High tide did more than anything. If it had gone beyond Wednesday they likely would have been screwed as the high tide was set to start dropping each day after Tuesday. Good thing they started dredging right away.
I’d be surprised if they aimed for their ship to arrive n days before the spring tide in case it got stuck. That just doesn’t sound like an efficient operation. In this case the luck was that the high tides were relatively high when it was stuck. If we were in a neap tide, we might have had to wait longer for a high enough tide to get the ship out. (But maybe if tides were lower it wouldn’t have gotten so stuck)
P.S. it isn’t exactly clear what you mean by mariner, but plenty of sailors in the Mediterranean don’t really need to care about tides as they don’t really get them there. Indeed, you shouldn’t trust any of the early modern Greek or Italian treatises attempting to explain tides as their authors didn’t really know how tides actually behaved outside the Med.
> I’d be surprised if they aimed for their ship to arrive n days before the spring tide in case it got stuck.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that after the ship got stuck, they certainly incorporated the tides into their plan for how to unstick it. If the tides had been less amenable, they would have come up with a different plan.
So their plan didn't get "lucky", their plan was predicated on the tides being part of the solution.
Without the high tides the amount of material needed to be removed would have been dramatically higher.
That’s the point and the absolute bit of luck. Without the high tides they likely wouldn’t have been able to get it unstuck as quickly. Search for slope/fill volume calculation charts - the amount of fill required to be removed as you go deeper is logarithmic, NOT linear.
It was VERY lucky they had the highest tides possible.
What? Tide mattered more now because it had a significant impact on getting it out quickly.
Luckily it wasn’t nearly as high when it beached itself - but if it had beached itself on the downslope of the peak tide instead of the upslope it very likely would still be stuck!
Tide when it crashed was not nearly as significant as when it got free.
I disagree, i think you got that backwards - the tide level at the time of the beaching has surely had an effect on at what point it started plowing and was being decelerated and subsequently how far in absolute numbers evergreen went into the rim.
Imagine getting stuck during spring tide vs low tide hich is more than 2m lower and would have decelerated the ever given earlier
Sure but the luck here is the number of days until a sufficiently high tide. Imagine a simple model where every 28 days you get a sufficiently high tide and every other day is not sufficiently high, and the ship gets stuck (after high tide) on a uniformly random day. Then the expected time until the ship is unstuck is 14.5 days and the luck is how close you are to the time the ship can get free.
The "spring tide", the highest of the high tides, naturally occurs twice every 28 days. This is when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a line. So the average wait would have been ~7 days.
Ship captains who sail on open ocean are well aware of tides. It is not too difficult to imagine somebody did 2+2 and figured out the tides are getting higher so in couple of days there is going to be better chance of freeing it.
Obviously they did not plan it. It is just an opportunity they used.
I think you and the other poster are saying different things. You are saying it’s fortunate that a spring tide was coming and you are right. I think grand parent is saying that sailors are well aware of tides and as soon as the ship got stuck they would have been racing to meet the spring tide, which was planning and not luck.
They built a computer model to try and manage the stress on the ship as they worked to free it. It was not straightforward as the ship could have broken if they weren't extremely careful. They also had divers inspecting the hull for signs of stress. This was a massive, complex operation.
It's like the guy at a bar who tells you he knows how to swordfight after doing fencing. I'm sure he's right but it just funny from an official with experience basically saying "it wasn't that hard."
Boskalis is the company who brought the tugboats, engineers, diggers and whatnot over there in days. This is not a random guy commenting. This is an end-boss in charge of the entire operation.
They brought over a few tugs, but the large majority were Egyptian. Not belittling Boskalis' work in the operation, but don't think that the Egyptians don't understand maritime operations in the canal.
And I'm guessing that the operation was overseen by the Suez Canal administration, not Boskalis. Not saying that there wasn't delegation, but I'm guessing a joint management operation between the canal, the ship's management, the salvage operator and the local ship captains.
I'm sorry if it sounded like Boskalis "saved the day". I was trying to make the point that his is not a random internet person commenting on stuff. Not trying to imply that he's the one running the entire operation.
Can you image if the hull did weaken to the point of near failure? They might have needed to offload everything right there where it ran aground, lest it completely fail uncontrolled. The canal would be closed for a very long time. Luckily they didn't have to make that call.
The beauty of steel is that it will yield plastically beyond its normal design stress. It would have been possible for them to damage the ship to the point where it required significant repairs but still be capable of exiting the canal.
Luckily, indeed — but they were already planning for this contingency. Apparently (and unsurprisingly) it was going to be hard to find a large enough crane to move the containers.
It's easy for me to throw together a small house, shed or bridge, but chances are whatever I build -- if it doesn't immediately collapse -- is horribly overbuilt for its purpose, because I don't know how to calculate and analyze the various stresses and material capacities well enough to size everything to a proper margin. So when I build a bridge I use lumber that is bigger than I think I need and use more of it than I think I need until it feels quite solid, but if I were a proper engineer I could figure out the exact right amount to use.
I'd guess figuring out where you can safely attach the tug boats, monitoring stability and stresses on the container ship and so on is non-trivial, too.
If you fuck up bad enough those containers end up landing on the tugs, killing the crews. Not to mention increasing the quantity of stuff blocking the canal.
What I wonder about: how is such a rescue contract negotiated? There is likely willingness to pay, but it is difficult to judge what a reasonable price is, and it may not even be clear who is culpable in advance. Do they have contracts in advance with the shipping companies?
In contract salvage the owner of the property and salvor enter into a salvage contract prior to the commencement of salvage operations and the amount that the salvor is paid is determined by the contract. This can be a fixed amount, based on a "time and materials" basis, or any other terms that both parties agree to. The contract may also state that payment is only due if the salvage operation is successful (a.k.a. "No Cure, No Pay"), or that payment is due even if the operation is not successful. By far the commonest single form of salvage contract internationally is Lloyd's Standard Form of Salvage Agreement (2011), an English law arbitration agreement administered by the Council of Lloyd's, London.
I would assume that Egypt paid. They have by far the biggest incentive to clear the canal asap. They will presumably now enter a lengthy legal dispute to try and get their money back from the shipping company.
My understanding is that the Suez Canal Authority will have to pay, but also that the SCA requires the use of "pilot" captains that maneuver the boats through the canal, which means that the issue was squarely the fault of the SCA.
About the cargo part - it's entirely possible that some cargo is non-viable. It is going to be onboard days longer than predicted. Anything even faintly perishable may be degraded.
It's already a trip halfway around the world at something like 30 km/h. If you're transporting goods that are that sensitive, you're likely doing it by air already. Ships get delayed all the time for various reasons.
> It's already a trip halfway around the world at something like 30 km/h
This sounds slow at first, but, since you can drive pretty much 24/7, that's still 720km per day. If you're literally going halfway around the world (20.000km), you'll be there in 28 days. Since you drive on water, you'll do few small detours (I assume), so you can actually get those 700km a day.
EU<->China even appears to be "only" 7000 km [0], so if you could drive in a straight line you could get there in 10 days. 14 with usual delays and detours, maybe. That's a reasonable time span for a lot of perishable goods. With the blockage doubling that time, I can easily see how this would affect quite a few goods.
The ship will still likely be anchored for hull inspection, perhaps in Bitter Lake. That may take a couple of days at best, and an indefinite stranding if serious problems are discovered.
Also crew change is likely because of on-going investigations, and that will be tricky with the on-going mariner crunch. There's not a lot who are qualified to run a ULCV, especially one straight out of an accident.
I think those were unloaded during the ‘delay’. If they weren’t, I guess the Wikipedia page would have mentioned something about life on the Münsterland, carrying eggs and fruit.
I would assume any perishable cargo was quickly lost to spoilage during the ongoing conflict and the rest of the cargo just staying there. There are actually interesting stories about how the crews of the stack ships got to know each other and how they spent their time during the uncertain time after the channel became impassable - they did theater plays, did sports competitions, fished for food, etc.
Over time as the political situation cleared up a bit most of the crew members were repatriated with just a periodically rotated skeleton crew watching over the ships staying behind.
Container ships can easily have an unpredicted wait of 1-2 weeks just entering port, happens all the time and isn't major news. Few days in the Suez canal isn't going to do anything to cargo.
While the Ever Given may not have an issue, the HAJH AMINA which is waiting in the Great Bitter Lake is a livestock carrier that should have been unloading in port yesterday.
Sure but the same principles apply - delays happen, and livestock ships are equipped to keep livestock alive with food and water well stocked in case they can't enter port for days(which again, happens all the time, sometimes papers aren't exactly right and the livestock has to wait on the ship until cleared for offloading)
The shipping of livestock is controversial here in NZ and some (likely high) estimates suggest a death rate of as much as 1 in 10.
The issues are pretty closely tied to conditions at the other end of shipping (feedlots, slaughterhouses etc) as well as the shipping though.
I've seen this ship mentioned a couple of times. I kind of assume the subtext is that we should stop sending live animals by ship (except for perhaps specialist and breading stock), which I totally agree with, as much for the dangers of spreading disease as for an ethical concern for the animals involved.
- A sunken super container ship in the canal, rather than a floating one. Removing the wreckage would be at least an order of magnitude more work than floating the thing away.
- Thousands of containers floating / sunk in the canal. How much damage can one of those do to the propeller of a ship?
Thank you, I know it's a dumb question. Wondering about the cost/effectiveness of demolition of the ship vs the daily costs of having the canal blocked. I thought it might be like using explosives to dispose of whale carcasses.
- without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo
- without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship
- without taking multiple weeks
- without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world
It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.