Salvage teams on Monday finally freed the colossal container ship stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, ending a crisis that had clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways and halted billions of dollars a day in maritime commerce. However, an internet user has now started a petition online to put the ship back in the canal where it had been stuck. A flotilla of tugboats, helped by the tides, wrenched the bulbous bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been firmly lodged since March 23.The tugs blared their horns in jubilation as they guided the Ever Given through the water.
While the nearby ships and most of the world heaved a sigh of relief, one man named Parik Patel seemed unhappy that the ship has been freed. Patil has started a petition on Change.org to put the ship back.
“The Ever Given was just living its best life in the Suez Canal before it was torn away. Many people viewed that ship as a beacon of hope that distracted them from the pressures of daily life during a pandemic. PUT THE BOAT BACK!” the petition reads.
It is not known if Patil is joking or if he really did not want the crisis to end.
The crisis began on Tuesday last week when strong winds blasted in the region and kicked up sands along the banks. The narrow waterway and the difficulty in navigating due to poor visibility resulted in the crew losing control of the ship which careened sideways into a sandy embankment. Tugs and diggers have so far failed to dislodge a massive container ship stuck in the Suez Canal on Wednesday.
The canal is among the most trafficked waterways in the world, used by tankers shipping crude from the Middle East to Europe and North America, as well as in the opposite direction. Due to stranded ship, hundreds of ships carrying 379,000 20-foot containers of stuff couldn’t move through the canal in either direction in the past one week. Egypt’s Suez Canal chief said Saturday that “technical or human errors” could be behind the grounding of a huge container ship blocking the vital waterway, causing a backlog of over 300 vessels.
According to a report by the BBC, the ship was holding up goods worth $9.6 billion (£7 billion) each day that the jam was not cleared up. This amounts to about $400 million each hour.
A report by Financial Express says that the blockade could result in losses of $9.6 billion each day, estimates by London based Llyod’s List, a shipping news journal, show. Westbound traffic on the canal is worth around $5.1 billion daily and the eastbound traffic is worth $4.5 billion.
The container ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal for the last six days is finally back afloat — thanks to a supermoon that brought high tides. The container reportedly got a boost from a high tide caused by a supermoon — a full moon that raises water levels with its strong gravitational pull on the Earth.
At the time of writing this, 502 people have signed the petition.