(CNN) – The emergency stop is a familiar maneuver for most drivers. A danger presents itself in front of the moving vehicle, the driver steps on the brake and grabs the steering wheel, the car brakes sharply, hopefully under full control.
But what happens when the vehicle you drive is the size of a small town and doesn’t come equipped with brakes?
This is the scenario faced by those who command hundreds of gigantic container ships and cruises on our seas and waterways.
The maneuverability of these ocean titans made headlines this week when a container ship the size of the Empire State Building was trapped in the Suez Canal, one of the most important waterways in the world.
Given the level of traffic normally seen on the Suez Canal – when there is no pandemic, this can be an average of 106 container ships and huge cruise ships each day – it may be surprising that this type of incident does not happen more often. .
The captain’s perspective of a container ship
A container ship sailing on the Suez Canal.
KHALED DESOUKI / AFP via Getty Images
Captain Yash Gupta commands the container ships that cross the world’s oceans. He has worked at sea for almost 20 years.
Gupta calls maritime life “unpredictable, but very interesting”.
“If you are at sea on normal operations, you look very relaxed,” he told CNN Travel.
But, he adds, you never know what will happen next.
“One day, you see that the water is calm and the ship is stable as a rock. You wake up in the morning and see that there is a storm coming and waves of about five meters, six meters, eight meters. You never know.”
The key, he says, is to plan. On board, Gupta commands about 20 to 25 people at any one time, with crew contracts ranging from four to nine months.
Together with his navigation team, Gupta carefully maps the route before the start of the trip, taking into account the conditions of the tides and the climate.
The wind is a particularly important consideration for container ships because the stacked containers give them a dizzying height.
“So you can imagine that it is like a solid wall, which is turned against the wind,” says Gupta.
He says that the effect of the wind is uncontrollable because the ship is in the water. It is not possible to step on the brake in the same way that you would stop a moving car.
And how quickly can you stop a container ship?
To answer that question, Gupta points to the extremely high demand for sea freight.
“Look around you, wherever you are sitting – everything you see, or touch, has been on a ship in your life.”
He says this high demand means that container ships are built to accommodate acceleration and deceleration in the shortest possible time, to avoid delays.
But the scale of the ships means that the numbers still look great.
A container ship going from maximum speed to stop takes about 2.9 kilometers and between 14 to 16 minutes, says Gupta.
Steering mechanisms vary from ship to ship, with some driven by dials, buttons and levers, but steering wheels are still common – only not the wooden giants that previously maneuvered sailing ships.
“It is a steering wheel with many electronic components involved,” explains Gupta. “When the wheel is turned, it gives electronic signals to the rudder, which turns according to the command given.”
When sailing in the Suez, ships travel by train and must sail at roughly the same speed as the ship they are following during the approximately 12 to 16 hours that it can take to transit the channel.
“You can’t just start to increase your speed. Otherwise, the distance between the two vessels will become smaller and smaller, and then you will end up going and colliding, ”says Gupta.
If a ship approaches the Suez Canal from the north or south entrance, it cannot proceed either until at least one pilot representing the Suez Canal Authority embarks.
“They have expertise in transiting the Suez Canal,” explains Gupta. “This pilot has to be on board the vessel and he is sailing on the vessel. He basically assists the captain.”
However, the overall responsibility for the safe transit of the ship remains with the captain, says Gupta.
Crucially, Suez pilots are experts in the area’s topography. They know the tides, they know the depth of the water, they are familiar with the width of the channel.
Since ships are transiting the channel, they generally cannot overtake each other, although in some places the channel is wider and ships can pass over.
Pilots will communicate with each other via radio communication to discuss these maneuvers.
“The pilot says to the other vessel: ‘Okay, I’m going to overtake you, you give me space, you go on one side or you want to increase the speed, decrease the speed’,” explains Gupta.
Also involved in the process is what Gupta calls the Suez Canal equivalent of air traffic control, a subsidiary of the Suez Canal Authority that monitors vessel traffic.
“They have a bigger radar and bigger navigation equipment. They monitor the movement of all ships as a whole and coordinate activities.”
The tugs are currently assisting Ever Given. Gupta says these small boats are often used to help large ships navigate Suez.
“There are some areas of the channel that are narrower than the rest,” he says. “Tugs are generally used as ‘escorts’ in these areas for large ships.”
The tugs travel in conjunction with the larger ship and remain available to assist in the event of a problem.
Cruise ship perspective
Cruise ships transiting the Suez Canal or other narrow waterways face many of the same challenges as container ships.
On the one hand, they are also extremely tall.
“The taller the ship, the more wind and the more susceptible to the effects of the wind, so all of that must be taken into account,” says Captain David Bathgate, who commands the ships on the Seabourn Cruise Line, a luxury cruise line from owned by Carnival.
Bathgate has decades of maritime experience, having worked on general cargo ships, bulk carriers, container ships and oil tankers throughout his career.
He has held the title of captain for the past two decades.
“Being in charge of the ship is an extremely rewarding and rewarding experience,” Bathgate told CNN Travel.
Like Gupta, he works with his crew to create a travel plan.
Each plan, says Bathgate, covers four steps: assessment, planning, execution and monitoring.
The assessment, he explains, involves ensuring that the team has the right charts, navigation notices and up-to-date weather conditions.
“So you have the planning, building your own route through the various stretches,” he explains. “So you have the execution, really doing the job, taking the ship over there.”
Finally, monitoring involves maintaining control of the vessel during the route and making sure it is on track, and taking any corrective action if necessary.
Bathgate says that each travel plan will be checked by at least four people, including navigation officers and an environmental officer.
Before navigating a narrow passage, such as the Suez, the Bathgate team will make sure that they are aware of the depth and width of the waterway and what he calls “any danger of further navigation within”.
This can include shallow areas, curves, corners or margins.
Although these topographic conditions are not likely to change, the unforeseen weather can have an unexpected effect.
“The climate is one of perhaps one of the most important aspects of these passages in restricted waters, in terms of wind speed and visibility,” says Bathgate.
“In Suez, for example, one of the main risks would be sandstorms, so very quickly and without warning, very strong winds can creep in with a significant amount of sand and reduce visibility.”
Bathgate also watches as ships move through the channel on a numbered train, so when they approach the channel, they anchor and wait for confirmation of their time interval.
“Invariably, cruise ships, we usually get number one on the train, and we are often followed by the big container ships that are on a critical schedule,” he says.
Container ship captain Gupta explains that cruise ships tend to have priority because of the number of passengers and because they are working on tight deadlines. This is the case not only on the Suez, but on other waterways, he says.
Typically, two or three Suez pilots will board a cruise ship to aid in traffic, and Bathgate notes that pilots can sometimes change midway.
And how easily can a cruise ship slow down or speed up? The numbers are very similar to those of a container ship.
“At full speed, just turning off the engines and letting the ship slide, it would take 15 minutes and 1.75 miles to stop,” says Bathgate.
“However, if we wanted to make an emergency stop by putting the engines fully aft, it would take just under five minutes and the distance we would travel would be just three quarters of a mile. So, for the size of the vessel, that is quite impressive numbers . “
Passenger perspective
While cruise captains are working hard to ensure a smooth passage through the Suez, passengers enjoy watching the train from their meeting room balconies.
Pam Broadhead transited the Suez Canal in November 2019, on Marella Discovery, an 11-story TUI cruise ship. The ship, traveling from Malaga, Spain, to Dubai, entered through the north gateway and traveled south.
“Our ship was the first to sail, so it was an early alarm to be on deck to watch the sunrise,” she told CNN Travel, reminding passengers of drinking coffee and eating croissants as they watched the sun rise over the horizon.
“After watching the sunrise, we sat on our porch with the cafes watching the boats (all of them container ships) pass by us in a constant train. Most of them loaded with containers.”
Occasionally, passengers spotted local fishing boats, overtaken by Marella Discovery and most other ships on the train.
“I think they really liked waving to us and them all,” says Broadhead.
Broadhead and her husband expected a good view of Mubarak’s Bridge of Peace – a road bridge that crosses the canal and links Asia and Africa – but the morning fog impacted the ship’s view range, meaning it was not possible .
“But just going under looked very moving. I think that being from a generation that is aware of the Suez crisis has possibly made it another moment,” she says.
Cloudy conditions impacted a significant section of the passage, Broadhead recalls.
“At one point, visibility was just a few meters on a bank of white cloud, making it impossible to see the edges of the channel or even the water or other ships, but we continue to sail silently with all the other ships following,” she says.
“Fortunately, the fog had dissipated around the middle of the road and there was a lot to see from there.”
When the ship reached the south exit, it was detained for a while before leaving the channel. Broadhead and his fellow travelers were able to watch the journey through the canal come to an end when the sun set over the Gulf of Suez.