Yeah, there’s no need to blow anything up. IANA explosives expert (or a canal expert), but I expect that getting an intact ship stuck in it blocks the canal more thoroughly than blowing one up would—a sufficiently big bomb (like if you nuked it or something) might just, uh, widen and deepen the canal for a short stretch.
Actually sabotaging the canal would probably better be accomplished by deliberately sinking a ship in the middle of it. In fact, in the wake of the Six Day War of 1967, the canal was blocked for about eight years, which was done partly by planting mines, but mostly by sinking a bunch of ships in it.
There were 5 in front and 15 lined up behind it when the power went off. They all go at once, and I think that’s the total traffic for the day, with presumably another 20-30 daily in the convoy going the other direction at some other time.
Power on the ship went out, then it ran aground. So they have two problems: they need to get the power systems working again, and they need to get it ungrounded.
For whatever it may be tangentially relevant, I’d read that one tactic China or other adversaries may use in combat would be to sabotage the Panama Canal to hinder U.S. warships from transiting from the Atlantic to the Pacific in short order (although the U.S. Pacific fleet may be sufficient on its own.)
Wonder what militaries would benefit from the Suez being obstructed? (not saying this Evergreen vessel is deliberate, just hypotheticaling.)
So… it’s not a terrorist plot as OP feared, but a viable solution to the current problem might be to place a huge bomb inside the ship now and blow it up?
I saw a youtube video of an ultra large cargo carrier aground due to rudder failure in Holland or Belgium, I think it took 12 tugs (with 10s of thousands of horsepower) to “refloat” the ship.
(Edit) some of these things carry 20000+ “containers”, we’ve all seen them, something carried by tractor trailers, etc.
Hard to imagine that would ever be the best option. I wonder if they could dam one end of the canal, and then use the tidal surge to raise the water level to float this ship a little higher, and then get it turned the right way.
For all the power that tugboats have, they’re pushing against water. Someone upthread mentioned using cranes, but you don’t really need to lift, just pull. A ground-based winch might be able to give more of a pull than a tugboat, as long as it was anchored firmly enough on the side of the canal.
The first step is checking hull integrity. I’m guessing that she’s gone softly aground on sand in which case probably no problem.
Then to get her off, first step is just tugs. Next step is deballast (but of course she may not have been carrying much in the first place). These are combined with waiting for a higher tide but I don’t know how that works in the Suez Canal.
Third is remove cargo, but it is a major quantum leap in expense and complication compared to the first two steps, so they will avoid it if possible.
“If they are unable to pull her free… in a high tide, they are going to have to start removing cargo.”
The operation to move the Ever Given, which could include removing large amounts of sand from around the areas where the vessel is grounded, may take days, Cairo24 news reported, citing an official at the Suez Canal Authority.
Tugboats pull pretty hard; according to Wikipedia, the biggest can exert over 60 tons of force. Cranes can lift a lot more, but they’re really designed for lifting vertically rather than dragging horizontally. You’d be better off using a big earth mover like this one:
But even that is going to have limited tractive force, based on its weight and its grip. It weighs 183 tons and will be sitting on dirt, so probably not much better tractive force than a tugboat (and they’ve already got a bunch of tugboats pulling on this ship without much luck).
