The sun came up when one of the largest container ships in the world entered the Suez Canal towards the Mediterranean Sea. But on board Ever Given, a night storm in the desert obscured Tuesday’s dawn and hit a ship with four football fields.
Looking out of the bridge’s windows, the captain sailed at the critical bottleneck for global transport. Beside him were two Egyptian pilots in charge of accompanying all the big ships on the half-day journey. Then, a gust of wind turned the pile of 17,000 containers into an unwanted sail.
“Keep it steady!” the captain shouted, according to people who overheard the conversation on the bridge.
Minutes later, the bow hit the east wall of the canal, shaking the ship and blocking traffic on the Suez Canal, one of the most important links in the world in the global supply chain.
“We are stuck in a big moment,” said a policeman on the bridge, according to people who heard the lecture there.