The Ever Given, Suez, and the (probable) causes of the accident: a raw reflexion.

 

The Ever Given, Suez, and the (probable)  causes of the accident: a raw reflexion.

Shortly after the Suez Canal was blocked by the mega container vessel Ever Given  many experts (and not so experts) started to work theories about the possible causes of the accident. A video showing the track of the ship as it was moving in the channel served as the basis for many to anticipate that speed had been a factor. 

-The ship wasn't going at a “safe speed”-, I read many asserting in social media. It is so easy to pass judgment when one is not involved. It is amazing the amount of information a person can gather in order to point a finger. You don't have to be an expert, Google does all the work for you.

However, some of the experts, those with a maritime background, took the stand to display their knowledge on ship's hydrodynamic.  Their explanations were rich in technical terms (such as bank suction/ cushion, squat/under keel clearance and so on), and their line of reasoning made their logic all more compelling: speed was the main cause. 

But there were other experts who seemed to have taken the time to examine the entire context. In their dissertations they included, besides ships' hydrodynamics, ships aerodynamics and weather conditions. 

A ship the size of the Ever Given displays an above the water side area (windage) that exceeds a hectare. For those not familiar with this unit of measure, a hectare equals ten thousand squared meters. In short, this is akin to a huge uncontrollable sail on a sailboat. Consider a strong wind blowing violently against such a large sail. The slower the speed of the ship, the greater the effect the wind. 

Proceeding at speeds near cero leaves the ship completely at the wind's mercy. To compensate for wind effects, the speed needs to be increased and the heading needs to be adjusted too to match the true course. At a glance these corrections seem very often counterintuitive. To a bystander, a ship fighting the wind (or current, or both) to maintain its intended (safe) track might seem as if it is heading out of the channel, when in fact, it is exactly doing the opposite. A ship in such a situation is said to be "crabbing" ( called like this for it reminds how crabs walk). This "crabbing",  also signifies an increase of the ship's maximum beam (width), since it takes more room,  which translates into a reduction of the available space of the navigation channel.  The ship has not become wider, but since since it is moving "sideways" it takes up extra space.

It has been established that the day of the accident a sand storm with accompanying  gust of winds were part of the weather forecast. These experts have a point. Their line of reasoning is also sound. 

So, was it speed or was it weather? Or was it a matter of making a poor, uninformed decision?

To claim, as some have done, that the Captain or the pilots should have had delayed the transit based on weather conditions is to ignore the real dynamics of the hierarchies and chain of command in a shipping company. To my understanding neither the Captain, nor the pilots have the power to do so. I might be wrong. However, at least in the case of the Captain, I have witnessed how they are dispatched back home from the next port of call, after refusing to do what the company expects, which is do not stall the operation. It would be costly.  Besides, unlike bulk carriers or some tankers, when it comes to container vessels, time is really money. 

It becomes difficult for a seafarer not to think about the causes of any maritime accident. I am a seafarer too, a pilot to be more precise. My brain, like those of the experts above, wandered about many possible theories. But in the end I felt it would be not only unethical but also unfair to come up with a hypothesis in hopes to attribute responsibility.  Let the court decide what went wrong and to which degree anyone is to blame. Though the truth might never be known.

The only fact that is (was) causing me a neck itching is that the whole crew has been detained as if they were an integral part of the structure of the ship, relevant evidence or some kind of cargo.  Or as if they all may be linked to the causes of the accident. I mean, to what extend the depositions of the galley department are of any value to the investigation? Was a substandard meal served that day that made the bridge team sick which in turn prevented them from performing their duties appropriately? Maybe. 

Come on, criminalizing or holding crews has become the easiest way to shift responsibility. Someone should put a stop to such a nefarious practice already.   (Still a vexing topic these days) Why is it that "front liners", as we are called, always get the worst portion of the deal, however without us there is NO deal. (at least until AI and its brother autonomous ships seriously begin to plague the oceans) 

The Ever Given case is (was) nothing more but a battle to gauge the muscle of two legal teams rather than a case  in which ship handling, hydrodinamics, aerodinamics, or even taken course of actions are scientifically studied to arrive at a conclusion with the intention of preventing similar events in the future. It is about money, like everything else in the industry. Or everywhere. And it is a legal fight which will extend beyond the ship sailing away from Suez. 

 In todays' shipping, most decisions are made from the comfort of an office, with eyes glued to a computer screen displaying statistics, and not from the ship's bridge. Commercial pressure is all there is to when it comes to take decisions from the ship's bridge. Whatever comes out of that office is what counts. Anything else, such as weather conditions, crew change, or the environment,  are secondary and should not be elements affecting profitability.

 If we depart the idea that the causes of the blockage of the Suez canal can be summarized in the actions taken the day of the occurrence, our view becomes broader, and probably more accurate. 

How could a ship accident, with no significant loss of lives ( only one reported, during the salvage operations) and almost null environmental harm turned into the subject of worldwide attention amidst a health global crisis? A pandemic to be exact.

 Ever since the sinking of the Titanic, the spilling of the Exxon Valdes, the capsizing of the Costa Concordia, and more recently, the grounding of the Wakashio,  a ship accident had never taken world media stage as this one has. Why? Simply because it wasn't the Suez canal that was the only feature  that was blocked, but with it, a great deal of the shipping industry and the world supply chain. A lot of money is (still) at stake.  If you want to get businessmen attention, aim at their wallets, bank accounts, or future earnings. You get their attention, you get everybody else's attention.  

The truth is that, unlike previous maritime disasters, the blockage of the Suez Canal by the Ever Given made conspicuous the fragility of the world supply chain. Which is akin to the circulatory system of the human body through which nutrients and oxygen are delivered to every organ, tissue, and cell to properly function.  Only that the Suez canal is not just any capillary, but a vital artery which may cause major health problems when clogged.

 It also made clear how world trade depends on a well synchronized system connecting points of production with points of consumption. A system which workings are so smooth that goes, most of the time, unnoticed. ( I hope, that in addition to all of the above, the accident revealed the importance of seafarers, but I doubt it.)

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A ship much more larger than the EVER GIVEN

 What I feel the accident did is that it unearthed the fact that we are all aboard, stranded, I venture to say, in a much bigger ship that the Ever Given: the ship of Consumerism. 

Consumerism is a ship without a Pilot, a Captain or a crew aboard, ready to make wise decisions to avoid or minimize the consequences of an accident. No one is standing by the anchors or the engines of this ship if an emergency would arise. It is a ship drifting at the will of the winds and currents of our wishes more than at the will of our basic needs. It travels at the speed of economic gains. 

This massive ship is able to aim straight towards a storm, fight with it and come out unhurt. (Instead Covid19 seems to have made it only bigger ) It doesn't sink because its stability and buoyancy is ensured by our more basic instincts: our relentless desires for more, for more and  NOW.  (Which is in part the reason why mega ships have come into existence, to satisfy those desires) It is, nonetheless, a deceiving ship steering at an unknown course and an unsafe speed. And the day it would run aground, there won't be enough tug boats to free it. 

But of course there is another side to this story. Consumerism is also the engine propelling the creation of wealth, of jobs, in parts of the world where both are most needed. It propels my paycheck too. (Most likely yours too)

In that respect, it will be foolish to say that the blockage of the Suez canal was driven by our  savage consumerism (alone). Though, I feel free to say that humanity patterns of consumption, our cravings for more and now, can only be a signal of how lonely and empty our lives have become. We have come to feel that whatever we need for a fulfilling life is packed inside a ship's container.  It probably would, only if containers were loaded with such elusive cargoes as happiness, togetherness, tolerance, peace, compassion, solidarity, togetherness, or love. I doubt that in such a  scenario there would be any economic gains, yet I am sure we would be playing a different game, one in which humans would not live empty lives full of stuff. 

Or could it be that humanity has finally become easy prey of what author Shoshana Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism", and we, consumers, have been shaped by the market, so the market knows what we want before we, ourselves, do.  This put corporations on the spotlight to share the blame.

The Suez blockage can also be viewed as a byproduct of modern human's insatiable habits of consumption. Habits that may cost us our planet.

But let leave sentimentalism and emotions aside, after all, this is the society we have come to built. And it still works....so we say.

What happened in Suez then?

Ships happened, period.

  It doesn't take a mathematician or be familiarized with complicated statistic formulas to understand that even though the probabilities for an accident to happen in any waterway can be very slim, the possibilities for it to happen will always be present. Anyone with some knowledge in  risk assessment would know this. Also anyone familiar with "Murphey's laws".

For the last years traffic through major waterways around the world has dramatically increased. Over 18 thousand transits took place through the Suez canal alone during  last year.  And not only the amount of ships has increased, also the size of the ships using main world waterways is reaching absurd dimensions. To pilot such massive structures through narrow channels is not a task that belongs in the realm of the exact sciences. It takes more than just the basic knowledge of ship handling. It takes skills, it takes guts feelings, it takes a high dose of adroitness. It is like "threading a needle".

What happened in Suez could have happened anywhere else. There are dozens of videos of ships knocking down gantry cranes, crashing onto docks, colliding head on with other ship, and even breaking in two. The difference between those mishaps and the one at Suez are the implications. There was a dominoes effect after the Suez canal was blocked. It unleashed a chain reaction capable of reaching important terminals around the world. It made the supply chain go out of sync, by creating long delays. The system nearly collapsed. 

The good news is that the shipping industry has always proved to be highly resilient. Its mechanisms of adaptation are also highly efficient. (So we like to say too) Granted, it is currently going through a major storm that will last longer than expected, but it will certain prevail. Or is it really? In fact, the storm has come with financial benefits. If anything, the shipping industry is coming out stronger than ever. Look at their latest financial reports. This can also be easily explained with the fact that over 90 percent of all world goods are transported by ship. A captive market? 

In short we, modern humans, need the shipping industry as much as most organisms need their circulatory system for survival.  

As consumers, can we deny the surge of pleasure and excitement  we feel when we are notified that the item we ordered overseas, whatever it is that we think we need and have been waiting for, has already arrived?   No, we can't, even if we know that such a feeling will vanish in no time. Ephimeral.

TMP

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