The Morning: The cost of a stuck ship

A look at what happened with the Ever Given in the Suez Canal.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story March 30, 2021 By Claire Moses Good morning. A massive container ship that had been stuck in the Suez Canal is free. But the disruption isn’t over. Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, floating along the Suez Canal yesterday.Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters ‘Not just like flipping a switch’ After almost a week of dredging, drigging and tugging — and with some help from the moon — salvage teams yesterday freed the giant container ship that had been stuck in the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. As a result, traffic has resumed for the hundreds of ships waiting on both ends of the canal. And while estimates have varied wildly, the delay is also expensive. “The disruption has caused the canal authorities in Egypt losses of $95 million in revenue,” The Times’s Peter Goodman told me. And even though the ship is free, the disruption isn’t over. “It’s not just like flipping a switch,” Vivian Yee, the Times’s Cairo bureau chief, told me. Now that the ship is out of the way, the backlog will take at least a few days, maybe even weeks, to resolve. What happened? High winds from a sandstorm caused the ship, the Ever Given, to turn sideways in the canal and get stuck, its operators said. But shipping experts have suggested that while the wind probably had a role in the crisis, human error might have, too. Last year, almost 19,000 ships traveled through the canal without an accident, according to the chief of the Suez Canal Authority, the Egyptian agency that operates the waterway. And high winds aren’t unusual in the area. “We’ve seen worse winds,” Ahmad al-Sayed, a security guard, told The Times, “but nothing like that ever happened before.” The crews working to dig out the ship were largely dependent on forces beyond their control: the moon and the tides. The full moon on Sunday offered a few extra inches of tidal flow and gave workers the boost they needed to set the ship free. Not a normal ship It’s rare that a maritime disruption makes international news. But this was not your average mishap. For one, the Suez Canal isn’t like other waterways. “It is a vital channel linking the factories of Asia to the affluent customers of Europe, as well as a major conduit for oil,” Peter writes. And the Ever Given is one of the world’s biggest container ships. “From a distance, it’s hard to comprehend how big it is,” Vivian told us. “From land, all the containers on top look like Legos — and then you realize each one of those Legos is 20 or 40 feet long.” An aerial view of ships stranded in the Red Sea on Saturday.Mahmoud Khaled/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A global ripple effect In addition to shipping delays, the traffic jam has also affected manufacturing. There are a finite amount of big containers in the world, and many of them have been stuck at sea — creating a backlog of goods sitting in factories, waiting to be put in boxes, Vivian says. The crisis highlights a vulnerability of our interconnected world, Peter told us: “We have built a global distribution network that relies on goods getting where they are needed just as they are needed, with little margin for error.” The history: It took 10 years of hard labor — during which tens of thousands of Egyptian workers died — to build the canal in the 19th century. For more: This is how giant container ships are built. THE LATEST NEWS The Virus Healthcare professionals administering vaccines in Houston yesterday.Go Nakamura for The New York Times President Biden urged governors and mayors to keep or reinstate mask mandates, warning that “reckless behavior” had caused the recent rise in coronavirus cases. 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Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT ARTS AND IDEAS Jing Fong, the largest restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown, this month.Andrew Seng for The New York Times Chinatowns are struggling Chinese restaurants have suffered more during the pandemic than most other U.S. restaurants. Their business began declining sooner — in January of last year, when news broke that a new virus was circulating in Wuhan, China. The restaurants have also had to cope with a rise in anti-Asian racism — “vandalized, robbed, attacked online in racist Yelp reviews,” as The Washington Post reported. Xi’an Famous Foods in New York began closing early after two employees were punched in the face while commuting to and from work. Grace Young, a decorated author of cookbooks, is worried that traditional Chinatowns, like New York’s and San Francisco’s, will never recover from the pandemic, and she has spent months trying to call attention to the problem. “When you step into those restaurants, you are stepping back in time, and it’s a privilege,” Young said on a recent episode of “The Splendid Table,” a food podcast. For anyone who wants to help Chinese restaurants, Francis Lam, the host of “The Splendid Table,” offered a suggestion: “If you can, order yourself some Chinese takeout. Get extra. Leftovers are your friend.” In The Times, Bonnie Tsui has more tips for supporting restaurants. — David Leonhardt PLAY, WATCH, EAT What to Cook Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. Umami-rich seaweed takes creamy asparagus pasta to the next level. What to Watch See a short opera film starring the drag queen Sasha Velour, a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner and lip-syncing legend. Meanwhile, on TikTok Young artists are bypassing art schools and student loans, quitting their day jobs and pursuing careers as full-time artists on TikTok. But what happens when viewership plummets and copycats arrive? Now Time to Play The Morning now includes a bonus game from the team that creates Spelling Bee and the Crossword. The current game is Bee Plus. Your goal is to solve an additional riddle, using only the letters below. The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was untucked, and the answers to yesterday’s Bee Plus were duct and deck. Here is today’s puzzle and Bee Plus — or you can play online. BEE PLUS: Find two chemical elements that are next to each other on the periodic table. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Sneezing sound (five letters). If you’re in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — Claire P.S. Send us a question for the News Quiz! Submit a suggestion before noon Eastern tomorrow, and we may feature it in this week’s quiz. You can see today’s print front page here. Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about Georgia’s election law. On “The Ezra Klein Show,” Ted Chiang discusses science fiction, technology and superheroes. Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. The Morning Briefing newsletter is now The Morning newsletter. You received this email because you signed up for the newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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