The sun rose as one of the world’s largest container ships entered the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. But aboard the Ever Ever, a desert storm overnight hid Tuesday morning and hit a long ship of four football fields.
Looking out the bridge windows, the captain sailed to the critical point of suffocation for global transportation. Next to him were two Egyptian pilots mandated to accompany all large ships on the half-day voyage. Then a gust of wind turned the stack of 17,000 containers into unwanted canvas.
“Keep it constant!” cried the captain, according to the people who overheard the conversation on the bridge.
A few minutes later, the bow struck the east wall of the canal, shaking the ship and blocking traffic on the Suez Canal, one of the most critical links in the world in the global supply chain.
“We got stuck at a great distance,” said an officer on the bridge, according to people who heard the conversation there.