Ever Given, Ever Taken Away

Ever Given, Ever Taken Away

Okay, music fades in. [Music] My friend, let me weave you a tale of a windswept night beyond the old Egyptian sands. Where the water plays koi with the shore and the koi are sure to play in the water. Where the desert wolves make love to the moon. [Music] Each exterior day. This is the Suez Canal. Undeniably Egypt’s most famous body of water. Nothing bad ever happens here. Oh, except for that one time. Oh. Um, okay. Okay, so there’s a there’s a ship and it’s called the Evergiven and it’s going up the sewish canal really really fast probably and you think that well the port authority would call up and they’d be like captain you are going way too fast but the captain he’s wicked sit cool so he’s like they’re just jealous of my passion for going fast through critical trade infrastructure increase speed if you will not slow down prepare to meet the full might of the Egyptian military. Two of Egypt’s fastest fighter jets scramble on the runway. But the captain kept adding power faster. The people of Europe need these Chinese knockoffs of European goods. And they got all sorts of technology to go like top speed. Don’t go faster. I beseech you. But everyone on the crew was loving it. Yeah, go faster. But then look out. Someone left a ramp in the middle of the canal. I ain’t afraid of nothing. It was at this point that the captain chose to do a wicked sick job. Lens flare, but they overshot it. They were going to collide with a gently sloping sandy bank. They threw on the handbrake. Drop anchor. Brace for impact. But it was too late. collision. Literally everybody died ever given, ever taken away. Yeah, that’ll do. All right, see you in a year. What do you mean it’s not long enough? Wikipedia chat GPT add the um music. They love that. A reaction give. That’s a good one. No, this video is too good. Dial it back a little. Okay, let me start again. Uh, I’ll do the phony voice, too. Better. Okay, so here’s what really This story begins in Malaysia. Of course, you already know, but that’s this one over here. An at a port named Tang Jung Polus is the container ship known as the Evergiven. The last of the cargo is loaded onto the ship, and the captain of the ship, Krishnan Canthal, is there with his crew of 20. Hello. At this point, Cantherville probably said something like, “All right, the boat’s tummy is all full of cargo. We’re almost ready to get going.” So, Evergreen, the operating company of the ship, would have called ahead and booked passage for the ship. Yes. One adult ship ticket, please. Uh, large. How many containers? Hold on. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. Now this guy at the operating company is on the line to the Suez Canal Authority and they are in charge of all of the operations of the Sewers Canal. All right. Thank you for choosing Suez Waterways. You are scheduled for March 23rd. You are 922nd in Q. All right. We’ve got a Supermax container coming through on March 23rd. Pulling up the stats now. The Evergiven. One of the largest container ships in the world. Over 400 m long, 60 m wide, only 10% smaller than the world’s largest aircraft carrier. Able to carry over 20,000 of these shipping containers. Here’s a guy in a sandwich for scale. All right, navigator, helmsman, Jean, let’s get going. We wouldn’t want to hold up the other ships. With a teary goodbye, the Evergiven sets sail from Malaysia and makes course for the Netherlands. Let’s go to the map. Malaysia. And you already know, but the Netherlands is over here. The route’s so simple. You just go from here over to Oh, we’re blocked by Africa, sir. Should we just head back? Don’t worry. I know a shortcut. Heading to that inlet. It’s called the Red Sea, Captain. It’s blue. I know. In a bit over a week, the Evergiven cruises all the way to the Red Sea. And on the way, someone on the crew points out Djibouti and says it aloud, Djibouti, because it’s fun to say. Ah, it’s a great time to be a cargo ship captain. I can tell you that much. Captain, we’ve got another problem on the satnav. There’s more land in the way. How are we supposed to get through an obstacle like this? Should I just head back? Now, if this was 1868, Canville would be in big trouble. But luckily, in 1869, someone happened to dig a big channel right from one side of this ismas to the other and filled it with water. They did, which meant that ships no longer needed to circumn Africa. It’s not nothing personal. It’s a geographic thing. Late that evening, the Evergiven arrives at the Gulf of Sue. Here on the map, it’s a big open area for ships to park. And there are ships everywhere, sitting idle, waiting for their turn to pass through the canal. Now, the helmsman is kind of driving around the area looking for a place to park and drop anchor. But then, hm, something captures his attention. Hey, what’s that mysterious looking ship over there? It looks abandoned. MV Amad MV Do not speak its name, helmsman. Why not? Uh, look, there’s a spot. There’s a spot. That’s a handicap. They park the ship, drop anchor, and radio in to the Sewers Canal Authority. Thank you for joining the queue. Typical wait time is a few hours up to one business day. What? Why do we have to wait? Why can’t we just go straight through? Ah, because we’ve got rules here at the canal. A big book of them. No running, no dive bombing, and blah blah blah. Somewhere way down the back of the manual, it says all vessels entering or leaving the canal must have a pilot. And in fact, a ship as large as yours needs two. These pilots are employees of the canal authority who understand the perils of the route. Kind of like a consultant to the captain and they stand around going, “Yes, yes, go here. Turn coming up here. Watch out for the geese.” So, just stand by for a while. Yep. All right. Nothing to do till this pilot arrives. Guess I’ll take a little bit of me time. I’m off to my cabin, fellas. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And so just after midnight, Canville heads back to his quarters to take a nap. [Music] Quite a cozy scene, wouldn’t you say? But all is not well on the Evergiven tonight. There seems to be some trouble with the weather. 2:30 a.m. Kentville wakes up. Outside is the loud rattle of shipping containers sparring with the wind. Loud enough to capture Canthal’s attention. Ra. He dashes up to the bridge. All right. What’s the status on it being really, really windy outside? The wind is up to 35 knots, but the Evergiven is fine, and the anchor is keeping us held. All right. It sounds like I can head back to my quarters then. Wait, wait. Captain, I think we need to move the ship. Yeah, those guys are getting closer and closer to us. We’re surrounded by ships like the Elnas Riar. Their anchors can’t withstand the wind and they are being dragged about. We need more buffer or there’s risk of a collision. Good thinking. All right, duty engineer, prep the engines. I The ship kicks to life. The helmsman steers the Evergiven to get further away from the other ships. This whole thing might be cancelled. Port control. Although this waiting area is delightful, the weather outside is very frightful. Is passage through the canal still happening? Not cancelled. Hold position. Your pilot is wrapping up and will be on his way to your vessel soon. They’re making us wait. Captain, if we’re struggling not to hit ships in this big open area, it’s going to get pretty dicey when we have to navigate through a narrow channel like the Suez. Yes, although you should have said spoiler warning. passed. We’re back on the bridge. There’s the helmsman. Captain’s gone back to his quarters. Pilots won’t be here for hours. Then suddenly an idea. The helmsman takes it upon himself to navigate a little bit of art. He he says the helmsman. As long as no one checks the nav data. This won’t come back to bite me at all. A couple of hours pass. The wind dies down just a little. No ships crashed into the Evergiven, but a small one did pull up beside it. Captain, pilots are here. Welcome aboard. Oh, hey, Captain. Yes. Yes. We’re running late. Where’s the helm? We don’t know what the pilot’s names are, so we’re just going to go with blue and red. Okay. I think we should move ahead at about 14 km. That’s right. Ahead. 14 kmh. The Evergiven joins a convoy of ships taking position at the entrance to the canal. Convoy checking in. Ready, ready, ready. All right, everybody. We want to be alert. Stay focused. Yeah. Yeah, Captain. I’ll follow the other ships. I’ll try not to get lost. Hold on, helmsman and the audience. This is a much more perilous journey than you might know. What? a big straight line. It is 193 km of narrow waterway. And I hope you’ve got some stamina because it takes 12 hours to traverse. That’s a full day trip. Some parts are only 24 m deep. Oh, that’s very shallow. Yes. And only 200 m wide in some parts. That’s very narrow. I’ve seen McDonald’s drive-thrus with more clearance. And you certainly wouldn’t want to have an accident, would you? Because 12% of the entire world’s sea freight passes through here. If you blocked it, the consequences would be humongous. No pressure, though. Oh, I see. Oh, don’t mind him. He gives that speech to everybody. Ahead. 14 kmh. Yes, pilot. 14 km. Steady on. So, into the canal, the evergiven wind. As they cruise, the winds swirl back onto the sea. No longer buffered by miles of open water, the sand and dust can blow about with abandon. Low visibility, strong winds jostle the ship. Grit pelts the bow. The Evergiven steams ahead at about the pace of a fast jog. And there’s no real buildup here, to be honest. Things go ary almost immediately. How are you coping with the wind? It’s manageable. All right. Well, the wind is definitely pushing us to the left hand side. Yes. Just try to keep it as centered as you can. Adjusting. These winds are quite something. Do you think we should have insisted they postpone? Well, the pilots don’t seem worried, and they know this water better than anyone. The angle of the wind is particularly nasty, catching the enormous surface area of the ship and constantly nudging it off course. Helmsman, you’re still too far to the left. You got to get back to the center. Yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m trying. Adjusting. The helmsman keeps changing the trajectory of the ship, but he cannot seem to stay in the center. Come on, helmsman. We’re still not centered. I know. I know. It’s the wind. No matter what they do, they can’t seem to get away from the left bank. The wind foils their every counter maneuver. This is not as manageable as I thought it would be. Is it going to be like this the whole way? Don’t worry. This is really common. It won’t be the whole trip. enough. The problem is we’re going too slow. Red pilot takes the initiative. If we speed up, we can push through the wind. Accelerate to 22 km an hour. Somewhat reluctantly, the helmsman obliges. 22 km/h. Engines engage and the ship speeds up. Captain, going this fast in heavy winds is needlessly reckless. There are protocols for this sort of thing. All right, Jean, it’s a bit windy. Relax. This must happen all the time. The red pilot was right. The increased speed helps them to fight through the wind and get away from the lefthand bank. However, they can’t seem to keep the ship in the very center. Comesman, you’re aim too severely to the right hand bank now. We need a bit of leadership here. Don’t worry, I know what to do. Turn left. Adjusting. The pilot’s giving steering instructions now. Captain, is he supposed to do that? Captain, the pilot is not here to give steering orders. You should say something. The ship is now consistently snaking left and right and left and right. Turn to the right. So, they turn to the right, but then they end up too far to the right. You’re too close to the right bank now. Turn to the left. Yes, Avery. Turn to the left. Flip. This is all a bit tense. And we both know where this is going. It’s going to crash. Let’s just enjoy it. Oh wow, there it is. A gently sloping sandy bank. Red pilot, we’re just consultants. This isn’t our job to steer the ship. You’re micromanaging. We should only be giving general navigation advice. We’re getting too close to the left bank. I can’t keep it centered. We have to slow this ship down. If we slow down, the wind will push us into the bank. What do I do? Reduce the speed. The two pilots begin bickering. And not just bickering normally. They’re bickering in Arabic. Arabicering. And Canthal’s crew doesn’t speak Arabic. What the hell are they saying? I don’t know. Neither do I. Does anyone here speak Arabic? The Evergiven has reached its target speed of 22 km an hour, but they’re taking wider and wider turns and can’t seem to get anywhere near the center of the lane. And the two pilots, they’re still fighting. Captain, captain, pilots, captain. The Evergiven then reaches an extreme unreoverable angle pointing acutely to the right straight for the bank. [Music] We need to turn left now. Hard left. Hard to the left. Hard to the left. The rudder turns, but the ship doesn’t turn with it. Instead, it slides. Didn’t I tell you to turn left? Why aren’t we turning? I am turning to the left, Captain. The ship’s not responding. I knew this would happen. It’s your fault. The helmsman loses his ability to steer. The ship has gone out of control. [Applause] Captain Canville finally steps forward. Enough. Helmsman, center the rudder. Reduce speed. Rudder center. Reduce. But it’s too late. Canville did not intervene in time. [ __ ] Home. Home. The crew can feel the vibration through the floor as the bow meets the bank. That bow raised 6 m slides into the bank with ease like a hot pencil through pudding. Meanwhile, the rear of the ship is pulled into the opposite bank. The bridge shakes and the crew lurches forward as 300,000 tons of momentum is reduced to zero in the span of a couple of seconds. We’ve run a ground. We’ve run a ground. Cut your engines. Canville yells out on the radio. Because don’t forget these ships are running as a convoy, which means that the ships behind them have just seen what’s happened and they all have to slam on the brakes. A couple of ships back, the Asia Ruby 3 suffers an engine malfunction, and it cannot stop as quickly as it intends to and nearly plows into the back of the mask Denver. They manage to stop themselves just in time and prevent running ground as well. Pan back to the Evergiven. Let us look at it from above. It is diagonally wedged across the entire canal. An unplanned bridge connecting two continents. A ship collision of such magnitude there’s almost nothing to compare it to. Maybe Hindenburg 911. I’ll I’ll keep Googling. No, no, hold off on the dramatic sound effects. There’s no need to panic just yet. It’s like a car tire stuck in the mud. We simply reverse. Full a stern. Well, that means full backwards. Propellers at the back of the ship whiz to little effect. Locked in place by the sand. We didn’t move. Merely a runup. Crash a stern. That’s the most dramatic version of full stern. Ramping up to full thrust as quickly as possible. Nothing. No. No. Stop it. No sound effect just yet. We still have one more option. Start up the bow thrusters. They’re the jets at the front of the ship that give a little bit of extra oomph. Crash a stern. Full thrusters. No effect, sir. [Music] Now, we don’t have the transcript from here, so we’ll just presume that at the time, Canville said something very quirky and millennial, like, uh, uh, so that just happened. But what we do know is that he and the pilots then jumped on the radio and got in contact with the Port Authority. Uh, we’ve got something to tell you, and you got to promise not to get mad. Shut up. We look listen. We’re going to need a tugboat. We are run a ground. The helmsman takes a turn at being millennial. Um there are other ships right behind me, aren’t there? Uh-huh. And there were as the queue of container ships piling up behind them got longer and longer. Um, make that two tugboats. So, what happened here exactly? And who is in big big trouble? Explainer time. There are three main causes to why the ship crashed. Let’s start with the wind. The captain could have very easily said, “Guys, the wind is far too severe. Let’s postpone.” But he didn’t. However, the blame’s not all on Campville. The two pilots could have also said, “Let’s just follow protocol.” By radioing in to HQ and saying, “Yes, get us two tugboats, please.” With one on each side at the front, they would have had far more stability and control, and they wouldn’t need to erratically fight about with the wind to stay in the middle of the lane. Second cause, the speed of the ship. Now, it was the red pilot who told the helmsman, “Accelerate the ship to 22 kmh.” But when he did that, they were already driving at the speed limit for their weight class, 14 km per hour. and telling the helmsman to go beyond that meant that they are technically breaking the rules. And while I agree that some rules are made to be broken, going this fast in a very large ship in a comparatively small canal causes a whole bunch of problems to do with fluid dynamics. Big problems, huge. Five fun physics phenomena. Now, I don’t know the physics, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. But what I will say is this. Speeding up causes something approximating over steer. The ship becomes all slidy. I’m just going to turn a little bit to the left. But instead, you go a lot to the left. I’ll just turn right a little bit. But instead, you turn to the right a lot. Remember how the cheerful navigator was like, “Come on, guys. We have to get back to the center of the lane.” Well, they can’t because every time they try to direct back to the center, the speed and the over steer means they overshoot it. One more effect of going very fast. I will sneeze. Wait for it. Take a look at this animation. Side on. Water pressure effects cause the ship to tilt. At this speed, the front is raised 6 m higher than usual, which means when they collide with the bank, combined with the high velocity, they really wedge themselves in. But we can’t just blame everything on the physicists because there’s a third main cause. Poor communication. English is the official language of pretty much every port. However, the pilots start arguing with each other in Arabic, which is not just unprofessional, but excludes all of the rest of the crew from what’s being discussed. And all of these competing voices make for chaos on the bridge. But the blame is not all on the co-pilots either. The captain is always in charge. He has the ultimate authority. Decisions start and end with him. So the captain should have intervened and said something like, “Shut up everybody, but he doesn’t. He stands there quite passively throughout. By the time he does step in, it’s too late.” Now that everything’s been laid out, who would you say is at fault for the crash of the evergiven? The helmsman, blue pilot, the red pilot, Canthville. I’ll tell you society. That’s who. You and me. And I think you should apologize. [Music] All righty. So, we have something three and a half times the size of the Titanic choking the world’s largest freighting canal like a greedy seagull throating a glue stick. Good start. And they didn’t get very far through the canal itself. About 5% of the progress bar. But if we scroll up for a second, we can see what landmarks they missed out on. the Great Bitter Lake, named so because the water there is very salty instead of fresh. Then up a two-lane bit and over to Timsar Lake, named so because Timsar is the Arabic word for crocodile cuz there used to be crocodiles in there. Otherwise, it’s pretty much zip right through to the Mediterranean. That would have been very nice for them. Now we go back a bit to Timsar Lake and here you’ll find the city of Israelia and at its port. See this building? This is the Suez Canal Authority. Inside, Captain El Say, head of navigational control, is just settling in for the day. As he sits down to his desk, uh, Captain, you’re going to want to see this. The video feed pulls up. What? Line one. We’re stuck. We’d like to request a tugboat. Stuck. Stuck where? You know that single lane area pretty close to the entrance there. Now, had this happened in one of the two lane sections, they could have kept the traffic flowing. But alas, what? So, you’re blocking all the traffic? Mr. Elsa, we already promised we wouldn’t get mad. Fine. I got to see how bad it is in person. Als snatches his keys off his desk and he races down to his car, rushing to the scene. He gets out and casts his eyes upon the ship. My god. Towering over him is a structure the width and breadth of the world’s largest Walmart, except it is also 15 stories tall. The bow raised 6 m higher than normal is jammed into one side like an unwitting finger in a Chinese finger trap that somebody filled with gorilla glue in its prom tomorrow. The ass of the ship firmly squatting around on the other side and the middle of the ship making bended metal groans as it’s barely suspended by only a few meters of water. El say lets the sand run through his fingers. At this point, another important person arrives on the scene. Admiral Rabi. He is the Sueis Canal Authority chairman, the big boss of the whole canal. Here’s the rough structure of the organization. He’s all the way up here, right? Oh, no. So high up that he reports directly to the Pharaoh of Egypt himself. Yep. That’s one blocked canal. Stop it. Stop. Uh, no. No, Mr. President. He didn’t say blocked. Shut up. Uh, he said that canal rocked. He’s giving it a five-star review. Come on, follow me to the bridge. Also board the ship. And it’s a hell of a scene. The crew is racing around. Oh god, they’re going to check the nav data. They’re going to see the dickpick. Oh god. Canal’s standing back taking a panicked phone call with the operating company. Okay, so two pilots walk into a ship and the first one says, “And the two pilots from before are still bickering.” All right, you two are dismissed. Canville. Oh god. Oh god. This is the end of my career. This is going to cost a billion dollars. Als puts his hand on Canththerville’s shoulder. Do not worry, my friend. We shall solve this. Come on, Captain. What’s the status? Well, the ship isn’t floating. Yeah. No, no. What I mean is the situation is worse than you think. It’s the way we’re pitched up on the shore. The weight distribution is all wrong. We’re like a raised bridge, but we don’t have any of the support underneath. The middle of the ship could bend under its own weight and tear. So, it could sink. Yeah. That would shut down the whole canal for months. Are we taking on water? No. I’ve had the engineers check the hull. We can’t see water making ingress anywhere yet. The best way to get free and the best way to prevent the ship from potentially sinking is to lighten the load. We need to get rid of at least, I don’t know, like 20,000 tons. How quickly do you think your crew can offload containers? No, no, no, no. Look how high those boxes are stacked. To offload these containers is going to require specialist equipment, the kind you’d only find at a dedicated port. We’re not going to be able to offload these containers out here in the middle of nowhere. All right. Well, what’s the easiest, most brute force solution you can think of? the ballast tanks. Eh, go on. We’ve got nearly 10,000 tons of ballast water on board. We can dump that right now and relieve some pressure. Excellent idea. I’ll get started. No, no, no, you can’t do that. Well, why not? Allow me to explain. You see, when a ship fills his ballast tanks, it’s filling with more than just water. It’s a big dilute salty soup of algae, plant material, and even sometimes small fish. Pick that up in Malaysia and then just dump that at the next port. You’re introducing these stowaway pest species into the environment. Some examples of these invasive species include the northern Pacific sea star. Yo, this is Patrick. The European green crab. That son of a [ __ ] and cholera. So, you have to treat the water before you discharge it, usually through heat or chemicals. And the key there is that it also requires time and access to one of these treatment machines. And we’re not at a port. It’s going to take much longer than usual. But let me get onto the line with the guys at Isalia. We probably have a portable water treatment machine somewhere. Als turns and looks out the window. Coming down the canal are two tugboats. The ones that they ordered earlier. Look, we might not even be that deeply wedged in. These two tugboats might be all we need. Yes, tugboats. This is the Mosa 2 and the Mosed 3. These two little guys are able to pull around this massive cargo ship comparable in size to the Evergiven. On go the ties. Line secure. All fast. Engine ready. Ready to pull. Canal looks nervously at El. Commence. Pull. Slow ahead. The polyethylene ropes whine as they’re pulled tort from the water. The tugboats lightly draw against the ship, testing for resistance. All right. A little more. More. More. Full power. Nothing. Not an inch of difference. All right, stop engines. Be on standby. This isn’t going to work. With just two tugboats, we do not have the pull for a ship this massive, this deeply grounded. It’s also low tide. That’s not helping. Well, when’s high tide? Early afternoon in a couple of hours. All right, that buys us some time. How soon do you think you can get a dredger out here? Let me find out for you. Please hold. The dredges can remove the sand below the water line that’s all built up around the ship. Hi again. They say it’ll take a day, maybe two. All right, tell them to hurry. A day or two? I’d better update my boss. Let him know it’s not going to be a quick fix. I should call my wife as well. All right, don’t go too far. I need you for something in a minute. Hey, what about excavators? Oh, yeah. How many we got? Uh, right now. No, for my birthday. Yeah. Now one one one guy. There’s only one excavator on standby for the whole canal. Well, it’s just postco. Everyone’s been excavating from home. Patch me through. There really was just one guy, by the way. It’s local contractor Abdullah. So, he picks up the phone. Mushy mushy. There’s been a big accident at the canal, Abdullah. There’s sand and dirt everywhere. I need jail. Just send me the deets. Tune. Abdullah jumps in his truck and heads to the scene. And when he pulls up, gut in him. He sees the mass of Evergiven wedged into the canal. Abdullah locks himself into his excavator and gets to work on the most important task he’s ever done. Digged [Music] back on the bridge. Yeah, I’m not sure. Hopefully home soon. Okay. Yeah. No, no. Love you, too. Okay. Byebye. Bye. The boss was not happy. Hey, before you said you needed me for something. I did. Who’s this? Breathe into this tube. [Music] Also, you have to do a drug test. After the crash, they tested Canthavville for drugs and alcohol. Both came up negative. There’s also a procedure to make sure that captains aren’t fatigued. They look at the rest schedule and they find no Canville took that nap. Remember, he’s had plenty of rest time, so he passed the fatigue assessment. And while Canerville was at the nurse’s office, high tide came and went. Tugs were tried again and again. Tried a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It didn’t work. All day trying, all evening, and into the early morning. But that stubborn ship was going nowhere. [Music] [Music] [Music] of course the moon. Day two. There’s quite a queue of ships by this point, and they’re all honking their horns impatiently. Hey, move your ass. I got frozens in the back. Go around. Go around. No one knows quite what’s happening because the Sewish Canal Authority has not made a formal statement, but their hand is about to be forced when an impatient sailor behind the Evergiven takes a photograph and publishes it online. And this starts a bit of a buzz on social media. It was at this very moment that the helmsman’s most feared fear was most realized. Someone pulled up the navigational data. Colonel, within 24 hours, it was all over the news. So over at the Sue’s offices, uh, Mr. Rebby, you have 300 voicemails, telemarketers, important clients, and journalists. They’re asking about whether the canal is blocked, are they? They’re asking about whether the canal is blocked. Yes. And the sewers canal authority could keep it a secret no longer. They held a press conference. Okay. Okay. This is crazy. Let’s say hypothetically. They didn’t give many details, but it was a very inspirational press conference. The news begins reporting on the story. It’s blocked. Cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal. A huge container ship. There’s just the most incredible drama playing out in the sewers canal. A massive container ship longer than the Eiffel Tower. It’s one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. And breaking news from the Nana Star News Channel. I am Nana. Mega ship’s big ass is stuck in the Suez Canal. Right. Point is this story exploded everywhere. There was a lot of sympathy to go around. I appear to have blocked global trade. And the internet upon seeing it went, “These guys need some help. We would love to volunteer.” That’s not picture of a naked woman. I need to help them. They knew best about what to do to get this ship unstuck. All right, it’s time for the Yeah, I reckon you could pretty much just do this and it’ work section. By far the most popular solution was simply blow it up. No ship, no problem. [Music] But why wouldn’t this work? Well, first you’re blowing up a billion dollars worth of cargo. And this thing is about three times the size of Mount Rushmore. So there’s quite a lot of debris to sweep up, actually. And you still haven’t solved the problem of moving the thing out of the [ __ ] canal. Next idea. What if we attach a thousand helicopters and simply fly the thing out? You could even take it all the way to its destination in the Netherlands. Well, the problem is this thing weighs about 300,000 tons. So even if you had a really powerful helicopter, you’re going to need like 25,000 of them. And you can’t put them all together in one area or they’ll crash. It ain’t going to work. a route to help. Uh, hey, hey, maybe pull up a bit next. All right, more seriously, why don’t we take a whole bunch of old jet engines, weld them to the sides of the ship, turn them all on at once, and the day is saved. However, there is a risk of an explosion and then you’d have a hole in the ship and then this ship sinks and then you’re really never moving it. Hear me out. Liquid nitrogen. A lot of liquid nitrogen right under the boat. The water freezes, expands, the ship lifts up. Bob’s lovely. Except now the ship is just stuck in ice and then it melts and then you’re back to the exact same position. Also, you need like a billion dollars worth of nitro. There’s no way to get that much material, let alone handle the scale of that material. Also, everyone’s going to freeze to death on board and the ballast will expand in the tanks and that’ll destroy the ship. It’s not going to work. All right, last idea. Best idea. What if we just actively made things worse? such as this petition to add a second boat to the canal. Jokes aside, one humble comment did stand out from the crowd. Get a few people on this side, a few people on that side. Push it. And I really think it would go. Well, maybe because that’s exactly what the recovery team intended to do. AOY. Ah, good to see you back from the nurse. I told them I didn’t do any drugs, but they wouldn’t take my word for it. I would have believed you. Hey, just give me the walkie-talkie. All right, full ahead with the excavators. Three more excavators join Abdullah, and they are all busily digging out the front and rear of the ship. It’s still going too slow. What else? We got more rescue stuff. So, here comes Rabbi pulling up to the scene. Good news, fellas. And he’s standing at top a very powerful bit of kit. a big beautiful dredger. To be specific, a cutter suction dredge. Essentially, you’ve got a big rotating cutting tool that loosens up all the soil while a big suction pipe sends it yonder. All right, do the dredgy full speed. What else we got? We got more tugboats incoming. More and more tugboats join the fry. A total of eight arranged around the ship like this. notably the Baraka 1 and the Isat Adele. These are two of the most powerful tugboats in the Middle East. And that includes the non-desity parts. Full ahead with those. They keep trying. A cacophony of engines playing the highest stakes game of tugofwar ever attempted. Tens of millions of dollars being lost every hour until it was won. and their opponent unbothered, moisturized, taking up the whole lane. Unbudgeable. All right, we’re calling it for now. Oh, El Say, we’ve thrown everything we can at the ship, and it won’t concede an inch. It’s hopeless. Hopeless. The cynicism of youth. I’ve worked for many years on the sewers. There’s magic in the water. Canville magic we will succeed. Your words are empty. Elsa, optimism has blinded you. Elsid, we cannot defeat the canal. It is simply too powerful. If I were the guys at Case and I’d just forget about the Evergiven and buy a new ship. Well, we can’t afford a new ship. The owners of the Evergiven Show Kaisen Kaisha Limited are getting very worried. I need that ship back and I can’t just leave it to the Sewish Canal Authority to do it. There’s only one team daring and foolhardy enough to take on a job like this. Kaisen calls up an elite salvaging company from the Netherlands. Smid salvage. We need your help. I got your number from you know who. Smid is the industry’s best. They have response centers all over the globe, 24/7, ready to respond to marine emergencies. And funnily enough, they’re the same team that helps with the rescue of the Costa Concordia back in 2012. Suit up, boys. They put the ocean in oceans 11, the tide in tide pod, and sometimes they pee in the water. Why not the fish do it? We’re on route to the canal. ETA in the next 24 hours. [Music] [Music] Next time on Boat in Canal, the prophecy. It’s coming true. Kiss me, you fool. I’m beginning to think you don’t want to get the boat free. Well, is it the Yanny wire or the Laurel wire? Laurel. I couldn’t hear you. You’re breaking up. There’s only one way this was ever going to go. It’s now day three. There’s more digging, more tugging, but the ship is still exactly where they left it. And the slow pace of progress is starting to cause problems for international trade. Each delayed ship represents thousands of tons of undelivered stock for store shelves. And that queue is getting longer and longer. On board an estimated $9.6 billion worth of goods is sitting idle. The milk it will spoil. And the big question is how long until this thing is fixed? To answer this burning question, the Suez Canal Authority holds another press conference and declares, “Guys, guys, another day, maybe two, might even be this afternoon.” But the media and industry experts disagree. The truth of the matter is that they’re not making much ground. I mean, this is proving to be more difficult than originally expected. Could be closed for weeks. Could take weeks. Could be stuck for weeks. Weeks. That’s how long it could take to free the container ship currently blocking the sewers canal. So that means all of these ship operators here waiting in the queue have a very difficult choice to make. So basically I’ve just got two options. One, I can wait around hoping the ship gets unstuck, which nobody knows how long that’s going to be. Or option two, we go all the way around Africa. And I really don’t want to do that. And it’s not just a geographic thing. Freighers don’t want to go around Africa because it will cost them far more in terms of fuel. It adds 10 extra days to the route. And most importantly, pirates. Pirates, assassins, and gay pirate assassins. Now, there be two main pirate hangouts. The Somali pirates. Everyone knows about them. But the more prolific group is actually in the Gulf of Guinea, named so because it holds the Guineiest world record for most pirates. In fact, in 2020, 96% of all maritime kidnappings happened in the Gulf of Guinea. That doesn’t sound very good to me, Mr. Kaisha. And I just want you to know that you’ve made an enemy. And when I Is your boat running? Cuz you better [ __ ] move it. You can’t park there. All right, hear me out. I’m thinking a bunch of helicopters, right? And we there are a lot of people now who are angry with the owners of the Evergiven. There’s only one thing I can do. Bing bing bing bong. Breaking news. Uh, pause for a second. Show Kaisen Kaisha is big. Sorry. The owners of the Evergiven feel such enormous pressure that they go live on television to make a public apology. We are determined to keep on working hard to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Please do not be mad. In a few years, we’ll all have a big laugh about it. Yours sincerely, Mr. Kaisha. Oh god, that’s the boss of my boss’s boss. I’m in so much trouble. Can’t do anything about it. All we can do is keep trying to free the ship. So, they keep going and going into the night. And on that night, Kentville and Elsa had a heartto-heart. The mood was very somber. Still feeling optimistic, Elsa? Of course. Well, it’s day three. How much progress have you seen so far? They’re going to blow us up, aren’t they? It’s possible. They’re going to freeze us, aren’t they? That seems less likely. They might just attach a whole bunch of jet engines and we’re going to get [ __ ] up. That one got debunked. Sorry, I I don’t mean to take it out on you. It’s just all these guys, they rely on me. The navigator, the helmsman, Jean, and the other ones we never animated. But I’m thinking maybe I should just get on a lifeboat right now and never look back. I could go live on an island somewhere far, far away from here. Run away. Look at this timu neck massager for Sy. I bet she’s checking her mailbox every morning. Bulk $6 fingerless gloves for Mr. Po box. You want to disappoint him? No. Little Jimmy won’t be getting his 20 pack of kitchen tongs this Christmas. And you think that doesn’t kill me inside? But we’ve exhausted every option. There’s nothing on earth that could free this ship. Well, that’s where you’re right. Look up there, Lily. Elsa points up into the night sky. Los Lunos. [Music] Yes, the moon. the son of the night. To the ancient Egyptians, it was a sign of hope. And in a few more nights time, a prophecy will be fulfilled. The super moon. I have to show you a kind of boring diagram. I’m so sorry. You see, the moon doesn’t just orbit the earth in a perfectly equidistant circle. It is in fact an ellipse. That means there is a point when the moon is the furthest from the earth. And we call that the apogee. And there’s also a point where it’s closest to the earth. That’s the perigee. You know when you look into the night sky and the moon seems bigger or smaller than usual? Different distances in it. Point is the moon gravity all over the water. And the closer it is, the more it’s going to pull. Now there’s another effect as well. If you believe the mainstream media, the earth is going around the sun like this. And once in a while, it will also align with the sun being on the exact opposite side. Bam. At this point, when everything lines up like so, both the sun and the moon are at max strength pulling on the sea. And they call that the super moon. And the tidal effects of both combine for an even greater pool. High tide can be even higher than usual, sometimes by up to a foot and a half. Now, these sorts of moons only happen three or four times a year, but in 4 days, Big K, we’re going to get one. [Music] Previously on Boat in Canal. Don’t let go. Haha. My plans have all fallen into place. I thought I knew what being a captain meant. What do you mean cut the black and blue wire? There’s only white and gold. We’ve got one chance left. The moon. This is just like that Costa Concordia video he did, but way less funny. Over at the Evergiven, things are status quo. But online, there’s a bit of a new development. A screenshot of a news article appears. Cargo ship crashes into Sue’s canal. Captain involved in incident, but there’s a twist. Uh-oh. Is that a woman? A woman? Egypt’s first female sea captain, Ma Elsa, was being named in this headline as responsible for crashing the Evergiven. And the screenshot of this news headline spread all across social media. For MA to have screwed up this badly is impressive, especially considering she’s never worked on the Evergiven and is currently hundreds of miles away in Alexandria. But someone online went first female captain. Uh Broady Sue’s blockage. She must have did it. Ma found out about the accusations through a friend and quickly hopped online. I got to clear my name, guys. It isn’t me. But the online bad guys must have hacked her account cuz everything she wrote just came out in squiggles. So Ma tried to hack back this code. It’s It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. They’re countering my hack. I’m going to reroute the hosting. Not if I can help it. They ran through the firewall. Use IP4. It’s better. Now, while we can all agree that a lady captain is very gross and icky, and while we all agree that she should be doing a lady job, like adding rosemary oil to the ballast water or knitting hand warmers for the steering wheel, it was not fair that she was being falsely accused and the situation was escalating as the online bad guys started making fake accounts pretending to be her. What was Ma etc to do against such a coordinated campaign? Well, luckily a surprise hero to the story. The mainstream media showed up and did a thing. Don’t worry. Bringing her onto the telly and clearing everything up. Ma even found some positive in the situation. I was really upset at the beginning but later on I found like the support from all people around me and that made me feel like more grateful for what happened. A lot of the social media posts got taken down and in the end it all turned out okay at least for her. Back to the Evergiven. The Evergiven has been grounded for four long Egyptian days. So tug, tug, tug, dig, dig, dig. Pull, pull, pull. Fuel is getting low. Everyone is overdue for a break. All right, guys. Grab a Red Bull and a little snacky. We’ll pick up again soon. But as the engines wind down, the crew can hear something approaching. Who the hell is that? It’s Smid Selvage. [Music] The Smid team boldly actions onto the scene, looking at the ship very inspectively. They report their findings to the rescue team. All right, I ain’t no boat expert, but if you want to charts a move in this ship, you’re going to need to make it a lot lighter by tens of thousands of tons at least. Is it going to bend and tear and sink? No, it doesn’t look like it’s going to do that. But it also doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere with all of this weight on the back. Okay, we trust you. What’s your plan to make the ship lighter? I know a guy. He’s got a crane. I’ll get it down here. We’ll offload all the containers. It’ll be brilliant. You’re going to love it. The container thing again. Yeah. How long is that going to take? Well, to get them down here and to get all the equipment assembled, we’re going to need at least a few weeks. Weeks? Yeah. And to get all the containers off the ship, that might take several months. Months? No, Mr. President. He didn’t say months. He said, “Uh, monks? Those Shaolin guys? They’re very strong. Everything’s going according to plan.” A furious rabbi marshes in. Do you have any idea how much these last few days have cost Egypt already? We’ve had to sell parts of the sphinx. Look, the nose is gone. It’s looking all messed up. I we turned the whole country into an e-commerce site. It used to just be called Egypt. Now it’s online Egypt. Remember Tuten Carmun? Now it’s one carun. Get it? It’s a pun. Get it? Let’s move on, says the Smith guy standing in for the audience. Look, this is by far the best option. Yeah, it’s slow and laborious, but it’s a guaranteed fix. Or you can carry on doing what you’re doing now. You’re on what? Day four. How’s progress so far? Elsa wouldn’t hear it. We will continue with the dredging and the tugging. The super moon will be here soon, and that will save us. You are foolish, Els. The legend of the super moon is just a legend. All right, we’re on the same team here. If you insist on keeping the cargo aboard and just tugging, we’ve got resources to help. Smid calls in two additional tugboats. And not just big ones. pretty much the biggest ones you can get. So Smith and the recovery team have figured out a sort of plan A and plan B. Plan A is to pull the Evergiven free by the super moon, which is only 2 days away. Now, if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to go to plan B, which is to offload by crane most of these containers, and that will take months. [Music] watching on impatiently, tapping their feet and looking at their watches very aggressively is now a cue of 400 vessels waiting to use the canal. Fresh fruit, thousands of tons losing its freshness. Medicine losing its potency. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill. Mhm. You take the red. Not to mention livestock. More than a dozen ships have live animals on board. Mostly sheep and cattle lightly sizzling under an Egyptian sun. The Egyptian government has had to dispatch vets to board these ships to tend to the animals welfare. I am a surgeon. I am. Uh, a few days ago when I was a younger man, Freight from Asia only cost $8,000 a container. Now it’s 12,000. And the impact is being felt by a lot of larger companies. Renault, for example, ran out of some critical components and had to halt assembly at a couple of its plants. Adidas, Nike, IKEA all saw shortages. Some of our clients are out of their top selling SKUs already. And as tankers cue, oil prices are rising. Let my people go through the little waterway, please. And meanwhile, all across the day, the tugs are trying again and again. Move a little more sand. Wait for the next high tide. Try again. And as this marches on with the same futility as day one, banking on the super moon looks like a costlier and costlier gamble. All right, enough of this. Said about 100 ships opting instead to go the long route around Africa, accepting the longer traffic time and piratey risk. [Music] [Music] the super moon. It’s tonight. There’s a renewed energy as people scuttle around the area doing everything they can to prep the ship for the big event. The excavator crew over the course of the week has expanded to a team of 11, working double, sometimes triple shifts with only 3 hours a day for sleep. Together with the two treasures, they have moved 30,000 cub m of sand and soil. For comparison, this is 1 cubic meter and this is 30,000 cub m. And here is what it looks like next to the Evergiven. That’s a lot of sand. Subway sandwich for scale. And it’s borne some results. Overnight, they managed to free the rudder from the left bank. And that’s a big deal because this rudder was acting as a bit of an anchor in the sand. Now free, the stern bobs around with the motion of the water. Great stuff. Meanwhile, the crew is doing everything it can to lighten the weight of the ship. That includes making a second plea for the ballast water to be ejected. Oh, please. The Smith guy is already tinkled in there. We just can’t do it. It would destroy the ecosystem of Egypt. Please, please, please. All right. Biod diversity. Let a thousand algae bloom. Nice work. That’ll make the ship 9,000 tons lighter. Kenthy, the ward is so bright. I can barely see it coming out of the ship. Here, take these. No, I don’t deserve them. Sunglasses are for people who redeem themselves. That’s not me. Hold on to them just in case. Into the evening, the pace keeps up. We see Abdullah excavating away, but really he’s thinking about the moon. Rabbi, he’s busy taking video calls, but he finds himself distracted with thoughts of the moon. Even Mr. Kaisha. Is there anything in this world that doesn’t remind me of her? [Music] More breaking news from the Suez Canal problem. Evergiver is stuck in the Suez Canal still. It’s been almost a week. A tugboat should be able to move Evergivers’s big ass. This is Nana Star, Nanastar’s News Channel. The full moon shone brightly that night, kissing the nape of the canel’s neck with its gravity lips. Full tongue. The canel liked it. And spoiling the romance of the moment is a big fleet of tugboats watching on voyeristically. They are 17 in total with just a bit over 1,600 tons of bolardpool. And here’s how they’re arranged around the Evergiven. Of the four most powerful tugs, two go at the front and two go at the back. They’ll be pulling. Another six tugs are put on the flanks. Two over here, four over here. They’ll be pushing. The remaining tugs are fueled and ready on the sidelines, waiting for their chance to sub in. Positioned like this, when the word is given, all these ships are going to try and turn the ever given anticlockwise. Looks great, guys. Do you think that this is going? I believe in the super moon. This would better work. The guy with the ruler down by the shoreline yells out, “The tide has hit its peak.” El say commands over the radio. Start main engines. Tension on full ahead. The tugs start moving. They carve through the water with ease. The immense power from the tugs meet the resistance of the Evergiven. It was at this point that the narrator said something really poetic. stuff about the night, about how the ships were like dancers on the water. For juxtiposition, we cut away to that crab again, which everybody hated. It’s like a metaphor if you think about it. The tugs are sliding to the left, they’re sliding to the right. It’s not working. Diesel fumes fill the air as the tugs keep increasing their power. The water violently foams behind the tugs. Everyone is staring at the back of that ship. Come on, move. This goes on for minutes. More minutes, even more minutes. An hour, 2, 4 hours. By 4:30 a.m., the moon’s power is starting to wne, and there is very little progress. Don’t give up. The tide only goes down so that we can rise once again. Your moon gambit has cost Egypt dearly. Eled guards prepare the sarcophagus with the Beatles like in the What the hell is that? Under the water. All of this tugging has loosened the sand, the soil, the rock. Could it be the sound of metal tensing and flexing? The ship is beginning to move. It is coming free from the bank. The super moon gives one last howl. It worked. They pulled the ship from the bank. At the back, at least. Now, the bowels still wedged in there pretty good, but this is progress. We’re halfway to freedom. Keep going. So, they did all morning. 7:30 a.m. The sun is rising. The tugs have been pulling all night. But the most difficult task, freeing the bow of the ship, remains beyond them. Well, I guess even the moon has its limits. I don’t want to hear it, El. It wasn’t enough. That bow is still stuck. No, Mr. President. They’re not saying that the bow is still stuck. They’re saying take a bow and then something else that rhymes with stuck. I got to go. They were loading up the missiles for plan B, as the guys on social media suggested. I lied about the crane thing. This was always the plan, says the Smith guys. You know what, Kenville? I agree. They should just blow us up. What? My career is over now, too. You’re the guy who blocked the canal, and I’m the guy who couldn’t get it cleared. We’ve brought instability to the Middle East. But enough, Kantherville. I raised your hopes with moonbased promises. But look at the tide. It’s low, low tide. And yet, I am lower still. Canville looks pensively out the window and it was at that moment that he had his character arc. He realized that he was the captain and the captain is always in charge. Shut up El Say we shall continue regardless of the tide. Is that not the Egyptian way? Don’t you remember the story Elid that every young Egyptian kid is told about the human pyramid? No. Where there’s one guy at the bottom who gives up and we all fall down. Heck, it ain’t a triangle if you don’t try. We need to be strong together like a pyramid. It’s what Giza would have wanted. You’re right. Damn it. Thank you, Ganville. That’s the most inspirational speech I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ll never lose my faith again. And even though you’re kind of the worst captain I’ve ever seen, you’re still the best friend. So they pressed on all morning. enthusiastically and vigorously tugging away, beating off the fatigue, but to no progress. Okay, everyone, take a break. Copy. We’ll have lunch and pick up again in a couple of hours. Then, suddenly, one of the smid guys comes busting into the room. I’ve got an idea. Everybody turns and looks at the Smid guy. All right. Well, sorry about the boring diagram, but take a look at this. Remember how we emptied the ballast tanks before? Yeah, of course. Well, now that the ship is half floating, what if we refilled the ones at the back on this part of the diagram where the ship is almost floating? That way, it will sink lower here and allow the bow to sit up even higher on the bank. Generville gives El Say a knowing nod. I got this. I know a guy who owes me a favor. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please really. A few hours later, the ballast tanks were filled and it worked. The bow lifted ever so slightly. It It’s working. It’s working. And it gets better. It’s now 2 p.m. And that means high tide. Guys, I’ve got another technical issue. All right. What is it? It’s easier if I show you with a drone. [Music] Hold on. Let me try again. All right. You can see the ship is lodged at the front. The guys are pulling, but it ain’t budging. However, a lot of force is building up here. And what if it were to break free? The sudden release could propel the ship straight across the water with a hell of a lot of momentum. It could span the entire canal and land on the opposite bank only to run ground again. Worse still, it could pin these small tugs in its wake. Dangerous. To solve this problem, they did a bit of a safety briefing and they got some rope. Four ropes actually, tying the bow of the ship to somewhere on the land. The lines look great, guys. With the contingency in place, the tugs start up again. And about an hour later, at 3:05 p.m., movement. The bow began to shift. Okay, that’s definitely moving. This is it. It’s working. The ship made a big noise as it accelerated from the bank. And at first, excitement and relief. The bow was coming free. But uh-oh. Remember that concern about the overswing? Well, it’s happening. Okay. The only source we found for this part of the story was Bloomberg, but they said that it happened and we wanted to build it. So, this recreation is how we imagined it went. The four support ropes take strain. Then, snap. One of them breaks. Do you think it’s going to hold? I think it’s going to hold. Move those tugs out of the way. Snap. Another rope breaks. Captain Elid, it’s going to hold. Get your tug out of the way, but it’s going to hold. Snap. A third rope breaks. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. A single strand is the only thing holding this ship from swinging all the way to the other bank and being stuck forever. Without even realizing, Canville grabs El’s hand and squeezes it tight. It’s going to hold. You’re a mad man, Canville. Mad. mad passionate about this canal and I ain’t afraid of nothing. He said very cold backardly. The engine shut off. All that could be heard is the squeak of tightening rope and the scream of torsioning metal. Suck blue said Abdullah. But it is slowing down. It comes to a halt. The final rope held. They really did it. And the Evergiven rested easy in the middle of the canal. Als turns to Canville. Power up the engines. Let’s get your ship moving again. I’m on it, says Canville. All of the tugboats start honking their horns in celebration. Cheers can be heard from the main treasure, the Mashau. In fact, they filmed this celebratory video. [Music] You heard them right, Mr. President. We did it. We did it. It’s free. I told you all in a days were the president takes his finger off the nuke button. Pack it up, boys. I can’t believe it. All that digging really must have made a difference. I just Oh, good. Everybody hated that crab. We did it, Jean. We did it. Jean, where are you? Captain, who are you talking to? Jean? Captain, there’s no Jean on board. Wait a minute. No, it’s impossible. Jean, wait. Thank you. I’ll always remember you, Canerville. And so the canal was clear once again. And chop chop. You still got work to do. By 8:00 p.m. the workday had not finished for the Sewers Canal Authority. There’s still a backlog of 400 ships waiting to go through the canal. So Rabby stands in front of microphones and says, “The canal will be operating around the clock until the queue is cleared.” And within a few days, it returned to normal. It was a big accomplishment. Many industry experts thought it would take several months to free the Evergiven, but the crisis was resolved within a mere week. Prepare the sarcophagus for the doubters. Even Egypt’s president came out and said, “Good job everybody. You know what? Pizza lunch.” And the Sewish Canal Authority held a ceremony in honor of the workers who helped to free the ship. And they also made this monument which you can see on Google Maps. But the story doesn’t end here. A quick note on the helmsman’s penis. Now you, me, and everyone in the press saw that VDR data penis. But despite how realistic and to scale it was, it was not deliberate. Yes, sheer coincidence. If you watch the VDR data, he really is just dodging the ships. And that’s the shape that the path took. So, we didn’t get in any trouble. The end. Oh, all right. I suppose one more smaller detail. Now that the Evergiven is free, what’s going to happen to it? And what’s going to happen to the crew? Well, the Evergiven was tugged over to Great Bitter Lake, where they determined that the ship was seaorthy and not in any urgent need of repair. But it’s also going to be impounded. Oh no. Hey, there’s like police boats outside. Why? What did you do? This ship and its crew is now subject to the indefinite detention by the authority of the Egyptian government. Until you pay us, the Evergiven may not leave, says the Suez Canal Authority. [Music] Yes, we will be holding on to the Evergiven. It’s our view that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the sewers canal authority or its two pilots and it was all the crew of the Evergiven. So their ship will be held until the parent company agrees to rightfully pay us for all of the costs incurred rot. Now here’s where things get very complicated and there is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. But the crux is this. The Suez Canal Authority says, “Dear Evergiven owners, you owe us $900 million.” And Show Kisen Kaisha says, “No way. How how many yen is that? No way.” So by April 13th, some of the crew was allowed to leave, but a lot of them have to stay. And there’s a certain nervousness in the air. Large legal battles can go on for a while, and there was already a bad example of this. Just a few dozen kilometers away. The MV Aman. Do not ask about that shape helmet. The MV Aman is a much smaller vessel and it has been abandoned for years. Detained by the Egyptian government in 2017 for expired safety equipment. Now, they were told to replace the equipment and pay a fine. However, there was no one to replace the safety equipment or to pay the fine because the shipping company went broke. $900 reduces. So, they just abandoned the vessel. There was no way for the legal situation to advance. And that meant that there was no way for the ship to be released. Most of the crew had to stay on the ship and they would keep them there for more than a little while, 13 months before a judge finally decided, “All right, look, just leave the keys with one guy. We’ll call him the custodian, and everybody else can go home.” Now, that custodian was a Syrian man named Muhammad Aisha. H look, he’s holding the keys. He’s holding the keys. You have to stay on the ship now. Everybody else got to leave, but he had to stay. On top of the 13 months he’d already been there, he spent the next three years aboard the ship. Quickly, the ship ran out of fuel, which meant it ran out of power, which meant it ran out of running water. No refrigeration either. Food ran out. Every few days, Mr. Aisha would be allowed to swim onto the shore to get food, water, charge his phone, but he was only permitted for about 2 hours until they would tell him to scoot. Would this be the same fate for the Evergiven crew? They did not know, but we do. So, let me tell you. A few more weeks passed and the negotiations continued. You guys had those two bickering pilots. Yeah, but h the captain’s always in charge. Sorry. Who didn’t arrange for tugboats while we were going through the canal? Oh. Oh, that was you guys. I’m going to put 20,000 containers on one of the largest ships in the world and go double the speed limit, then complain about tugboats. But eventually, they all got together in a big room and they went, “I’m sorry about all those things I said and those emails I sent. I didn’t mean it. I was tough on you as well.” They embraced. They made amends. They made love. And they agreed, “All right, you can keep using the canal, but sometimes we get to go fishing on the boat. That’s fair. That’s tough, but that’s fair.” They shook on it. It was an Egyptian handshake where they do the thing with the with the elbow. There was a mummy. This story sucks. By September, the crew was allowed to return home. They only got MVand a little bit. And that guy on the MVand, he got to go home, too. Why not? Get out of here, you scamp. The Evergiven made its delivery to Rotterdam. They did it. All the cargo is here. Although it wouldn’t hurt to check. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. Campville continued his career in shipping. It wasn’t the end. Maybe just one more for the road. It’s a great time to be a cargo ship captain. I can tell you that much. Als returned the Lunexicon back to the Sphinx. Thank you, old friend. And the Evergiven had some minor repairs done to the bow over in Ching Dao Port in China. And then she was ready to set sail again. The Evergiven was released back into the wild. It sailed into the sunset. Ever since then, global trade has improved. Prices have gone down. The economy flourished once again. Food returned to the supermarkets. Mothers clutched their babes. A litter of puppies. and peace was finally restored to the Middle East forever. [Music] The end.

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Sources:
Bloomberg – Kit Chellel, Matthew Campbell, and K Oanh Ha
bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-24/how-the-billion-dollar-ever-given-cargo-ship-got-stuck-in-the-suez-canal
Except for the official report, this is the best retelling and most comprehensive source for the whole story. They also made a YouTube video on the event which is worth checking out.

US Navel Institute – Shashi Kumar and Salvatore Mercogliano
usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/april/alchemy-ever-given

Business Insider – Mia Jankowicz
businessinsider.com/suez-excavator-driver-worked-21-hour-days-hasnt-got-overtime-2021-4

Vice – Matthew Champion
vice.com/en/article/pkdjzb/cargo-ship-suez-canal-dick-pic-ever-given

Business Insider – Walt Hickey
businessinsider.com/ideas-to-dislodge-the-ever-given-from-the-suez-canal-2021-3#

Seattle Times – Ann Koh and Alex Longley
seattletimes.com/business/how-to-dislodge-a-200000-ton-ship-from-a-suez-canal-wall/

Marine Safety Investigation Report:
gcaptain.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Final-Investigation-Report-Ever-Given-23-March-2021.pdf

Suez Canal Authority
suezcanal.gov.eg/English/About/SuezCanal/Pages/AboutSuezCanal.aspx

The Guardian – Rose George
theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/03/wind-or-worse-was-pilot-error-to-blame-for-the-suez-blockage

Al Jazeera – Suez Canal blocked by massive container ship Ever Given: Live
aljazeera.com/economy/2021/3/24/suez-canal-blocked-by-massive-container-ship-ever-green-live

Forbes – Palash Ghosh
forbes.com/sites/palashghosh/2021/03/26/sneakers-couches-wallpaper-kayaks-livestock-heres-whats-stuck-on-the-suez-canal-and-what-it-means-for-consumers/

The Wall Street Journal – Rory Jones and Amira El-Fekki
wsj.com/articles/how-a-supermoon-helped-free-the-giant-container-ship-from-the-suez-canal-11617040923

BBC News
bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56522178

Independent – Rory Sullivan
independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/suez-canal-blocked-ship-owner-apology-b1822234.html

BBC – Justin Harper
bbc.com/news/business-56533250

Supply Chain Dive – Matt Leonard
supplychaindive.com/news/suez-cape-good-hope-ever-given-evergreen-blocked-stuck/597402/

Business Insider – Tom Murray
businessinsider.com/suez-canal-pirate-fears-for-ships-circumnavigating-africa-to-avoid-jam-2021-3

Arab News
arabnews.com/node/1833276/media

BBC News – Joshua Cheetham
bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56615521

Business Insider – Michelle Mark
businessinsider.com/ship-still-stuck-update-ever-given-rudder-dislodged-suez-canal-2021

Suez Canal Authority
youtube.com/watch?v=kbSSt1VvtqM

The Guardian – Michael Safi and Jon Henley
theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/powerful-tugs-and-an-ebbing-tide-how-the-ever-given-was-freed

CNBC – Matt Clinch
cnbc.com/2021/03/27/suez-canal-ever-given-owners-in-new-attempt-to-free-ship.html

Ahram Online
english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/407823/Egypt/Politics-/LIVE-UPDATES-Egypts-Suez-Canal-Authority-to-hold-p.aspx

VesselFinder via YouTube
youtube.com/watch?v=mqzJL_hOm2k

The National
thenationalnews.com/mena/egypt/don-t-mock-the-weak-says-excavator-operator-who-helped-unblock-suez-canal-1.1195879

Egypt Today Magazine
x.com/EgyptTodayMag/status/1376472309465223173

UKP&I – “Ever Given” Media Statement
ukpandi.com/news-and-resources/press-release-articles/2021/ever-given-media-statement/

The Guardian
theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/13/ever-given-impounded-as-suez-canal-authority-pursues-salvage-costs
Ruth Michaelson
theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/07/ever-given-released-from-suez-canal-after-compensation-agreed

The Guardian – Ruth Michaelson
theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/19/ever-given-crew-fear-joining-ranks-of-seafarers-stranded-on-ships-for-years

BBC – Paul Adams
bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56842506

ITF Seafarers
itfseafarers.org/en/news/seafarer-mohammad-aisha-going-home-thanks-itf-ending-four-years-abandoned-ship

Reuters
reuters.com/world/ship-owner-says-suez-canal-was-fault-over-ever-given-grounding-lawyer-2021-05-22

Ahmed Morsy
english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/1/413189/Egypt/Investigations-prove-error-in-steering-Ever-Given-.aspx

Wired – Alex Christian
wired.co.uk/article/ever-given-global-supply-chain

Reuters
reuters.com/world/europe/ever-given-ship-that-blocked-suez-canal-arrives-rotterdam-2021-07-29/

The Maritime Executive
maritime-executive.com/article/ever-given-returns-to-service-after-repairs

Discovery Australia
youtube.com/watch?v=pNdughfkDbM

YouTube has a character limit so that’s all the sources you get.

Music:
– Downtown Metropolis Chase – Aaron Kenny – YT Audio Library
– 13ounce – OKAY (Original Mix)
– Suno