Ever Forward Freed | What's Going on With Shipping?

Efforts to free the giant container ship are continuing after the 400m-long vessel became stuck in the Suez canal. Local authorities attempted to dislodge the 220,000 ton vessel from the banks of the canal using tug boats, but the megaship remains stuck more than one day after it ran aground.

On this episode of What's Going On With Shipping, Sal Mercogliano - former merchant mariner and maritime historian at Campbell University - we compare and constrast the grounding and salvage of MV Ever Forward (March 13, 2022) with that of MV Ever Given (March 23, 2021).

A container ship is reported to be stranded off the coast of Gibson Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Marine Tracker lists the ship as the Ever Forward and that it is aground. It appears there are several tugboats out of Baltimore trying to assist. The company that operates the ship, Evergreen, is the same one that was responsible for the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal a year ago.

Grounding container vessel Shahraz and MV Samudra Sakti in Singapore Strait May 10 2020
What happened?
MV "Shahraz" and MV "Samudra Sakti I" had run aground to the shallow Batu Berhanti in the Indonesian territorial waters within 6 minutes, which is surveyed with minimum water depths of 8.3 m in the northern part and up to 0.5 m in the southern part . It is located south of TSS Singapore Strait’s eastbound traffic lane.
A chain of events which must be described as extra ordinary rarity....

A monster wave of 30m was measured at 03:00 am by the Marine Institute M6 buoy located 200nm West of Ireland.

PSA Marine has unveiled the first-of-its-kind Liquid Bulk module (“LqB”) under PSA Marine’s ONEHANDSHAKE™ platform, which will revolutionise the way industry players within the liquid bulk logistics chain interact, and empower them to effortlessly transact with one another.

During the night Mar 28-29 EVER GIVEN was moved from her initial grounding position and hopefully, soon, will be either refloated, or positioned alongside Canal eastern bank, to free the Canal for shipping.

As we all know there is a new regulation established since July 2012, this new regulation refers to pilot transfer arrangements. There are other yearly safety campaigns such as IMPA that include SOLAS V.23 and IMO Resolution A 1045 and Resolution A.1108(29). Unfortunately, in this annual overview there were some accidents reported that could have been avoided.

The chairman of the Suez Canal Authority has suggested a possible mistake by the captain of the Ever Given could have led to the grounding of the giant container ship in the waterway last month.