Sea Control - Sea Control 240 - Ever Given: The Ship That Launched 1,000 Memes with Dr. Sal Mercogliano

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Links1. Dr. Sal Mercogliano's Youtube Series on Ever Given2. "Adrift: COVID-19 and the Safety of Seafarers", by Joshua Tallis, Cornell Overfield, Kevin Inks & Cherie Rosenblum, Center for Naval Analyses, October 2020.3. "CSCL Indian Ocean finally refloated after running aground in the Elbe," by Mike Wackett, The Loadstar, September 2, 2016. 

Hey folks, Sherrod here. I have talked about our feed. I'm going to keep talking about it. There are two existing Seek Control feeds out there. The current feed, the one that you want to be listening to, is labeled simply Seek Control, and it includes the phrase Simsex Flagship Podcast in its description. Seek Control, Simsex Flagship Podcast, that's where you want to be. Please rate and review the new feed as well. This episode, number one, I want to welcome Keegan Ingersoll back from his hiatus. He edited and produced this on short notice for us.

Two, what's in it? Well, it's our old friend, Dr. Sal Mercogliano, and we're going to be discussing Ever Given, Suez, and all the lessons learned and repercussions from that incident. Please check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We just completed a retrospective series on the 1980s maritime strategy, as well as Naval Intelligence Week, and our next call for submissions for Project Trident is out. That topic, maritime infrastructure and trade, is related pretty directly to today's topic. So if you're interested in contributing to the discussion on maritime infrastructure and trade, submissions are due April 19th.

For more information, check out our website, simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, Hashemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. Today, my guest is an old friend, a VIS, a very important Sal, if you will, Dr. Sal Mercogliano. And we're going to discuss anything and everything surrounding Ever Given's grounding and subsequent salvage in the Suez Canal.

So if you've been following along, you've probably seen Sal on every news program in the English-speaking world, as well as several in the non-English-speaking world. Sal, first of all, welcome back. And then could you remind the listeners a little bit about your background? Sure. I'm an associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina. I'm a former merchant mariner, sailed with the Military Sealift Command and worked ashore for them. I'm an adjunct professor of maritime industry policy at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. And as you said, I've been giving a lot of kind of broadcasts on the situation in the Suez regarding the Ever Given. Thanks. And so I didn't put this on the list of our questions, but I'll ask this up top. Have you been through the Suez in your time as a merchant mariner?

I have three times. I went through it on board the hospital ship Comfort and on the oiler Lenthal. Okay. I've never been through there myself. Not a member of the quote unquote order of the ditch as we call it, but I've heard many stories from friends who have been through all sort of backed up by the reporting that I've seen as far as the quality and attentiveness of the Suez pilots. So we'll kick off with like the normal list that you and I had agreed to beforehand. So what's the normal process for transiting the canal? Who has to take a pilot? Who has to take tugs?

What are the kind of rules and how this goes? Well, you know, it's a lot different between Navy and commercial ships, too. Let me clarify that. Navy has the priority going through the canal. They always cut to the front of the line. And they usually get the best or I should say the most senior pilots on board. So Suez Canal will put pilots on every vessel. There will always be a Suez Canal pilot on board.

And unlike the Panama Canal, when you transit the Panama Canal, Suez Canal pilots do not take command of the vessel. You don't transfer command. So, you know, whether you're a naval vessel or a commercial vessel, the captain, the master, retains overall command. Suez Canal pilots are like docking pilots or harbor pilots. They just provide you expertise in the area. Transiting the canal is a long process. It is a real, especially for commercial vessels, it's a long day. It's a 16-hour passage usually. Start early in the morning. Whether you're going southbound out of Port Said or northbound out of Suez, it's a long morning.

You get into the anchorage. Sometimes you're at the anchorage. Sometimes you just sail into the anchorage and you kind of mill about, waiting for the pilot boats to come out. You have an order in the convoy. There are two convoys, a southbound and northbound convoy. Sometimes there's jockeying for position to get in front of people. Sometimes it's a free-for-all to get in the canal. It depends on the situation. Transit of the canal is usually fairly routine, to tell you the truth. I mean, it's not like you can get lost. As a navigator, you're checking off kilometer markers, 190 kilometers, 120 miles through the canal. You're really maintaining yourself in that main channel. There's a lot of one-way areas of the canal even exist today.

In 2015, they opened up a second lane. One of the areas of the canal was a lot wider than the other. And what they basically did was dig some ancillary canal so there's a two-way passage. And what that did was it prevent when the old way to pass through the canal was the north, the southbound convoy would anchor in the Great Bitter Lake. And then the northbound convoy would pass them entirely. And then the southbound convoy would go. And that made a long days. It just it just really prolonged the passage. Now you can actually have the vessels pass each other in the center of the canal. And you don't have as many anchorages as you did. Depends how many vessels have to go through the canal that day.

So usually about 50 vessels go through the canal on a given day. That's a norm. You can max up to about 75. But it is a long day. The passage is fairly routine. There's a lot of dirt on each side of the canal. You don't see a lot. A lot of vestiges of the old Arab-Israeli wars you'll see, tanks and burnt out pillboxes along the way. But it's always that little lingering fear because anything could go wrong at any time. And there's no margin for error in the canal. There isn't. If you lose power, if something happens, as we've seen, there's just not a lot of time to react. Thanks. So you mentioned that naval vessels have priority there. Is that dictated by treaty or just an agreement with the Egyptian government, or do we pay for that

privilege? Treaty of Constantinople basically sets the idea that vessels can go through the canal. It gives priority to naval vessels. The Egyptians always allow that to happen. So it's a very unique thing because this canal is entirely within the territorial of Egypt. So it's not a natural passage, kind of like the Montreux Convention that deals with the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles with Turkey or the Straits of Malacca. This is a completely artificial waterway. So it is within their confines to really control it. But again, you know, the canal had been closed two times in the past, 56 during the Suez crisis and again in 67 after the Six-Day War. But Egyptians rely on the Suez Canal for a huge amount of their resources. They're not sitting on oil. The

tourism business hasn't been quite what it has been since the Arab Spring, and especially with COVID. So the one money generator for them is the Suez. Thanks. So what happened to Ever Given, or at least what is the company saying happened? What do we know about it so far? Because I've read a lot of different reporting about high winds, sandstorms, the ship blacking out or losing power well what makes ever given first off unique is her size she's part of this class of these ultra large container vessels and and to give you the scope and scale of this vessel since really 2011 we've seen the expansion of these vessels they have grown astronomically again we've seen the length the width and the depth of these vessels increase and as you do

that the the volume of the vessel increases exponentially so you know 10 15 years ago you know a 10,000 box vessel you know was big and it was like the big container ship of the day you know you're running about eight nine hundred feet you know which again about the size of a navy aircraft carrier about the size you're looking at now you're ever given is 1300 feet long 200 foot wide draws 50 feet of water and carries 20,000 boxes it's just astronomical and she's not the biggest out there there are 24,000 box vessels out there they're just monsters and so ever given was northbound in the convoy. She was fifth vessel that morning heading up. This is on Tuesday, March 23rd. They got underway about 4.30 in the morning. About 7.30 in the morning,

she's right behind Costco Galaxy, a similar sized vessel. And we get conflicting reports, as you mentioned. The agent and the flag of registry, which in this case is Panama, have reported that the vessel went dark. We've had instances recently and a lot happening because of the changeover in fuel on January 1st of 2020, this new very low sulfur fuel. We've had instances where ships have lost power. We've got one in the Pacific right now that's had an MSC vessel, not Military Seal of Command, Mediterranean Shipping Company has a vessel that's lost power. So they reported they lost power. The company denies that. The company says very clearly that, no, we were hit by wind, a gust of wind, sandstorm hit us,

and it's what shoved us into the canal. But the problem with that story is, number one, Costco Galaxy was a mile ahead of her. Marist Denver, a U.S. flag vessel under the Maritime Security Program, was a mile behind her. Both of them did not encounter any of those issues. And if you follow her automated information system track, her AIS track, she was meandering through the canal. She was kind of wandering a bit. And she didn't do what a lot of vessels have done in the canal. Vessels have lost power in the canal. In fact, we just had a vessel lose power in the canal the other day. And what they typically do is they kind of, almost like when your car conks off on the road they're able to pull off onto the side ever given did not pull

off into the side she veered hard right and rammed her bow into the east bank i mean she literally rammed into asia and hit so fast i mean because they're going 13 knots the usual speed in the canals between seven and nine knots and it wasn't just her going fast the whole convoy was going fast and this is one of the reasons they're directing the the focus of the pilots she hit so hard so fast that her stern because of the momentum kept going northbound and her stern went ashore on the african on the african on the west bank and so here you have a 400 meter long vessel 1300 feet across a 200 meter canal with her bow rammed into asia her stern perched on africa and in the middle of the vessel bridging the suez canal it is the worst scenario that anyone has

ever kind of thought about with the Suez Canal. It effectively sealed off 12% of the world's economy in one motion. Now, the same vessel, this is not her first navigational issue. So the same vessel had a collision with a ferry in 2019 in Hamburg, Germany. Was this the same cabin and crew? Do we know that? Or has that come out in any of the recording? And this is, again, the companies have all gone quiet. So when you deal with international shipping, you've got a couple of myriad of issues here. So this is a Taiwanese. Evergreen is Taiwan. It's a Taiwan company, seventh largest container liner in the world. Ships registered in Panama. The operating company is German. The owner of the individual vessel is Japanese. The insurance for

the cargo is in Great Britain. The insurance for the vessel is in Japan. It's got an American classification society that oversees the hull. It's got an Indian crew, and it was in the Egyptian waters with Egyptian pilots on board. We know there was 24 Indian crew members on board. There's still on board. We have no idea who the captain is. We have no idea if it's a female, male, we don't know because the company is just not saying anything. But this vessel was involved in, as you mentioned, in Hamburg. And in that case, very similar, they lost power. They had a power shortage. They basically lost, they lost the drop the plan. This new sulfur diesel fuel is causing problems because again, these vessels use these large slow speed diesels. These diesels are

huge, you know, direct drive to the propellers, no reduction gear. You know, they spend about 60, 90 RPMs. You can block out the cylinders, but the seals and the gaskets have been soaked in sulfur for a long time. And one of the things that we're finding is in this low sulfur diesel, the gaskets and seals begin to break down. And these vessels do not typically have yard periods like Navy vessels. They're continually operating. You can cut out the cylinders and do maintenance on it, but that's a major endeavor to do that. And it's very clear that some of these vessels have not kind of shifted over yet all these seals and gaskets because it would just take too long to do it for the entire vessel. They're in the process of doing it for all the vessels. But again, one of

the things we're seeing is vessels dropping power. Thanks. Now, you mentioned the crew, and you've been pretty vocal about mariners' rights, COVID protocols, driving extended periods, stuck aboard ships. You've been vocal about mariners' rights and COVID protocols, driving extended periods, stuck on ships. So do we know how long this crew had been aboard ever given? Or is that part of what's obscured by the company's silence at the moment? No, it's a big issue that we need to know is how long we've seen, again, a proliferation of accidents happening on commercial vessels. At the end, you know, about the latter half of 2020, a report came out, Center of Naval Analysis did a great report on this, but there's been reports from the International Maritime Organization,

international labor organizations, that about a third of the 1.2 million mariners were over the acceptable time on board vessel. And that's 11 months. And again, you know, talking to a Navy audience, you know, 11 months on a vessel, that's not bad. It's like, no, this is 11 months for a 24 person crew that's working 24 seven a day. There's no days off. They're working eight hour shifts, basically four on, eight off. A lot of time that eight off in the day is overtime. So you're working 16 hour days. And I know I'm preaching to the choir here on this, but again, And it's a lot for these crews. And so we don't know. And one of the things that we're seeing right now is multiple investigations going on at the same time because of those jurisdictional issues.

We're seeing the Suez Canal Authority running an investigation. We've got the Panamanian flag running an investigation. We have the German operating company running an investigation and the biggest investigation that matters the most of the insurance companies, because they're the ones who want to point blame for who's going to pay for all the delays and damages here. And they don't want Taiwan, they don't want Evergreen to be the one who's got to foot the bill for ship cargo being late, not just their cargo being late, but the 450 ships they impacted from going through the canal for six days. Now, you kind of mentioned the answer to this already when you mentioned 12% of world trade. So are you able to quantify the impact to the worldwide logistics chain? Were there any countries or businesses specifically affected more than others? Well, one of the big things we see is about $9 billion worth of goods go through the canal on a daily basis. And what this has done is put a speed bump into that normal flow. We saw vestiges of this early in 2020, when all of a sudden China kind of shut down. And all of a sudden, you know, weeks later, we saw the impact of that with delay of goods getting into markets in the United States. Again, there was no shortage of toilet paper in the world. There was just a shortage of toilet paper on the shelves where we needed it.

And one of the things that we're seeing right now is in the major ports of debarkation in Europe, in Felixstowe, in Rotterdam and Hamburg, the ships that were supposed to be on berth were not on berth. And now what we're seeing is delays. We're seeing ships arrive real quick. That cargo is not just going to Europe. And this is a big misconception. You know, if you sail out of Hong Kong, it's about 50-50 to go via the Panama Canal or the Suez to get to the east coast of the United States. And Panama cannot handle these big vessels. And so a lot of vessels go through the Suez. And we tend to think this is just a Europe and Asia thing. It's not. A lot of that cargo that's being offloaded in Rotterdam is being put on the feeder vessels that then go to the United States, go to North and South America.

So we will not know the exact impact, but what we will see is accelerated transportation costs. And that usually translates to higher costs on retail for Americans and for consumers. We will see some shortages in some production in Europe, for example, some goods that are not on the shelves that are needed. But again, it's hard to quantify that to exact numbers. So let me ask this, and this may be my naivete about worldwide logistics, but you've also talked quite a bit about the log jams in American ports right now. Is this a potential help for those American ports to maybe clear out some of what's sitting there? Are they going to get a little operational pause in the future as a result of this delay? Well, one of the things that you could see is the shift of cargo going from the west coast to the east coast. As that flow increases and now they can be able to move it, there may be a way to clear some of the backlog on the west coast because of the brief pause we're seeing here. There's a little bit of a gap here. And so ships, for example, are anchored off Savannah right now. Savannah is a big terminal right now. They take advantage of the new lane of the Panama Canal that was opened back in 2016.

So without the vessels coming from Europe right now, or not as much cargo coming from Europe, I should say, they may be able to move a little faster and clear some of the backlog. I don't know if it clears the West Coast yet. The West Coast is just slammed. It's hard for them to clear their backlog right now. But I think one of the things this does demonstrate to us is both on the commercial and the military side is how tenuous our logistics systems can be when we rely on just in, just out logistics. when we count on vessels just showing up with what we need as we need it, any disruption can cause this butterfly effect. And it's magnified over distance. Again, the U.S. Navy is used to operating in the Persian Gulf, where your supply head is in Fujairah, several hundred miles away. If you have to run a peer-to-peer conflict in the Pacific, and now your supply head is Guam, Pearl Harbor, or the West Coast of the United States, that's magnified. The tyranny of distance

just gets worse as you look at this. And any disruption is magnified exponentially as you go distance here. And when you lack the sufficient vessels to then fill the, and this is one of the big problems right now, is there's not enough space to move cargo. The vessels are at capacity. There's not a lot of surge capacity here in both the commercial or military area that impacts us. And so I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from this for the military that I don't think is being done right now. Thank you. So do we have any numbers on how many ships opted to divert and go around the Cape and how many chose to wait it out? It was several dozen. Marine traffic was doing a great job of seeing that. And we were right at the cusp. I got to tell you,

we were right at that moment where had this gone on a few more days, you would have seen a big number of diversions start taking place. Yeah. I will say like, I was surprised at how quickly they cleared it i thought this was going to go for months but well this let me be clear the salvage operation it was phenomenal i mean i interviewed one of the leading salvers in the world the master salver who did the cost of concordia and every salver i talked to you can't talk to the guys who do the salvage they will never talk they'll never talk about their own salvage but other salvage guys will talk about other people salvage and so you know everyone was willing to talk about smith who didn't work for smith and they all said the same exact thing this is going to be weeks i

mean there's no way you're going to clear that vessel as fast as you did but what they didn't factor in here was the egyptians didn't care what happened to the vessel they didn't care i i don't have proof of it i can't prove it but i am telling you there was a discussion by the egyptians who basically said pull the ship off i don't care if you rip the bottom out of it as long as it doesn't sink in the channel as long as we can get it to the great bitter lake i don't care we will pay for the vessel just get it out of the way and they did i mean i mean literally if you watch the the And the imagery of the AIS of them pulling it off, they pulled it off on a high tide. They swung the stern out in the high tide.

The next high tide, they ripped it off the bank. And then they sailed it under its own power up the channel, you know, at seven knots. And again, I am just amazed that they turned that engine over. I can't imagine the shock damage done to that vessel that they were willing to take that chance. They brought on high pressure pumps. They brought on large capacity pumps. So if she started the flood, they were going to be able to get water off of her real fast. and they had enough tugs around her to drag her if they needed to, but they were going to get her

off. But again, I think that goes back to the issue of the priority, you know, in a salvage operation, it's life safety first. Well, no one ever got hurt. Everyone was good on this. Second was environmental. She hit forward and aft. So her fuel tanks were never compromised and they took a lot of fuel off of her too. So they really weren't worried about a pollution issue, but then you come to the economics and that was the economics of the issue. The Egyptians needed to get her off the canal as fast as they did. And so they really needed to kind of get her out there. But again, I think that goes back to the issue of how do you do a salvage like that? If this wasn't Ever Given, if this was Eisenhower going through the canal and she lost helm control and

got herself jammed, what's the scenario for that? Because I think the Navy would have a much different philosophy of pulling the Eisenhower off the bank than Ever Given because they would not want to damage that vessel. Yeah. And sorry, I interrupted you there, but yeah, Let me go back to that last question of ships that opted to divert and how many waited out. Yeah. So most of them waited out. I mean, so you had 450 ships. I mean, it was piling up there. I mean, if you look at the images of those anchorages, it was it was huge. They were moving down the Red Sea. You had a couple of dozen vessels that started to divert. The big indicator for me was Evergreen diverted one of their vessels really early.

They had one vessel heading to the canal across the Indian Ocean and they diverted her. but again you were at the point where if this went more than seven days the backlog was going to be so significant that it was going to be a wash whether to wait at the anchorage or go around the the cape of good hope the problem the cape of good hope route is it's long it's expensive you add a lot of fuel to it and the egyptians were adamant that they said once they move the vessel they'll clear the canal and they did i i am amazed at how fast they cleared the canal. They didn't go fast. I noticed that they kept the speed down. They were not going to do 13 knots through the canal. They were running about nine knots, but they were running continuous

convoys. Usually they run 16 hours and shut down for the day and they're done. They were running 24. They just kept running and running, which they have a finite number of pilots and they were pushing them to the extreme, but that's the way the Egyptians operate. They pushed the envelope there quite a bit and they were willing to take that chance. They announced that the canal was clear prematurely, I would tell you. There were still about 100 vessels waiting to get through the canal when they said they were back to routine operations. They were not quite there yet. And like I said, we just saw an incidence where an Italian tanker lost its plant coming up almost in the same spot Ever Given was. And it was close. They had a couple of vessels, had a stop. They

grounded one on the bank, but they were able to ground it on the side, not go across the canal the way Ever Given did. But it almost came back to be a problem for them. But now they're basically at the routine. The Eisenhower was able to transit the canal. They got her through along with her escorts. So again, I think they were able to do it. But the Egyptians are, you know, now they've filed a billion dollar claim against the Ever Given. Ever Given is still anchored in the Great Bitter Lake. She's sitting there by herself. And the Egyptians are basically refusing to let her go until they complete their investigation and get their billion dollars. So I'm not exactly sure how this resolves. So the Suez was previously closed for a period of eight years from 1967 to

1975. What was the impact of the global economy then? And then how did that differ from what we saw today? Well, I mean, a couple of things happened. So one of the big things was there's a vessel, an American vessel in the Great Bear Lake when it closed in 1967, loaded to the gills with ammunition heading toward Southeast Asia for the Vietnam War. So an American supply vessel was caught right there. Actually, it was attacked by Israeli jets during the incursion. They stayed there, those 15, there was 16 vessels, one was sunk, 15 stayed there. They were there for eight years. The two vessels that eventually completed their journey were two German vessels because the Germans were adamant they were going to make these voyages complete. But that closure was

significant on a couple of things. One of the things it demonstrated was, I would argue, the maritime industry can't adjust. They will adjust to a closure. And so, you know, they went to the Cape route, but they didn't just go to the Cape route. They adjusted the size of the vessel. So one of the things you saw was the growth of tankers. You know, it became more economical. If you didn't have to go through the Suez Canal, you're not constrained by Suez Canal drafts and depths. So what you saw was economy of scale. Let's, instead of sending two tankers around the Cape of Good Hope, let's send one big one, you know, or sending three little ones, let's send one massive one. So you've got those VLCCs, those very large crude carriers, and ultra large crude

carriers. And that concept of economy of scale has increased. I mean, it has. It's increased to the scale of basically cruise liners now that are the same character and the Ever Given, which is one of these ultra large container vessels. And one of the things that the Egyptians have countered back to is, hey, we want your traffic back. And so what do they do? They spent $8 billion in 2015, enlarge the canal dredge it expand it put the double lane in and say come on back every given come back these you know you else uh these ultra large container ships come on back and and we will go in i think the other thing it demonstrates too that we should take note of is if a choke point closes how quick are we to adjust i think this is one of the reasons why we see for example china

playing such a big active role in south china sea in the south pacific and in the arctic you know if anyone benefits from this, it's Russia and China. They sit there and go, listen, that Arctic route looks a lot better right now. We don't have to worry about these key choke points that are in the hands of a few people. If you look at the northern route, the northeastern route, for example, which goes through the Bering Sea along the north coast of Russia, that's all in the hands of Russia, except for that one choke point between the US and Russia right there. That's it. The Canadians are claiming sovereignty over the Northwest Passage. It's hard to imagine, but a scenario where the Canadians become, you know, the controller of transits right there. I don't,

it's a weird analogy, but it could happen. But I think this is what, one of the things that China will always do is like, we're not going to stop our trade. You know, we'll go around the Cape, we'll go through the Drake Passage, south of South America, we'll go through the Panama Canal, we'll take the Northwest Passage or the Northeast Passage. And so I think that's the implications we should be looking at this closure of the Suez Canal right now. So who ultimately got it out and how did they do it? You talked a little bit about this before, but you can give us a few more details. So this salvage operation was run by Smith Salvage, one of the best in the world. And Smith Salvage, which is a subsidiary of Bacallus, is one of the premier salvages. A

couple of firms around the world, Donjon, Resolve, Marine, but Smith has done a lot of these. So Smith did a very similar job in 20, I think it was 2018, the CSCL Indian Ocean went aground in the Elbe River. Similar size vessel, went aground, and very much in the same process. If you look at how they got the Indian Ocean out, it's basically exactly how they did this. So Smith came in, and I have to tell you, in most salvage operations, it's slow and steady. It's methodical. It's almost, the analogy I always use is like a car accident. If you ever see fire departments show up at a wreck, you know, it's the same thing. Stabilize the vehicle, stabilize the patient, remove the vehicle from the patient to remove the patient. You know, you always want to make

sure of the patient. In this case, it's a little different because they were kind of on a timeline here. They needed to clear the vessel. So the Egyptians initially tried to clear the vessel. They used their tugs. They couldn't do it. Again, the tugs pushing against a 200,000 ton vessel is just not going to work. These are harbor tugs that they're trying to use. And so one of the things that became very clear is you're not going to move Ever Given with just these small assets. So Smith was called in. They brought a salvage team in. And one of the key things they began to do was a kind of a control dredging around the process. When she went around on the east bank, she literally threw up the spoil on the east bank of the lower

Suez Canal. That's that's the shallow part of the canal. They dredge the channel so much they got to put the spoil somewhere and they don't throw the spoil out because that's too complicated because it's dirt and mud. It's not just sand. And you would wash away the bank. That part of the Suez Canal, there's concrete on the bank. They don't want to wash that away so they just basically put the spoil on the eastern side and what she did is she plowed in went up on the bank and pushed the bank out and so if the canal is 12 and six o'clock north and south she was about at about two and eight o'clock with her bow at two o'clock and her stern eight o'clock so what they wanted to do was rotate her counterclockwise if they can rotate her

counterclockwise then they can yank her stern off and then pull from the stern and use the ship's engines as additional thrust so they did targeted dredging they dredged along her port bow and her starboard a quarter they got the prop in the propeller they got the prop in the rudder clear smith brought in these two massive anchor tugs and these are the tugs that are used to move large drilling platforms so the alp guard which is the big massive one what she does is she puts down a big huge mushroom shaped anchor in the middle of the suez she puts wires on the stern of ever given And then basically just pulls, you know, there's a Captain America off on the roof of the building, kind of pulls on both ends and uses her thrust to yank it off. They were also fighting a spring tide.

They had a spring tide they were lucky to have right then. It was going to end the end of the month on March 31st, April 1st. So they were using the tide to the best they could. They have about a two-meter tide in the canal. So they used that. They were able to yank the stern off, get her in the stream. So she then went from 2 and 8 o'clock to 1 and 7 o'clock. and then when with her stern clear on the next tide they used the engines they used the tug and

they used some tugs in it to spray some wash onto the bow to try to get some water underneath her and they were able to yank her off and like i said as soon as she was clear i mean almost as soon as she was clear they kicked her engines ahead and they were out of there as fast as they could they were very worried i think if you look at the images of her going up the canal She was listing the port down by the bow. We know she had taken water damage forward in the forepeak, in the bow thruster room. They put those big high capacity pumps on her to get her off. But towing a 200,000 ton vessel is not an easy thing and everything.

It makes me wonder about the U.S. Navy is how often have we practiced towing 100,000 ton aircraft carrier? If you look at the history of salvage and things like World War II, there was a lot of problems towing these big aircraft carriers that were damaged in World War II. The Hornet at Santa Cruz, the Franklin off Okinawa. And, you know, those were 20,000, 30,000 ton vessels. And again, one of the things that the Egyptians realized is they needed larger towing vessels in the canal because these vessels are getting bigger. The small harbor tugs aren't cutting it. So you've touched on this a little bit in several of your answers. What now? What are the lessons learned here? And you mentioned also, you know, there may be lessons for the Navy here.

Oh, I think there is. I think there's a lot. So the Suez Canal is already addressing this. So they had a press conference ahead of the Suez Canal Authority. And again, remember, Egypt's in a very unusual state right there. They're under a military dictatorship since the Arab Spring. And so a lot of the pronouncements and statements coming out of the Egyptians and the Suez Canal Authority have been very, very bold. that, you know, we're going to get this vessel moved in 24 to 48 hours. And, you know, in some ways they did produce, they were able to produce, but again, there's a big concern. So a lot of questions are like, are they going to let vessels like this continue in the canal? And the answer

is yes, they have to. This is a huge amount of money for them. They generate massive revenue from the canal and the tolls on these vessels. So I think one of the things that the Egyptians are going to do is implement a couple of things. So if, for example, wind was the cause, if a gust of wind did it, then it really goes back on the Suez Canal for allowing that vessel in the canal. Why did the pilots let them in? You know, this vessel was not supposed to be on berth at Rotterdam for a week. It's not like she was pushing a schedule. She was not having to get through the canal that day. And so there may be instances where more vessels will incur delays going through the canals, especially these vessels. Again, the side of this vessel is equal to four football

fields. You know, so when you get, you know, a 40 knot wind up against the side of that vessel, Again, I sailed on USNS Comfort. She's 895 feet long. We had an 80-foot sail area on the side of that vessel. And I sat in an anchorage in Bahrain and told Navy destroyers, don't anchor anywhere near us because if the wind blows, we go different than you. We're going to be a lot different in our anchorage. This vessel is twice that size. And again, I think the Suez Canal will have to sit there and think about how to handle these ultra-large vessels. There's a question about using tugs to escort them. I can tell you right now, even if you had a tug escorting Ever Given, at 13 knots, you're not stopping her. You're just not going to stop that vessel if she turns into the canal the way she did.

Now, if she lost power, that's a different scenario. One of the things, I think one of the best elements of seamanship we saw was the Maersk-Denver, a mile astern of Ever Given, was able to stay in the middle of the channel and stop and not T-bone into the Ever Given or run ashore. she just manages to kind of just meander right there and stop and literally gets ran by the vessel behind her because they've dropped their plant. So I think there's got to be some changes in the canal. Now, the canal is talked about, too, by a crane, so if they need to get containers off these vessels. But again, this vessel is 14 stories high, the top container. They're 23 across. It's just mind-boggling the size of this vessel. And when you deal with vessels like this, there's very little margin for error when something goes wrong it's going to go wrong fast and and as we

see right here with large implications they've talked about expanding the canal but they're still paying off the expansion from 2015 you know eight billion dollars is you know adding a you know expanding the southern section this southern section from the great bitter lake to suez has been expanded it's wider than it was but if you had a second lane that that's double what probably you paid for the original expansion. And the Egyptians just don't have the money for it right now. Thanks. So final question, probably the most important one. I titled the episode The Ship That Launched a Thousand Memes. What was your favorite meme? Because you actually showed up in a couple of these. I did. And it goes to a larger question, I would argue, and I'm going to go back to the

meme in a second, is why this caught public attention so much. It really did. I mean, it was crazy the amount of attention this story got. And I think it demonstrated a couple of things that, you know, for us demonstrate, you know, here's something we have no control over, no oversight over at all. And yet it has global implications, you know, and it didn't involve loss of life. It wasn't a tragedy like Costa Concordia where 32 people died. This is a vessel took a wrong turn. And then all of a sudden you pinch 12% of the world trade. And, and again, and I think it showed a little bit of the futility of trying to control these things. When you get the image of the little digger, I love the digger. I'm sorry. The digger is my

favorite. The little digger just kind of, you know, at the bow, just kind of scraping dirt off and everything. It's great. I mean, it just, it's the absolute, you know, futility of that. I also love the Austin Powers stuck in the tunnel back and forth. I think that rocking back and forth was one of my favorite. I think I posted that like one of the very first ones I saw. It's like, this is going to be really tough to move it. But I think it demonstrates to us an area we don't know about. You know, the Navy, everybody knows about the Navy. They know about the Navy. We have lots of videos about the Navy. People can go on board Navy vessels. They see it. There's images of it. Commercial industry is really outside the mainstream. People don't see it at all.

We've got it fenced off. It's locked off. You can't get on a terminal unless you have literally top secret clearance in some ways to get on it. It's been farmed out to foreign industries and foreign companies. Americans don't do it too much anymore. And again, the concept of the size of this vessel is hard for people to really get that wrap their head around. And when you saw that little digger, it kind of showed the futility of really like, wow, this is going to take a long time. This is a tough thing to do. And, you know, again, we've created the largest moving objects in the world.

Yet again, you know, if you look at the biggest vessel, HMM, which is a Korean company built 12 in two years, 24,000 box vessels, 12 of them, you know, just 1300 foot long, you know, And these are vessels that you can take the Ford, stick inside of, and stick another Ford on top of, and still have room for some LCSs thrown in there. And again, with a crew of 24. And we don't understand the commercial side of the shipping. You know, Rose George, who I know, wrote a great book years ago, back in 2011 or 2013, called 90% of Everything, where she talks about, you know, how you move goods around the world. She actually sailed on a vessel, you know, to see it.

And actually, ironically, I talked with her. The vessel she sailed on was a vessel called the Maersk Kendall, which is the Maersk Denver. It was the vessel right astern of Ever Given in the canal that day. You know, people in the industry hate that book because they think that it's too simplistic. But for many people, it's an eye-opening element there. So I think the ship that launched a thousand memes, it's funny because, again, we hate the idea that we're controlled by forces outside of our control. And it's so true. And I think this is the true thing of logistics. You know, again, you know, I go back to C&O Gilday talking about, you know, last year, how, you know, we really haven't practiced fighting, you know, with our logistics being encumbered, you know, or being threatened. And I think we saw that right there, you know, granted that Eisenhower was able to go through the canal quickly, but we had vessels with cargo going to the Middle East that was held up there.

You know, if you lose that chain, if you lose that choke point, we've got to adjust. And I think, you know, we take the logistics lessons from this. We should take the salvage lessons for this. What happens if an American aircraft carrier loses its plant, damaged or something? What do we do with that? Who are you going to get? Every time we've had a casualty with the U.S. Navy, we've been able to get a heavy lift ship, throw them on the back and carry them home. I can't do that with an aircraft carrier. What's the scenario for that? What happens if you ground as you did in that? And you can't tell me it's not impossible, because the McCain took a left turn in front of the most heavily trafficked area in the world going into the Singapore Straits. And they were T-boned by a ship. And so these casualties can happen. I think we really need to look at this. I think the memes are great, because it raises attention to the issue. But again, I think a lot of people have now realized how fragile our global economy is when we rely on just in, just out logistics, both commercially and militarily. thanks so yeah i found the whole thing uh particularly all the memes to be really emblematic of the term sea blindness and most people don't really understand what happens and where most of their things come from and how they get there but my favorite conspiracy theory is that this was all like a simsec plot to promote the maritime infrastructure and trade writing

from coming up april 19th uh for the listeners so you know right on it um go ahead so no i had people tell me the same thing it's like it's like like because i got asked by uh presenters like well who benefits from this i said well i benefit i've got more air time on on news source news channels now than ever before if i knew that's all it took to propel me into the forefront i would have bribed a uh helmsman on a ship a long time ago to run aground in the suez But it does demonstrate that. I think it does. Again, and coincidentally, I mean, you're running the infrastructure and trade talk at the same time. I think it's really critical. I mean, we've talked about this a lot, choke points, maritime infrastructure. It is, again, we think about it in a military aspect, but in a commercial aspect, things other than forces beyond our control can impact this.

And again, one of the things we've seen with global trade over time is they will adjust. They will factor in, they will adjust. And it's the clogging up the kitchen sink. If you clog up the kitchen sink and the water's running, it will find an outlet. If it doesn't go down the drain, it'll go somewhere else. And that's exactly what we see happening. Well, thanks, Sal. Unfortunately, we are out of time for today.

So I really appreciate you coming on with us again. You know, you're always welcome here. Where can we find you online and what are you working on next? Sure. You can find me on Twitter at, at Mercogliano S. So I'm talking about this. I've, I've started doing a little YouTube thing every day on, on, on the Sue, what's going on in the Sue S.

So myself and John Conrad over at G Captain have, have been working on that. So it's been great. Again, I, I take all my podcasting and YouTube lessons from you, Jared. You're my inspiration. I do need a Jared Samuelson bobblehead to kind of keep me going and everything. I'm hoping SimSec puts that out sometime soon. I'm working on a piece with Sashi Kumar right now for U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings on this event on Ever Given. We were asked to put that together.

Sashi is what I am to understanding commercial is I'm a fraction of what is in Sashi's head. Former provost at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, deputy administrator at MARAD, just an amazing person. And so I'm really honored to be asked to do that piece with him and put that together. I was trying to come up for a topic for the SimpSax, infrastructure and trade. I'm still lost. I don't know if there's a topic of some type I'd come up with. So I'm trying to write something that hits infrastructure and trade. If only there was something in the news that I could tap into.

So I'm going to keep pondering that, and hopefully I'll have something for you guys. If only. But thanks again, Sal. To our listeners, thank you for turning in. We'll see you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon We'll be right back.