Suez Canal blocked by stranded Evergreen boxship

An ultra large container ship operated by Evergreen ran aground on the Suez Canal on Tuesday, blocking traffic on one of the world’s most important waterways.

A picture taken by crew onboard another ship in the canal, the Maersk Denver, shows the 2018-built 20,388 teu Ever Given, which was en route from Shenzhen to Rotterdam, blocking the canal in both directions after it got stuck near the Red Sea entrance of the canal yesterday morning.

The vessel, built by Imabari, was among the first series of ships in excess of 20,000 teu to be constructed in Japan. It is the largest ship to run aground in the 152-year history of the key artery linking Europe with Asia.

TankerTrackers tweeted that there were a lot of fully-laden tankers stuck at either end of the canal carrying Saudi, Russian, Omani and US oil while data provided by eeSea below shows the volume of containerships heading for the Suez.