German NDR radio: "EVER GIVEN" ship stranded in Suez Canal shows bad history

CAIRO - 28 March 2020: It seems that the captain of Choi Kisen Kesha’s ship, EVER GIVEN, which was stranded in the Suez Canal, is used to mismanaging it.

In February 2019, EVER GIVEN collided with a small ferry in Germany's Blankenese and badly damaged it, causing international shipping to stop in the Port of Hamburg. Hamburg is Germany’s largest port, Europe’s third-largest, and ranks 18th in the list of the largest container ports in the world.

The repeated failure to control the ship’s course in light of the bad weather, which is the basis of the "force majeure" led by the same captain, calls for investigation into his error and the safety of the navigation devices of that giant ship. The ship disrupted the Suez Canal in the same way it disrupted the German port of Hamburg in 2019, resulting in a trade disaster.

The German radio, NDR, said that ongoing European discussions at the level of the European Union are demanding that EVER GIVEN ship should be prevented from passing through any port in Europe due to its repeated technical problems that affect international navigation and the failure of its captain to control it.

Since March 23, 2021, the EVER GIVEN ship, 400 meters long, 59 meters wide, and with a capacity of 224,000 tons, ran aground due to bad weather and sandstorm and wedged diagonally across the canal at 151 km of the canal, where vessels pass through from both directions. Being stranded at this point, the ship resulted in the suspension of the international maritime trade through the canal.

The SCA announced on Friday resuming efforts to re-float the ship, using 9 gigantic tugboats, including "Baraka 1" and "Izzat Adel", after the completion of the dredging work near the vessel’s bow using "Mashhour" dredge.

It was further explained that the tugging process requires several factors, including the wind direction and the tidal state, which makes of it a ‘complex technical process’ that requires very unique procedures and multiple attempts.

In a previous statement on Friday, SCA announced dredging 17,000 cubic meters of sand and mud by Mashhour dredger around the Ever Given ship’s bow, with rate of dredging reached about 87 percent.