Ship freed in Suez Canal, allowing waterway to reopen
BEIRUT — The giant container ship that had plugged the Suez Canal for nearly a week was dragged off the channel’s banks and refloated Monday, allowing ships to once again traverse the 120-mile vital waterway and easing fears of a major, prolonged disruption to world trade.
The Ever Given had been trapped in the canal since Tuesday after its ends ran aground on opposite banks, blocking passage to hundreds of vessels and putting an Empire-State-Buildingsized obstruction in a canal that handles about a tenth of global maritime commercial traffic.
“I am excited to announce that our team of experts, working in close collaboration with the Suez Canal Authority, successfully refloated the Ever Given on 29 March at 15:05 hrs local time, thereby making free passage through the Suez Canal possible again,” Peter Berdowski, chief executive of the Dutch salvage firm Boskalis, said in a statement. “I’m extremely proud of the outstanding job done by the team on site as well as the many SMIT Salvage and Boskalis colleagues back home to complete this challenging operation under the watchful eye of the world.”
Leth Agencies, which offers services to ships transiting the canal, was more succinct in a tweet Monday afternoon: “M/V EVER GIVEN is no longer #grounded.”
Later it said that vessels had resumed transit, with 43 departing the Great Bitter Lake, a wide section of the canal used as a waiting area during the crisis. Dozens of other ships would then enter from Port Said for a southbound journey across the channel.
The full dislodging of the 200,000-ton vessel — a socalled ultra-large container ship — came after a lastditch effort that took hours after the ship was already partially refloated earlier Monday.
Overnight Sunday, 10 tugboats had pulled the ship from four different directions, the Egyptian staterun Suez Canal Authority said. But it was the tide, drawn by a full moon, that may have been the decisive factor in the partial refloating: At about 4:30 a.m. local time, with water levels rising in the area, the megaship was “successfully refloated,” Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, the authority’s chief, said in a statement Monday.
He added that the ship had responded to the tugboats’ maneuvers, forcing what he said was a “restoration of 80% of the vessel’s direction” and swinging the stern of the vessel so that it was roughly 332 feet from the western bank of the canal.
The rising tide proved crucial again later Monday morning when workers were finally able to jerk the ship completely off both banks.
Live video broadcast by local media outlet eXtra News showed the ship traveling at a stately pace amid a flotilla of tugboats, like a mammoth among chihuahuas. It is now berthed at the Great Bitter Lake and awaiting technical inspection.
Videos posted on social media earlier Monday showed the tugboats blaring their horns in raucous celebration as the Ever Given appeared to swing out into the canal during the partial refloating. But the bulbous section below the Ever Given’s prow remained stuck on the rockcovered bank.
Still, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi didn’t wait for the full refloating before striking a celebratory tone in a speech in which he lauded Egyptians for “ending the crisis … despite the massive technical complications that surrounded this operation from every side.” He added that the “whole world is assured of the passageway of its goods and requirements.”
Under normal circumstances, more than 50 ships per day bearing all kinds of cargo — including tea, TVs, livestock and furniture — cross the waterway linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. By Monday morning, about 370 vessels were waiting at the Suez Canal’s southern and northern entrances, Leth Agencies said.
That backup included ships carrying oil and gas shipments crucial for several Middle Eastern countries.