DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A massive cargo ship turned sideways in Egyptian Suez Canal and blocked traffic in a major East-West waterway for world shipping, according to satellite data visited on Wednesday.
Traffic on the narrow waterway that separates continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula stopped on Tuesday after the MV Ever Given, a Panamanian-owned cargo ship with an owner in Japan, crashed.
It was not immediately clear what made the Ever Given turn sideways in the canal. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, described the Ever Given as an eclipse while traveling in a ‘northerly direction’, without expanding it. Others blamed the strong wind for turning the vessel.
According to the satellite data from MarineTraffic.com, the Ever Given’s arc hit the eastern wall of the canal, while its back was pinned to the western wall. Several tugboats surrounded the ship and were probably trying to push it in the right way, the data showed.
An image that put a user on another cargo ship on guard showed how the Ever Given was trapped across the canal.
Channel authorities could not be reached early Wednesday. It appears that the ship was stuck about 6 kilometers north of the southern mouth of the canal near the city of Suez.
Cargo ships and oil tankers were apparently lined up on the south side of the Suez Canal, waiting to move through the waterway to the Mediterranean, according to MarineTraffic data.
In a United Nations database, Ever Given is owned by Shoei Kisen KK, a ship rental company in Imabari, Japan. The firm could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday. The ship mentioned its destination as Rotterdam in the Netherlands before getting stuck in the canal.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a large shipping company in Taiwan, also listed the Ever Given among ships in its fleet, and the color has its color scheme and logo.
Evergreen could not be immediately reached for comment, although the state-run Central News Agency of Taiwan quoted unknown sources from the company as saying the ship was overcome by strong winds when it entered the Suez Canal from the Red Sea, but none of its containers did not sink.
The Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of almost 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is one of the largest cargo ships in the world.
The Suez Canal was opened in 1869 and provides an important link for the transportation of oil, natural gas and cargo from East to West. About 10% of the world’s trade flows through the waterway and it remains one of Egypt’s leading earners in foreign exchange. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, which could house the largest vessels in the world.
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Associated Press author Taijing Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.