Suez Canal blocked by grounded megaship

[celedhring]

They say they'll have to unload the ship before they can unbeach it. It already takes a few days to unload one of those, when in port, it will take much longer in the current situation...

I suppose the Cape of Good Hope is going to become trendy in the next few days.



Strong winds, though.

[The Larch]

They give me anxiety, because of how high the containers are stacked. It always looks to me like containers should fall off any moment, or the whole thing capsizes with one big wave (in, say, 30 MPH winds ).

I think they do in fact go overboard quite often.

Not that often, actually. From the World Shipping Council:

Upon review of the results of the nine year period (2008-2016) surveyed, the WSC estimates that there were on average 568 containers lost at sea each year, not counting catastrophic events, and on average a total of 1,582 containers lost at sea each year including catastrophic events.

So, either 568 or 1582 depending if you include catastrophic events or not. Given the sheer amount of containers being shipped annually throughout the world that must be a tiny amount. These incidents tend to be concentrated in certain spots, though. For instance, I believe the English Channel sees a certain amount of containers lost during storms every single winter, due to it being one of the busiest areas for maritime traffic.

[The Larch]

They give me anxiety, because of how high the containers are stacked. It always looks to me like containers should fall off any moment, or the whole thing capsizes with one big wave (in, say, 30 MPH winds ).

I think they do in fact go overboard quite often.

They are locked in pretty tightly, but mechanical failure is guaranteed given the numbers involved.

Yeah...looking at that picture above, what struck me about it was that despite the stack having basically fallen over, it doesn't actually look like the containers have fallen off, which is pretty damn impressive actually.

In that particular case it's because that picture doesn't include more of the surrounding sea, in other pics from the same series (one of them underneath this text) you can see that some containers and even what look like ship parts have already fallen to the sea.



But yes, those container stacks can veer quite a lot before collapsing.

[Solmyr]

"Ever Smart"

[Maladict]

They say they'll have to unload the ship before they can unbeach it. It already takes a few days to unload one of those, when in port, it will take much longer in the current situation...

Yeah, you can see how far the bow is up out of the water. With all that weight you're not going to dislodge it.

[Duque de Bragança]

They're talking days to weeks now, that's gonna hurt.

Do they have a shipment of Playstations stuck in the Canal again? 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/hiccup-in-playstation-deliveries-prompts-game-group-warning-517551.html

[Berkut]

"The Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of nearly 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is among the largest cargo ships in the world. It can carry some 20,000 containers at a time. It previously had been at ports in China before heading toward Rotterdam in the Netherlands."

That is fucking insane.

[Berkut]

It gross tonnage weight is 220,000.

To put that in context, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (which then kind of set the scale for battleship building) limited battleships to 35,000 tons.

An Iowa class battleship, one of the largest ever built, was about 60,000.

A Yamato, the largest battleship every built, is 70,000 tons

Size:

Ever Given: 400m long
Yamato: 256m long
Iowa: 260m long
Nimitz CVN: 330m

That is just insane. And it has a crew of 20.

[Habbaku]

The solution is clear: arm the Ever Given and build more like it for future wars.

[Sheilbh]

The solution is clear: arm the Ever Given and build more like it for future wars.

A super-dreadnought. I like it

[Oexmelin]

We cannot allow a container gap.

[celedhring]

The Auxiliary Cruisers of this era would be quite a sight 

[The Larch]

It gross tonnage weight is 220,000.

To put that in context, the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (which then kind of set the scale for battleship building) limited battleships to 35,000 tons.

An Iowa class battleship, one of the largest ever built, was about 60,000.

A Yamato, the largest battleship every built, is 70,000 tons

Size:

Ever Given: 400m long
Yamato: 256m long
Iowa: 260m long
Nimitz CVN: 330m

That is just insane. And it has a crew of 20.

And that is actually not the largest container ship in operation at the moment, there's a French company (CMA CGM) that operates six 236.583 GT container ships (the Jacques Saadé class ships), with three more in construction.



And powered by liquefied natural gas, apparently.

All these ships have a maximum lenth of 400 m. as that's the upper limit to be able to circulate freely by the Suez Canal, in fact. If they're longer they need special permision to be able to cross it.

[Syt]

Biggest Tetris game ever.

Also, basically just a big mobile platform to stack containers on.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

We cannot allow a container gap.

seems to me that what Suez needs is just that: more gap