bb
etting to Egypt, by the way,
00:01
was the most hassle I've
ever had on a reporting trip.
00:06
It was the fact that
when I arrived in Egypt,
00:07
absolutely no one wanted to talk to me.
00:08
By going to the Suez Canal,
00:10
I visited the Suez Canal control tower
00:13
and seeing for myself how things worked.
00:15
It was only by going to the
litigation in the court,
00:17
in Ismailia, and hearing the lawyers
00:20
talk about the problems on the bridge,
00:22
that we learned all this new information.
00:24
A giant container ship
00:26
is blocking the Suez Canal.
00:27
One of the world's busiest waterways,
00:29
the route is vital for
the movement of everything
00:31
from oil to consumer goods.
00:33
Initially people blamed
strong winds, but you know,
00:37
it was never a very
satisfactory explanation,
00:39
simply because strong winds
in that part of the world
00:41
happened for about half the year.
00:43
Bad weather may not be the main reason
00:45
why the ship got stuck.
00:49
It could have been a
technical or a human error.
00:51
That will be revealed
through the investigation.
00:53
According to evidence that was presented
00:55
in an Egyptian court, the pilots
at one point were arguing,
00:58
shouting at each other, trading insults.
01:00
So if this lasts for
anything more than a day,
01:04
it could cause major headaches
01:07
for global shipping and energy markets.
01:10
Why did this situation even
occur in the first place?
01:13
This ship is so huge.
01:15
It's as long as the Empire
State Building is tall.
01:18
And it is blocking the entire
width of the Suez Canal
01:20
since it ran aground on Tuesday.
01:22
I think most of us aren't aware of just
01:25
how much global trade hangs by a thread.
01:34
Hi, my name's Kit
01:36
and I'm a reporter for Bloomberg.
01:38
I thought it was critical to actually
01:40
go to Egypt to report this story.
01:42
I visited the Suez Canal Authority,
01:43
I spoke to the chief pilots.
01:45
I attended a couple of the court hearings
01:48
and saw the ship owners
lawyers make the argument
01:50
for the first time that
there had been some fault
01:53
in the hands of the Suez Canal pilots.
01:56
I'm Matthew Campbell.
01:57
I am a reporter and editor
for Bloomberg Businessweek.
02:01
So modern ships of all sizes really,
02:04
have something called a voyage
data recorder on the bridge.
02:07
The idea is to capture audio
of everything that goes on.
02:11
So in the case of the Ever Given,
02:13
as in so many marine accidents,
02:15
the evidence from the VDR
became really critical
02:19
to determining what actually occurred.
02:21
The urgent effort to dislodge a cargo ship
02:23
stuck in the Suez Canal,
02:25
blocking a key global trading route.
02:27
This is a traffic jam like no other.
02:30
There was this rippling
cascade of disruption
02:33
to global trade, and therefore
lots and lots of people
02:36
who might argue that they lost money
02:39
as a result of what occurred on board
02:40
the Ever Given in late March.
02:42
Then, the happenings on the bridge,
02:45
what was recorded by the VDR,
02:47
becomes a matter of incredible sensitivity
02:49
because it is just crucial evidence.
02:58
Ships have, with some exceptions,
03:01
just gotten bigger and bigger
over the last 30 or 40 years.
03:05
The Ever Given, if you
include the value of the ship,
03:08
the value of the fuel on board,
03:10
and the 17,000 odd
containers it was carrying,
03:13
it comes to about a billion dollars.
03:15
This is one of the largest objects
03:17
that humans have ever put on the ocean.
03:19
There was a crew of 25 led by a captain
03:23
named Krishnan Kanthavel,
03:24
a very experienced
mariner from Tamil Nadu.
03:29
It had set sail from Asia,
03:32
and was due to arrive in
Rotterdam a couple of weeks later.
03:38
In the Suez Canal,
03:39
you typically transit
early in the morning.
03:42
So the Ever Given would've
been emerging from the Red Sea,
03:46
coming into the Suez Canal.
03:48
There were terrible winds at that point,
03:52
a whipping sand, a really severe storm.
03:55
And enough wind, in
fact, that some vessels
03:57
decided that they did not want to proceed
03:59
through the canal on that day.
04:02
The captain of the Ever
Given, Captain Kanthavel,
04:04
would have had a choice
about whether to proceed.
04:06
It is always the final
decision of the captain.
04:09
But there are huge financial pressures
04:11
on a captain in this situation.
04:13
The shipping industry is
a just in time business.
04:16
A captain of his experience
would be keenly aware
04:20
that there were huge
amounts of money riding on
04:22
getting his cargo to Europe on time.
04:26
If you look at the Suez
Canal from a satellite,
04:29
it looks like a fairly straight
shot through the desert,
04:31
with a couple of lakes on the way.
04:32
And you would imagine, I
imagined, that it wouldn't be
04:35
particularly difficult to steer a ship
04:37
straight through the passage.
04:39
But actually, it's a very
stressful thing to do,
04:42
we're told by all all the sailors
04:44
and captains that we spoke to.
04:45
It's a very narrow gap in places,
04:47
200 meters or so wide, and quite shallow.
04:50
So any mistake is liable to
cause an incident of some kind.
04:55
So when big ships come
into narrow waterways,
04:59
typically they will take on
board at least one pilot.
05:02
And a pilot is someone who
really intimately knows
05:06
a particular area and
can advise the captain
05:09
and the helmsmen of a ship
who may not be familiar with
05:12
that waterway on what to
avoid, dangerous currents,
05:16
submerged hazards, that kind of thing.
05:18
They don't actually steer the ship,
05:20
but they give instructions as to
05:21
the best way to get through.
05:22
They have to communicate with the captain
05:24
and the other crew on the
bridge of the Ever Given,
05:26
which is a difficult conversation to have
05:29
because the captain and the
crew are mostly using English.
05:33
The Egyptian pilots would mostly
05:35
have been speaking in Arabic.
05:36
So it would have been
quite difficult for them
05:37
to have a proper conversation.
05:42
We were told by almost
everyone we interviewed
05:45
that the dynamic between
the captain and the crew,
05:49
and the local Egyptian officials,
05:51
can be a tense one when
they're going through Suez.
05:54
And there's a few reasons for that.
05:55
The captain is the master of his ship.
05:57
In normal circumstances he has
05:59
complete control over the crew.
06:02
He's the boss.
06:02
But when you go through Suez,
06:04
you have to surrender some of that control
06:06
to the local pilots whose job it is
06:08
to steer the vessel through the canal.
06:10
When you do speak to people
06:11
in the shipping industry,
06:13
you will quickly learn that Suez pilots
06:15
have a pretty mixed reputation.
06:17
We had lots of reports of pilots
06:19
asking for cigarettes, for example,
06:21
asking for other gifts in
return for their cooperation
06:25
in getting through the canal.
06:26
And all of these things add up to make it
06:28
quite a fraught situation.
06:42
So the Ever Given comes into the canal
06:44
in these very windy conditions,
06:46
and you have to think
about the scale here.
06:48
This is a vessel that is 400 meters long.
06:52
It's also, at the top of its containers,
06:54
more than 50 meters above the waterline.
06:56
So it really is an enormous surface
06:58
for the wind to smack against.
07:01
And what appears to have happened is
07:03
the Ever Given began to
act as a sort of sail
07:06
and was swerving back
and forth in the canal.
07:09
And we know from some of the evidence
07:10
that's come out in legal proceedings,
07:13
that there was an argument on the bridge
07:15
between the two Egyptian pilots.
07:17
They were arguing about
speed, the weather.
07:20
And we know that when the captain tried to
07:22
get in the middle of the
argument and calm things down,
07:24
one of the Egyptian pilots
threatened to leave the ship,
07:27
leave his post.
07:29
At some point,
07:30
as the vessel was swerving back and forth,
07:33
one of the pilots,
according to what we know
07:35
from the voyage data recorder,
07:37
gave the order to go full ahead.
07:38
And that would have taken
07:39
the Ever Given's speed to about 13 knots.
07:42
And speeding up is supposed
to give you more control.
07:45
It gives you more purchase on the rudder
07:47
when you're trying to steer
one of these enormous ships.
07:50
And in normal circumstances,
07:51
that would be a good
way to regain control.
07:55
But, the situation at that moment,
07:57
it was the worst thing they could've done
07:59
because the ship is in
such a narrow channel
08:01
that increasing the speed
actually, conversely,
08:03
can make it much harder to control
08:05
because of something called
Bernoulli's Principle.
08:07
And the basic idea is that
as water rushes faster,
08:10
or any fluid rushes faster,
the pressure decreases.
08:14
And because there's less pressure,
08:16
the vessel is sucked toward
one bank or the other.
08:19
That then became a problem as the captain,
08:21
and the helm, and the bridge crew,
08:23
fought to keep control of the vessel.
08:26
There were, according to what we know
08:28
from the voyage data recorder,
08:29
orders given in rapid
succession from the pilots
08:32
to go hard to port or hard to starboard.
08:34
So eventually one of these
turns went past the point
08:38
where it could be recovered,
08:39
and the bow of the Ever Given
lodged right into the sand.
08:43
The ship just slows down,
08:44
and then suddenly you
realize you've crashed.
08:52
So the Ever Given was stuck in one of
08:54
the southern reaches of the canal,
08:56
quite close to the southern entrance.
08:58
Now, the Suez has been
expanded over the years.
09:01
Most recently in 2015.
09:03
Critically, those
expansions have been aimed
09:05
at allowing two-way
traffic, for the most part.
09:08
Because, originally, the
canal was only wide enough
09:12
for vessels to go in
one direction at once.
09:14
However, where the Ever Given was stuck
09:17
was a one-way section, there
was no bypass around it.
09:23
Somehow when they crashed,
09:24
they managed to not only wedge
the front into the deserts,
09:27
but the back of the ship
also grounded as well.
09:30
So the ship was left diagonally wedged,
09:32
completely blocking the channel.
09:33
By the end of the first day,
09:34
there would've been a
hundred or so vessels
09:36
anchored waiting to transit.
09:38
And that number grew
steadily hour by hour.
09:41
Every day, goods worth $10 billion
09:44
were arriving at the canal
waiting to go through.
09:49
Look around you in any room
you happen to be in right now,
09:52
the vast majority of
the objects in that room
09:55
will have come to you on boats.
09:57
And if you live in Western Europe,
09:58
if you live in North America,
10:00
it is very likely that those boats
10:02
pass through the Suez Canal.
10:03
So every company that
deals with physical stuff
10:07
depends on this waterway
in one fashion or another.
10:10
So having it blocked is just
10:11
a titanically important problem.
10:14
And one that there were
billions of dollars
10:16
riding on resolving quickly.
10:18
The 400-meter long cargo
ship, the Ever Given,
10:21
is stuck in the Suez Canal.
10:23
And it is fouling up global trade.
10:25
50 ships a day normally
pass through the canal,
10:28
carrying 12% of the world's trade.
10:30
So the pressure is really
on to get her refloated.
10:34
The ship crashed at such
speed that the front
10:37
went six or seven meters
directly into quite rocky sand.
10:41
Two tug boats arrived very quickly.
10:44
They were just routine tug boats,
10:46
they weren't especially large or powerful.
10:48
But they immediately made
efforts to pull the ship free.
10:51
And it didn't move an inch.
10:52
It was clear it was firmly stuck.
10:58
The main entity with responsibility
for clearing the canal
11:01
and freeing the ship is
the Suez Canal Authority,
11:03
which is the Egyptian government entity
11:06
that controls the canal.
11:08
And the man in charge
of the pilots at least
11:11
is the chief pilot, Captain El-Sayed.
11:13
And he was one of the first on the scene.
11:14
And he, with his boss, chairman Rabie,
11:17
put together a plan to
try and get the ship free.
11:20
Initially they realized
that that simply pulling
11:23
probably wasn't going to be enough.
11:24
They would have to dig as well.
11:26
The front of the ship was
wedged so deep in the bank
11:28
that they would need to do some digging.
11:30
One of the earliest photos we have
11:31
is of a small yellow excavator,
11:35
right up against the front of the ship,
11:37
just scooping out scoop
after scoop of sand.
11:40
And you know, it looks ridiculous
11:42
next to the size of the
vessel, it looks hopeless.
11:44
This somewhat anonymous Egyptian guy
11:49
became a global internet celebrity
11:51
when photos of this went viral.
11:53
Just a kind of metaphor for
being stuck in a hopeless task.
11:59
The vessel's owners quite quickly hired
12:01
a Dutch firm called Smit, who are one of
12:04
the most prominent salvage
firms in the world.
12:06
So a team of experts from Smit flew in,
12:09
from the Netherlands and elsewhere,
12:11
and see if there was a way that
12:13
they could help get this ship off.
12:15
Salvage teams are awarded a percentage of
12:17
whatever they save, generally.
12:19
There are different ways to pay them,
12:20
but that's the traditional fashion.
12:22
Now, if you're a salvage
crew and you save a big,
12:26
fully-loaded oil tanker,
for example, from sinking,
12:29
you could be in line for
tens of millions of dollars.
12:35
So the team from Smit arrived
on the morning of March 25th.
12:38
So that's about two days
after the grounding.
12:41
The view of these
salvage experts from Smit
12:44
was that preparations needed
to be made immediately
12:48
to begin bringing containers
off, hiring a crane,
12:51
coming up with a plan
to offload these big,
12:54
very heavy boxes, in order
to lighten the vessel.
12:57
Now, there were some people
at the Suez Canal Authority,
13:00
is our understanding, who were
13:03
more reluctant to consider that option.
13:05
I think they worked out
it was gonna take months
13:07
to completely offload the
containers from the Ever Given.
13:10
So they were facing a much longer delay,
13:12
and a much longer blockage,
if they had to try
13:15
and take the containers off.
13:16
So the compromise that was arrived at
13:18
was towing would proceed
13:20
until the time that a crane arrived.
13:23
And then, if at that point,
the vessel was still stuck,
13:26
they would begin unloading it.
13:28
In a situation where every
day the canal is closed
13:31
costs the world economy
billions of dollars,
13:33
no one felt they had time to wait.
13:38
On the 28th of March, that was a Sunday,
13:41
you had two very powerful
tugs turn up from the south.
13:46
Combined had something like
13:48
200 or 300 tons of pulling power.
13:52
The tide is, of course, very important.
13:54
You want more water,
that means more buoyancy,
13:57
more ability to lift the ship
13:59
clear of whatever it's stuck on.
14:01
There was actually, at the
end of March, a supermoon,
14:04
a time when the moon is
unusually close to Earth.
14:07
Tidal peaks are higher.
14:08
So if you happen to be trying to get
14:10
a 400 meter container
ship off of a sandy bank,
14:14
that's potentially quite important
14:15
because you have more water to work with.
14:18
So everyone knew that
March 28th to March 29th
14:21
was the best opportunity
for weeks that the salvers
14:24
were going to have to
pull the Ever Given clear.
14:27
There was no sudden movement or noise.
14:28
They just suddenly realized their tugs,
14:30
instead of treading water, were moving,
14:33
and they were moving because the back had
14:34
very slowly started to
move away from the bank.
14:37
So the rear was freed first,
but the front was still wedged.
14:42
One of the worries was that
14:44
when the bow did finally come free,
14:47
it would swing clear across the canal.
14:49
First of all, potentially
doing terrible damage
14:53
to anyone who was in
the way, which included
14:55
lots of vessels from the
Suez Canal Authority,
14:58
and potentially also swinging right into
15:01
the opposite bank, grounding itself again.
15:03
So during the towing operations,
15:06
the crew of the Ever
Given had helped set up
15:09
cables from the bow of their
vessel to shore, four in total,
15:13
so that when the bow
did finally come clear,
15:16
it could be held from swinging
right across the canal.
15:20
Smit came up with an idea
to take on ballast water
15:23
into the ballast tanks of
the rear of the Ever Given.
15:26
The back is pushed down
15:29
and the front is lifted ever so slightly.
15:31
That slight lift of the
front turned out to be
15:33
just enough to help them
lift out of the sand.
15:37
So when the tide changed,
15:39
and the waters were flowing out,
15:41
and the two powerful tugs
15:42
were pulling in the same direction,
15:43
that was when the front
finally came clear.
15:46
And when that happened,
everything happened quite quickly.
15:50
There was jubilation, as you can imagine.
15:55
They all sounded their
horns at the same time,
15:57
it could be heard from miles away.
15:58
One of the Egyptian dredges was cheering
16:01
and shouting number one, number one.
16:04
So once the Ever Given was free,
16:06
it was towed up to the Great Bitter Lake,
16:08
which is a body of water
partway up the canal.
16:11
And it sat there during what became
16:13
a pretty tense legal standoff.
16:16
You had the Suez Canal Authority,
16:18
which is part of the Egyptian government,
16:20
demanding compensation
of more than $900 million
16:24
in exchange for letting the vessel go.
16:27
Now, the Egyptians
claimed that part of this
16:30
was a so-called salvage award,
16:32
which is the percentage of value
16:34
that you're entitled to
when you rescue a vessel.
16:38
Part was also for what amounted
to reputational damages.
16:41
The owners of the Ever Given, and frankly,
16:44
a lot of people observing
this around the world,
16:47
thought that figure was absurd.
16:49
The Egyptian government reduced
their ask to 550 million.
16:53
I think it's probably a safe bet
16:54
that the settlement came
in somewhat below that,
16:58
but we just don't know.
16:59
In any case, it is a great deal of money.
17:10
One of the amazing things about shipping
17:12
is that it's kind of
invisible to most of us.
17:15
The ships have become too
big for ports in Manhattan,
17:18
or in East London, so the
ports have moved elsewhere.
17:21
So actually, shipping has
kind of receded from view.
17:24
But in that time, it has
become an even more important
17:28
part of our lives than ever before.
17:31
Everything we depend on,
all the material goods,
17:33
all the energy, all the
oil we put in our cars,
17:36
everything we shop for at a
place like Ikea or Walmart,
17:39
it all comes on ships.
17:41
For about a week, the whole
world was riveted by shipping,
17:44
and also understood in some
ways how fragile it is.
17:48
And all it took was one
wrong turn, effectively,
17:51
for that to all be shut down.
