The sun rose as one of the world’s largest container ships sailed the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. But on board the Ever Given, a nighttime desert storm darkened Tuesday’s dawn and a ship advanced four football fields long.
The captain gazed out the bridge’s windows navigating the critical bottleneck for global shipping. Next to him stood two Egyptian pilots mandated to accompany all the large ships on the half-day journey. Then a gust of wind turned the stack of 17,000 containers into an unwanted tarpaulin.
“Keep her stable!” the captain shouted, according to people who heard the conversation on the bridge.
Minutes later, the bow slammed into the canal’s east wall, shuddering the ship and blocking traffic on the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most critical links in the global supply chain.
“We are very trapped,” said an officer on the bridge, according to the people who heard the conversation there.