaster, many captains undergo special training at a special mini model of the Canal in France:
reuters.com/lifestyle/oddl…
(My own favorite account of the miniature Suez Canal at the Port Revel training facility appears in John McPhee's wonderful book Uncommon Carriers.)
google.com/books/edition/…
Special training alone, however, isn't enough to cover all the risks and hazards of moving such big ships through such a narrow waterway. So the Suez Canal Authority carefully regulates traffic and manages its own fleet of pilots and tugboats to help guide ships through.
The compensation suit turns on these details of how the Suez Canal operates as a complex technical system. The ship's lawyers have argued that the SCA was actually at fault for allowing the Ever Given to enter the Canal in such bad weather.
theguardian.com/world/2021/may…
The Canal Authority's legal team has responded by alleging--through use of recordings from the ship--that the Ever Given's captain lost control of the ship, running it too fast into the Canal and issuing a rapid series of orders to turn the ship back and forth to correct course.
Here's an article on that allegation from the Canal authority:
wsj.com/articles/egypt…
UK Club, the Ever Given's insurer, then responded with a statement that the Canal Authority controls the speed and route of ships through the Canal and that responsibility for any such errors did not lie with the ship's captain.
gcaptain.com/ever-given-ins…
Along the way in these mutual recriminations, the Egyptian government has lowered its claim for damages by $300 million. But the legal battle is still ongoing.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has announced plans to extend the second lane of the Canal that was excavated at the behest of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi as one of his first major projects after the coup of 2013 that brought him to power.
cnn.com/2021/05/31/afr…
To help with that new extension project, Egypt now owns the largest dredging machine in the Middle East, the Mohab Mamish, named for the close confidant of al-Sisi's who ran the SCA when the first stretch of the second lane was dug back in 2014.
dredgingtoday.com/2021/05/17/dre…
As Egypt attempts to regain the confidence of global shippers, its competitors continue to press the case for alternative routes. Most notably, Russia continues to tout the virtues of both the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Northern Sea Route.
aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/9/…
That's about it for now. I'll keep adding details here as they appear. /End
Something of a non sequitur, but in the mail last night I found the latest addition to the Suez source hoard. And I must say that the aesthetic sensibilities of the Suez Canal Authority in the heyday of the United Arab Republic were lovely:
P.S. For those interested in the not-so-recent history of the Canal and its role in making our world hotter, more unequal, and, for many peoples, less free, here's a piece I wrote a couple months ago:
publicseminar.org/essays/the-wor…
New installment of "Know Your Giant Dredgers": Egypt has ordered a sister vessel to the Mohab Mamish from the Dutch firm @royalihc, this one named for Hussein Tantawi, the geriatric field marshal who headed the Supreme Council of Armed Forces in 2011-12.
almasryalyoum.com/news/details/2…
For a reminder of the long and fraught relationship between the Suez Canal and the forces of counter-revolution, one need look no further than the names Egypt's military dictatorship gives to the machines it is using to expand the waterway.
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