Middle East

Tugs, tides and 200,000 tons: experts fear Ever Given may be stuck in Suez for weeks


Dredge and pull, dredge and pull. Dislodging a vessel that has become lodged in sand is simple, in theory. If the vessel is as long as New York’s Empire State building is tall, then the process gets more complicated.

Dredgers, tugboats and excavators, guided by world-leading consultants in salvaging ships, have been working for days to free the 220,000 tons, 400 metre-long Ever Given that became stuck in the Suez canal last Tuesday.

It has created a jam of more than 200 vessels in one of the world’s key trade lanes. The ripple effect on shipping may be felt for weeks – and longer if the Japanese-owned “megaship” cannot be dislodged any time soon.

, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), Osama Rabie, said that work to dislodge the ship was continuing and had so far allowed its stern and rudder to move and its propeller to restart. But the changing tide had jammed the equipment once again.

“The type of soil we’re dealing with is very difficult to manage, as are the tides which affect the vessel due to its size and its cargo load,” he said. Asked when the ship could be afloat again, Rabie suggested it was possible “today or tomorrow, depending on the ship’s responsiveness to the tides”.

A key hurdle has been the sheer size and weight of the enormous vessel, part of a class of container ships that has ballooned in size over the past two decades, partly due to the proliferation of “just in time” logistical models that keep companies lean, efficient and reliant on fast deliveries from factories and warehouses overseas.

The experts brought in to free the vessel, the Dutch company SMIT Salvage and Japanese specialists Nippon Salvage, have been working to dislodge tens of thousands of cubic metres of earth around the stricken vessel, as tugboats help to pull it free.

“These are the experts, but it took them three days to get into country, now they have to find these large tugboats and get them to the canal, they’re not positioned there,” said Captain John Konrad, a maritime expert and the founder of maritime news-site gCaptain.

The refloating process, he explained, will likely involve a manoeuvre called a “backwards twist,” using large tugboats to rotate the ship counterclockwise and dislodge it from the bank after dredging sand from around the bow.

A view from above of the Ever Given ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal.
The Ever Given ship, stuck sideways in the Suez Canal. Photograph: Maxar Technologies/AP

The technical management company of Ever Given, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, said in a statement on Friday that a specialised suction-dredger designed to shift 2,000 cubic metres of sand every hour had arrived on site the day before. “The focus is now on dredging to remove sand and mud from around the port side of the vessel’s bow,” they added.

This was taking place alongside efforts to source high-capacity pumps to remove water from the front of the vessel, including its bow thruster room at the very bottom tip. The SCA said that between 15,000 and 20,000 cubic metres of sand would need to be dredged from the bank of the canal.

Should the pulling and dredging fail, one of the worst-case scenarios would be that the vessel must be relieved of some of the around 20,000 containers it is carrying, a process Konrad said would involve bringing in specialised cranes and other equipment and would likely extend the timeline by weeks.

“The containers are a problem as they’re stacked so tall – there aren’t many cranes in the world that can reach that high,” he said. “You need very big and heavy equipment, and you can’t fly it in. You have to put a crane on a barge and bring it in, as there isn’t capacity nearby. The tugboats, the barge and the crane, all the equipment needs to come in from both sides, but there’s no room in the canal for them to move it through.”

Experts also point to the Ever Given’s position, with its bow and stern stuck in opposite banks of the canal, as a potential source of further problems.

“The vessel is in a precarious position, it’s hanging by its ends,” said Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner, maritime historian, and associate professor at Campbell University in North Carolina. This position, exacerbated by lowering tides, can stress the body of the ship along its length, potentially causing cracks that can lead to further problems including the ship leaking fuel.

“I have some reservations about the Egyptians just wantonly dredging alongside the vessel. Removing the dirt alongside the vessel sounds like a great idea. But what a salvage team would want to do is assess exactly what condition the vessel is in first,” he said.

“You don’t want the ship to crack, you don’t want it to, heaven forbid, break in half, because you do something wrong. If you start dredging without really doing a survey, you run the risk of the vessel doing something unexpected. And when I say unexpected, that’s a nice way to say roll, crack or break.”



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