Giant ship finally freed, reopening critical channel
SUEZ, Egypt — Salvage teams on Monday freed a colossal container ship stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, ending a crisis that had clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways and halted billions of dollars a day in maritime commerce.
Helped by high tide, a flotilla of tugboats wrenched the bulbous bow of the skyscrapersized Ever Given from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been firmly lodged since March 23.
The tugs blared their horns in jubilation as they guided the Ever Given through the water after days of futility that had captivated the world. The giant vessel headed toward the Great Bitter Lake, a wide stretch of water halfway between the north and south ends of the canal, where it will be inspected, said Evergreen Marine Corp., a Taiwan shipping company that operates the ship.
“We pulled it off!” Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said in a statement. “I am excited to announce that our team of experts, working in close collaboration with the Suez Canal Authority, successfully refloated the Ever Given.”
Buffeted by a sandstorm, the Ever Given had crashed into a bank of a singlelane stretch of the canal 3.7 miles north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez. That created a major maritime traffic jam that held up $9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic.
At least 367 vessels, carrying everything from crude oil to cattle, are backed up as they wait to traverse the canal. Dozens of others have taken the long, alternate route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip — a 3,100mile detour that costs ships hundreds of thousands of dollars in fuel and other costs.
Egypt, which considers the canal a source of national pride and crucial revenue, already has lost more than $95 million in tolls, according to the data firm Refinitiv.
In the village of Amer, which overlooks the canal, residents cheered as the vessel moved along.
“Mission accomplished,” villager Abdalla Ramadan said. “The whole world is relieved.”
While the canal is now unblocked, it is unclear when traffic would return to normal. Analysts expect it could take at least another 10 days to clear the backlog on either end.
The breakthrough came after days of immense effort with an elite salvage team from the Netherlands. Tugboats pushed and pulled to budge the the behemoth from the shore, their work buoyed by high tide at dawn Monday that resulted in the vessel’s partial refloating.