Getting our Wish in Suez

The Wish came through. The first ship to make it through the Suez Canal after the vital waterway was reopened after a colossal container ship was finally freed on Monday was reportedly the YM Wish.

The 1,207-foot-long, Hong Kongflagged container ship — only about 100 feet shorter than the previously wedged Ever Given — exited the southbound canal at about 9:15 p.m. Monday and proceeded to the Red Sea and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, according to The New York Times.

The ship-tracking Web site MarineTraffic.com showed more than 100 vessels traveling through the newly unclogged canal in both directions Monday night following the Wish’s successful passage.

The convoys restarted after tugs pulled the 200,000-ton Ever Given free from the spot where it ran aground on March 23.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Tuesday that the grounding had reaffirmed the importance of the waterway.

“We didn’t hope for something like this, but fate was doing its work. It showed and reaffirmed the reality and importance” of the canal, Sisi said as he greeted staff on a visit to the Suez Canal Authority in Ismailia, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, experts boarded the Ever Given as it idled Tuesday in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, seeking answers to what went wrong, causing disruptions to global trade for nearly a week.

A senior canal pilot told The Associated Press that investigators were looking for signs of damage and trying to determine the cause of the vessel’s grounding.

When blame gets assigned, it could turn into years of legal wrangling over the costs of repairing the ship, fixing the canal and reimbursing those with disrupted cargo shipments.