Humanizing Rules

CHAPTER 22RULE NUMBER FIVE

Ever Stuck

In March 2021, a 200,000‐ton container ship called the Ever Given made news headlines around the world when it got stuck in the Suez Canal. A journey that should have taken around 13 hours, ended up taking over six days, during which time the Ever Given blocked the main shipping route from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. In doing so, it caused a tailback of over 200 vessels and disrupted global supply chains. You might not remember the name of the ship, but you'll probably remember seeing pictures of an enormous cargo boat run aground on a sand bank being dug out by what looked like a toy digger.

Like me, your initial reaction upon hearing the story or seeing the image of it stuck, was probably to blame the captain for what seems like a basic navigation error. To misquote Brian Cullinan's famous words, “It doesn't sound very complicated, but you have to make sure you're steering the ship straight down the canal” (see the Introduction). But then I discovered that ships travelling through the Suez Canal are required by law to have a local pilot on board to help guide them through it. All of a sudden, I drew an entirely different conclusion. Surely, I now reasoned, it must be the pilot's fault. After all, preventing that kind of incident is the sole reason they're there.

Until that is, I learned that this wasn't the first time the Ever Given had been involved in an accident. Just over a year before the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal, ...