Boaty McBoatface clearly was more amusing. When a year go the container ship Ever Given went sideways and blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, there was more than red on the faces of its owners. Their balance sheet and others’ across the planet were bleeding. For each day Ever Given plugged the canal, “an estimated $9.6 billion-worth of cargo between Asia and Europe” was delayed. The Suez Canal Authority assessed nearly a billion dollars in damage. Egypt lost “between $12 and $15 million in revenues for each day the waterway was closed.”
Well. April Fools Day came two weeks early this year. A sister ship to the Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine Corp., Ever Given, is aground in the Chesapeake Bay.
Slate tells the tale:
Since Sunday night, a 1,095-foot-long cargo ship has been stuck in the mud off the Maryland coast of the Chesapeake Bay.
For reasons that remain unknown, the ship—which is fate-temptingly named the Ever Forward—missed a turn while traveling from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia, and veered out of a 50-foot-deep channel that runs down the middle of the bay to accommodate such large cargo ships. Ship tracking data shows that the Ever Forward overshot the edge of the channel into waters much too shallow for it to traverse.
Whoops. Except where this ship is stuck, writes Christina Cauterucci, is “no big whoop.” It’s not blocking other vessels. The bigger whoops is that the Ever Forward is “stucker” than the Ever Given ever was.
Perhaps Vladimir Putin can spare a tactical nuke.
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