''Ever Given'' () is one of the largest container ships in the world. The ship is owned by Shoei Kisen Kaisha (a ship-owning and leasing subsidiary of the large Japanese shipbuilding company

Imabari Shipbuilding is a major Japanese ship building, marine engineering, and service company headquartered in Imabari, Ehime, Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. It is Japan's largest shipbuilder both in terms of tonnage and sales revenue, with design, researc ...

), and is time chartered and operated by container transportation and shipping company Evergreen Marine, headquartered in Luzhu, Taoyuan,

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. ''Ever Given'' is registered in

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

and her

technical management In general, technical management is the systematic efforts used in the deployment of a system or process and in balancing its cost, effectiveness and supportability during its life cycle. Technical managers can be found at the interface of appli ...

is the responsibility of the German

ship management Ship management is the activity of managing marine vessels. The vessels under management could be owned by a sister concern of the ship management company or by independent vessel owners. A vessel owning company that generally has several vessel ...

company Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement. On 23 March 2021, while traveling from Tanjung Pelepas in

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, the ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking the channel. She remained in place for six days before salvage crews freed her on 29 March 2021. The vessel was impounded by the Egyptian government on 13 April 2021 for refusing to pay a reported $916 million in fees demanded by the government, including $300 million in "loss of reputation". The compensation claim was later cut down to $600 million. In early July 2021, the ship was released by the Egyptian authorities following an agreement on compensation.

Description

''Ever Given'' ( IMO 9811000) is one of 13

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal ...

s built to the ''Imabari 20000'' design developed by Imabari Shipbuilding, 11 of which have been chartered by Evergreen Marine with names starting with " Ever G". The ship was

laid down Laying the keel or laying down is the formal recognition of the start of a ship's construction. It is often marked with a ceremony attended by dignitaries from the shipbuilding company and the ultimate owners of the ship. Keel laying is one ...

on 25 December 2015, launched on 9 May 2018 and completed on 25 September 2018. It is Evergreen's second ship to be named ''Ever Given''; the first one ( IMO 8320901) was built in 1986 and has since been

broken up Ship breaking (also known as ship recycling, ship demolition, ship scrapping, ship dismantling, or ship cracking) is a type of ship disposal involving the breaking up of ships either as a source of Interchangeable parts, parts, which can be sol ...

. With a

length overall Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and is also ...

of , ''Ever Given'' is one of the longest ships in service. The hull has a beam of and her height from keel to main deck (hull depth) is . Fully laden at design draught, ''Ever Given'' draws of water while the scantling draught, which is used as the basis of hull strength and structural design, is . ''Ever Given'' has a

gross tonnage Gross tonnage (GT, G.T. or gt) is a nonlinear measure of a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage. Neither gross tonnage nor gross register tonnage should be confused with measures of mass or weig ...

of 220,940;

net tonnage Net tonnage (NT, N.T. or nt) is a dimensionless index calculated from the total moulded volume of the ship's cargo spaces by using a mathematical formula. Defined in ''The International Convention on Tonnage Measurement of Ships'' that was adopte ...

of 99,155; and

deadweight tonnage Deadweight tonnage (also known as deadweight; abbreviated to DWT, D.W.T., d.w.t., or dwt) or tons deadweight (DWT) is a measure of how much weight a ship can carry. It is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, fresh water Fresh water or ...

of 199,629 tons at design draught. The ship's container capacity is . As with most large container ships, ''Ever Given''s propulsion system consists of a single low-speed

two-stroke diesel engine A two-stroke diesel engine is a diesel engine that uses compression ignition in a two-stroke combustion cycle. It was invented by Hugo Güldner in 1899.Mau (1984) p.7 In compression ignition, air is first compressed and heated; fuel is then in ...

coupled to a large fixed-pitch

propeller A propeller (often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon a working flu ...

. The 11-cylinder

straight engine The straight engine (also called inline engine) is a configuration of multi-cylinder piston engine where all of the cylinders are arranged in a single row, rather than radially or in two or more cylinder banks. Design A straight engine is eas ...

, license-manufactured

Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...

MAN B&W 11G95ME-C9, produces at 79 rpm and gives the vessel a service speed of . In addition, ''Ever Given'' has four

straight-8 The straight-eight engine or inline-eight engine (often abbreviated as I8) is an eight-cylinder internal combustion engine with all eight cylinders mounted in a straight line along the crankcase. The type has been produced in side-valve, I ...

Yanmar is a Japanese diesel engine, heavy machinery and agricultural machinery manufacturer founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1912. Yanmar manufactures and sells engines used in a wide range of applications, including seagoing vessels, pleasure boats, cons ...

8EY33LW auxiliary diesel generators that produce electricity. For maneuvering in ports, the vessel has two

bow thruster Manoeuvering thrusters (bow thrusters and stern thrusters) are transversal propulsion devices built into or mounted to either the Bow (watercraft), bow or stern (front or back, respectively) of a ship or boat to make it more manoeuvrable. Bow th ...

Operational history

2019 Hamburg collision

On 9 February 2019, the ship collided with and heavily damaged ''Finkenwerder'', a

HADAG The HADAG (full name HADAG Seetouristik und Fährdienst AG, literally "''HADAG Sea-tourism and Ferry service''") is a local public transport company in Hamburg, Germany. It owns and operates passengers ferries across the Elbe River, overseen by a ...

ferry boat which was berthed at

Blankenese Blankenese () is a suburban quarter in the borough of Altona in the western part of Hamburg, Germany; until 1938 it was an independent municipality in Holstein. It is located on the right bank of the Elbe river. With a population of 13,637 as of ...

, near the harbour of Hamburg. Two minutes after the collision, a traffic ban on the

Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...

river was mandated due to high winds.

2021 Suez Canal grounding

At 07:40

Eastern European Time Eastern European Time (EET) is one of the names of UTC+02:00 time zone, 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The zone uses daylight saving time, so that it uses UTC+03:00 during the summer. A number of African countries use UTC ...

( UTC+02:00) on 23 March 2021, as she was passing through the Suez Canal on her way to

from Tanjung Pelepas, ''Ever Given'' became stuck (coordinates ) near the village of Manshiyet Rugola and blocked the canal. According to a statement by the

Suez Canal Authority Suez Canal Authority (SCA) is an Egyptian state-owned authority which owns, operates and maintains the Suez Canal. It was set up by the Egyptian government to replace the Suez Canal Company in the 1950s which resulted in the Suez Crisis. After ...

(SCA), the ship ran aground diagonally after losing the ability to steer amid high winds and a dust storm. In a separate statement, Evergreen Marine said that it had been told the ship "was suspected of being hit by a sudden strong wind, causing the hull to deviate from hewaterway and accidentally hit the bottom". The ship ended up with her bow wedged in one bank of the canal and stern nearly touching the other. Ever Given in Suez Canal viewed from ISS

Ever Given in Suez Canal viewed from ISS

The ship, which had no tugboat, was the fifth in a northbound convoy, behind two prior container ships that were each paired with a tugboat. There were fifteen vessels behind her when she ran aground. Traffic in both directions was blocked for just over six days, leading to a traffic jam of over two hundred vessels. On 24 March, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, the technical manager of the ship, denied earlier reports that she had been partially refloated. In addition, trade experts were worried about a supply chain delay, and tension due to the delay for the ships trapped as well as other vessels that planned to cross the Suez. Eight

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, suc ...

s worked to re-float the vessel in collaboration with

excavators Excavators are heavy equipment (construction), heavy construction equipment primarily consisting of a backhoe, boom, dipper (or stick), Bucket (machine part), bucket, and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The modern excavator's ...

removing sand from the side of the canal where the bow of the vessel was wedged. After an overnight break, the salvage work resumed in the morning of 25 March. Egyptian meteorologists reported that high winds and a sandstorm had affected the area on the day of the grounding, with winds gusting as much as . Addressing a press conference on 27 March, Admiral Osama Rabie, chairman of the SCA, said that weather conditions were "not the main reasons" for the ship's grounding, adding, "There may have been technical or human errors ... All of these factors will become apparent in the investigation." Aided by high

spring tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide tables ...

, the ship was partially freed from sediment and re-floated on 29 March 2021 at 05:42 EGY (03:42 UTC), apart from the bow, which was still caught. The ship was finally freed in the afternoon at 15:05 EGY (13:05 UTC), and the ship started moving under tow towards the

Great Bitter Lake The Great Bitter Lake (; transliterated: ''al-Buḥayrah al-Murra al-Kubrā'') is a large saltwater lake in Egypt which is part of the Suez Canal. Before the canal was built in 1869, the Great Bitter Lake was a dry salt valley or basin. Madl, ...

for technical inspection, the first step towards reopening the canal, planned for later that day. After the canal had been checked for damage, the SCA informed shipping agencies that shipping was to resume from 19:00 local time (17:00 UTC).

Aftermath

On 13 April, the SCA announced that the ship had been seized on court orders until the owners paid $900 million in damages. On 4 July 2021 the German newspaper ''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' reported that the owners and the SCA had agreed on compensation, although the exact amount remained unclear. The settlement had been lowered to $540 million by the

. The ship departed from the Suez Canal on 7 July for scheduled deliveries of cargo at several European ports. On 7 July 2021, Egyptian authorities released the ship after an unspecified settlement was reached. It was announced that Egypt would also receive a 75-ton tugboat from the ship's Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, as part of the compensation package. ''Ever Given'' sailed to

Port Said Port Said ( , , ) is a port city that lies in the northeast Egypt extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, straddling the west bank of the northern mouth of the Suez Canal. The city is the capital city, capital of the Port S ...

. Hull inspections were carried out, with the vessel finally departing on 12 July, after a seizure delay of more than 100 days. The ship finally arrived at her destination, the Rotterdam Maasvlakte, NL,

container terminal A container port, container terminal, or intermodal terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. The transshipment may be between container ships and land v ...

on 29 July, after sailing for 17 days, (although the trip was originally expected to take 9 days ), 22 days after her release by the Egyptian government, and over four months after her grounding;. She became a

tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural beaut ...

during that time. After unloading about three quarters of the load in Rotterdam, ''Ever Given'' departed on 2 August, mooring in Felixstowe Trinity Container Terminal on 3 August to complete unloading, before going out of service prior to inspection at Harwich Anchorage by Leask Marine (

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

) on behalf of

American Bureau of Shipping The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) is an American maritime classification society established in 1862. Its stated mission is to promote the security of life, property, and the natural environment, primarily through the development and verific ...

. She departed 6 August, for refueling at Malta Bunkering Area 3, preceded by ''Scot Munchen,'' on 15 August. During the morning of 20 August, ''Ever Given'' transited through the Suez Canal, within a 22-vessel convoy. On 20 September 2021 the ship arrived at Qingdao Port anchorage, before berthing alongside the sufficiently large

dry dock A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...

facilities for repairs on 4 October. Qingdao is also close to Chinese shipping ports where the vessel was projected to re-enter service in late October to mid-November. Photographs taken upon arrival at Qingdao Beihai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry pier indicated bow crumple damage extending as far back as the rear

tunnel. After spending nearly six weeks in dry dock there, she returned to service in November 2021, docking at Qingdao and Shanghai before continuing on her normal route.

Description

Operational history

2019 Hamburg collision

2021 Suez Canal grounding

Aftermath

See also

References

External links