BREAKING: Ever Given Finally Free in Suez Canal, After Diggers Removed 27,000 Cubic Meters of Sand From Canal Banks

Sarah RumpfMar 28th, 2021, 11:58 pm
 
ever given evergreen ship suez canal

Photo by Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images.

The Ever Given ship that has blocked a critical pathway for international trade for nearly a week has been unwedged from the Suez canal banks where it has been stuck for the past several days.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the ship is now officially free, allowing traffic along the vital manmade waterway to resume. Earlier reports revealed that the bow was afloat, but the ship was technically still stuck. The most recent news update, however, makes good on the previous encouragement that the ship would be free later on Monday.

Last Wednesday, the giant container ship went astray during wind gusts of 35 to 40 mph and got both ends stuck in the sand on opposite sides of the Suez Canal. (The Financial Times’ Brendan Greeley has an excellent explainer here regarding the physics of steering giant ships through canals.) With the enormous ship stretching across the entire breadth of the canal, no other ships could pass.

The Suez Canal is the route for approximately 12 percent of all global trade, and about 450 ships have been stuck in the logjam waiting to pass through. Some have already opted for the longer — and far more expensive — route around the entire continent of Africa.

Multiple tugboats had tried to drag the ship to freedom, but were unsuccessful. Diggers have been working along the banks of the canal for days, removing a reported 27,000 cubic meters of sand, and that appears to have been the strategy that allowed the tugboats to pull the Ever Given away from the banks and resume floating again. It is not clear how quickly traffic will be able to resume through the canal, or how long it will take to clear the backlog of ships.

Egypt’s government had set a deadline of Tuesday to begin unloading the Ever Given if it wasn’t freed by then. Bloomberg is also reporting some damage to the ship’s front, although the vessel is reported to be “stable.”

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.