[lisper]

You can get a rough idea by thinking of this as if it were a natural disaster, and from that perspective I think the toll is probably not too bad. No casualties, very little property damage, and a week is not really all that long.

However... that is no excuse to shrug this off. We were very, very lucky that it was only a week. The ship could easily have broken in two, which would have been a catastrophe of the first order and likely shut the canal down for a year. The world dodged a major bullet here.

[DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii]

After Egypt intentionally blocked the Suez Canal during the Six Day War and an operation was taken to reopen it after the Yom Kippur War it took around 7 months to clear the ships that were scuttled to block it[1]. I would think a cleanup with more modern technology dealing with a ship that wasn't scuttled for the purpose of blockage would take less time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Suez_Canal_Clearance_Oper...

[lisper]

The 1974 operation involved ten ships, the largest of which was 6700 tons. The Ever Given displaces 220,000 tons. It's an entirely different beast.

[fiedzia]

Its large, but its size is limited by sues canal. Ships could be much larger if they were designed for a different route.

[notyourday]

Only Qmax and Chinamax are higher.

[perl4ever]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinamax

This has a rather odd diagram, and I'm not sure if it supports your comment or not.

It shows Suezmax as having "unlimited length", while Chinamax is given as 360 meters, which I think is smaller than Ever Given.

Obviously unlimited length can't be literal, if the Suez isn't perfectly straight, right?

On the other hand the Chinamax diagram says "unlimited air draft" which again, can't be literal since at some point it would be impossible to keep upright?

The Chinamax designation seems to imply a greater draft, which does make sense, but it's only 20% greater than the greatest stated for Suezmax.

[juki]

Chinamax means ships that can use specific harbours, which imposes a length limit. Panamax likewise has a length limit because the ship has to fit inside the locks in the Panama Canal.

The Suez Canal doesn't have locks, so in principle the length isn't limited. In reality it of course is limited by the harbours you intend to use. Apparently ships longer than 400m also require permission from the Suez Canal Authority.

More important for the claim that Chinamax is bigger is the tonnage. Chinamax can carry 400,000 tonnes, while Suezmax is typically under 200,000 tonnes.

[schoen]

> Obviously unlimited length can't be literal, if the Suez isn't perfectly straight, right?

It looks to me from the map like the tightest turns in the canal are the southern exit near Suez, and the turns between Timsah Lake and El Qantara el Sharqiya (depending on which channel you're in, and whether you're allowed to use both channels in your turning maneuvers).

It would be a fun problem to find a good way to figure this out exactly, but it looks to me like a ship 3000 to 4000 meters long would not be able to complete those turns even in principle without running aground. (Presumably the actual practical limit is a lot lower.)

The longest ship ever built (which exceeded the draft limits for Suezmax, so it was out for a different reason) was 458 meters long

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant

... so there might still be an order of magnitude to play with if you were making a ship that was ideally small and maneuverable in other regards.

[Teever]

I am not an expert but what I think they mean by 'unlimited' in this context is 'limited by engineering, not limited by 'geology of man made structure.'

[pixl97]

While our ships have grown greatly, so has our ability to salvage them at the same time.

[Animats]

Worldwide salvage capacity isn't up much. Mammoet Salvage and Titan Salvage exited the business a few years ago. Smit is one of the few salvors with worldwide reach and their own heavy equipment. The business requires huge equipment on standby, and trained people waiting for the next crisis.

Smit is now part of Boskalis, which is a big marine engineering firm. They have dredgers, heavy lift ships, tugs, and barges, which are useful both for marine construction and for salvage. So the fleet can do other things between crises.

[Uehreka]

That feels like the kind of non-obvious claim that should come with a source (even just a blog post by an analyst that lays out the relevant vocab terms and the general theory).

[nowandlater]

That's no joke. Salvage operations is such a fascinating topic, which I'm sure many (me included) found themselves quickly obsessed with. The sagging and hogging threshold of this ship is the critical key here. I'm curious how close/or not the hull came to being compromised.

[Animats]

That's why Smit has naval architects on staff, and the program Hecsalv.[1] They will have calculated the limits of how much the stern could be pushed without damaging the bow before pushing it.

[1] https://www.herbert-abs.com/hecsalv

[iso1210]

The canal revenues were down about $15m/day. If it really cost $7b a day, then Egypt is massively undercharging.

[Taek]

Not necessarily. I pay only $1 a day for water, but if you stop giving me water for 7 days the damages are going to be a lot more than $7. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to charge me more than $1 per day for water.

Obviously an extreme example, but the situation with this ship is likely similar. The damages probably far exceed the $15m/day in revenue (though I suspect they are far lower than $7b per day).

[OscarCunningham]

The reason water is cheap is because it's plentiful; there's a lot of competition to supply it. But there's only one Suez canal and sailing around Africa is much worse. So you would expect Egypt to be extracting a significant portion of the value the Suez canal adds.

[mywittyname]

You're forgetting about the stick, namely, the literally armies backing these massive shipping companies.

If you're going to run an extortion racket, you need the power to secure yourself against the inevitable challenges to your station. Egypt is in no position to handle and armed threat from the US, China, or even most European nations. Their government would be toppled and a sympathetic one would be installed who would lower shipping prices to something on the cheap side of fair.

[goatinaboat]

Egypt is in no position to handle and armed threat from the US, China, or even most European nations

A little history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

[kenneth]

The Suez Crisis's failure by the British and French had nothing to do with Egypt beating them militarily, and had everything to do with American pressure. One of the West's biggest strategic failures.

The Israel, British, and French insurrection completely dominated the Egyptians. The US wanted to carry favors with Egypt to prevent them to falling into the communist sphere, so it applied a pressure campaign against the British and French that completely wrecked the European economies (and from which they never really recovered). It didn't work, Egypt did not become an American ally in any meaningful way, and instead the West lost control over one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, turning it into a corrupt mess where you have to pay for passage in cigarette boxes and bribes.

It was one of the biggest foreign policy fuck-ups of the USA, in my opinion.

[wizzwizz4]

So… if somebody gets a monopoly on the water supply to an area, you think a price hike is reasonable?

Oh, wait, water's already a monopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

[Dylan16807]

1. We're not talking about what's reasonable, but what's expected.

2. This isn't like a monopoly on water supply, because the ships don't have to go this way. To make the analogy work you'd have to add something like "everybody already has a well, but supplying tap water is cheaper than using a well". In such a situation, a water company that's maximizing profits would charge just a little bit less than using a well, and while it would annoy people it wouldn't harm them.

3. The government stops water companies from gouging for the good of the citizens, which isn't a factor here.

[wizzwizz4]

Everybody has access to rainwater, except the people who don't. I think the analogy works quite well re point 2 (though not point 3).

[OscarCunningham]

The subject was predicting the cost of the boat getting stuck by comparing to the known cost to Egypt. The moral aspects of the water situation don't transfer across the analogy unless you also think that Egypt are charging less than they could because they think they have a moral obligation to shipping companies.

[lizknope]

The houses just 100 yards away from me have wells for water. There is a large upfront cost of making the well but after that you have "free" water other than the electricity for the pump.

[fest]

In some countries (Latvia being the example I'm familiar with), water from artesian wells is considered a limited resource and it's taxed.

[perl4ever]

Yes, but you said it yourself, the value the Suez canal adds, compared to going the long way. It's much smaller than the value of being able to ship from A to B at all.

[ClumsyPilot]

There is no major city with two independant water supplies, with their own sets of pips, purification systems and suers. Thays what water supply means. So no, there is no competition, and a supermarket water bottle is not competition.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> That doesn't mean it's reasonable to charge me more than $1 per day for water.

This is where someone steps in and says something to the tune of "Whatever price you're willing to pay is by definition reasonable" and completely ignore the ethical/moral issues with essentially holding someone's life for ransom by charging the maximum price they can get for something they need to survive.

[ksdale]

Looks like you stepped in to say it!

[tehjoker]

The suez is the site of massive imperial intervention. The Suez crisis was precipitated when Egypt nationalized the canal. Western militaries and economic leverage are deployed to keep the prices low for the benefit of those governments.

It's a huge mistake to regard any international trade in the middle east as regulated by simple supply and demand curves. This is a site of world geostrategic focus, usually at the expense of the people that live there.

[azernik]

It's not 100% negative - clever Egyptian governments have managed to charge an extra "price" in diplomatic and geopolitical advantage. e.g. using selective closures as a weapon, selective opening to military traffic as an incentive. You just have to be careful not to take actions that affects everyone, like a massive and "unreasonable" price hike; these invite the kind of great-power consensus against you that is very dangerous.

(Interestingly, both have been practiced towards Israel at different times, as the countries have gone from bitter enemies to cautiously aligned against both Iran and Sunni Islamism of the Brotherhood/Hamas flavor.)

[creato]

Someone else in one of these canal threads said that Egypt charges slightly less than it would cost to sail around Africa. If that's true, that Egypt is probably capturing around as much value as is possible from the canal.

[CalChris]

Quite a bit less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iwOZOb90fM

[creato]

That example was pretty idealized, starting and ending very close to the canal. Most voyages are probably not affected quite as starkly by the canal, and I doubt the canal can or does charge ships based on their overall itinerary.

[pitaa]

> I doubt the canal can or does charge ships based on their overall itinerary

You'd be wrong there! They actually have a rebate system[0] based on a number of factors including origin and destination. Basically, they try to make it so that its always cheaper to go through the canal, rather than sail around.

[0] https://www.wilhelmsen.com/ships-agency/suez-canal/suez-cana...

[plaidfuji]

Depends.. their fees are likely based on the saved time/cost of circling Africa, and calculated so as not to encourage other nations to construct workarounds themselves (if that’s even geographically feasible).. not on the cost of their service being down once people are already committed to it.

[rswail]

The cost to traverse the canal is likely to be as close as possible to the cost of the alternative routes (eg Cape of Good Hope) that Egypt can make them, while still providing the advantages of saved time and operational cost.

The cost here was for the interruption to the schedules, not the daily cost of operations normally.

[Spooky23]

I doubt it. It’s a significant source of revenue for a country with limited revenue sources.

End of the day, the big shippers can price in the two week delay to round Africa, and higher tolls could make a competing railway feasible. As it is China will probably have built a rail corridor in a few decades.

[throwaway1777]

Pretty sure there are literal treaties in place. It’s not simple supply and demand.

[iudqnolq]

Ha! I never thought I'd see a patio-style charge more to a govt. Only on hn...

[andi999]

There is no major bullet here. Nowadays the alternative route around Africa takes 10 days only.

[lisper]

10 days is not a big deal if it's just one shipment. It's a huge deal if it affects every ship that would otherwise have gone through the canal, i.e. 50 ships a day, 18,000+ ships a year. That's 180,000 extra ship-days per year. That's a pretty major bullet in an economy built on just-in-time inventory control.

[bkor]

Aside from the additional ships, you need additional containers, employees, etc. It also costs more in bunkers, etc. For JIT it wouldn't matter too much though. As long as it arrives on schedule it would be ok.