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Ed Webb

The Ever Given is proving hard to refloat. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ly-big-ship-is-now-blocking-it

shipping trade Suez Egypt

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • the grounding of Ever Given also has exposed how the complex ownership structures in global shipping might make it difficult to hold anyone accountable. The Ever Given is operated by Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen Maritime. Evergreen charters the ship from a Japanese firm; a Dubai-based company acts as the agent for the ship in ports; and the ship flies the flag of Panama
  • Flags of convenience, or open registries, have more lax labor and environmental regulations, and lower thresholds for safety and insurance provisions.
  • Last summer, the Wakashio, another ship owned by a Japanese firm but flagged to Panama, ran aground in Mauritius, spilling oil into the island’s sensitive marine ecosystem. The fracturing of ownership and operation across different legal jurisdictions and national boundaries also makes it much harder to assign responsibility for accidents such as the grounding of Wakashio and Ever Given.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Egypt is not collecting tolls on ships’ passage. And ships, including those operated by Evergreen, have begun to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.
  • For now, the knock-on effect of the stoppage is the accumulation of insurance claims and late fees, and delays in the delivery of cargo. But in the longer term, much as it did in the mid-twentieth century, the 2021 blockage of the Suez Canal, combined with the effects of the pandemic, may precipitate a reckoning in how maritime transport operates.
Ed Webb

Root Canal | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...root-canal

empire transportation water oceans

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Of all the great canals that have ever been dug, which was the most important? Which canal, that is, has had the most outsized role in world history, by fueling trade, war, or empire?
  • I would give the Suez Canal the nod. Digging it did much the same for British sea power as Panama later did for the United States. It granted the Royal Navy ready access to the Indian Ocean, making possible a liberal empire presided over by an unrivaled fleet. How crucial Suez was to Atlantic powers’ endeavors in Asia became clear in 1904 and 1905. That’s when Japan’s ally, Great Britain, closed the canal to the Russian Navy — and in turn compelled the Russian Baltic Fleet to undertake an epic 20,000-mile voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and up through the East China and Yellow seas just to meet Japanese Adm. Togo’s tanned, rested, and ready Combined Fleet at Tsushima Strait. The result was predictable: a debacle of the first order.
  • Suez supplies a second gateway to the larger maritime world, enhancing Mediterranean and North Atlantic countries’ prospects on the high seas immensely
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