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It's most probably just for show, as they'd have a tough time of actually finding them guilty considering the state of the canal. They'll bluster about huge damages, then "settle for an undisclosed amount" which is realistically more like just the costs of the fix itself, and maybe a bit extra for compensation.

Absolutely. They see an opportunity to make some revenue, and they will. This is, in the nicest possible way, the way business is done in Egypt. You start from an absolutely outrageous position, and settle on something both parties are generally happy with. This applies from billion dollar lawsuits to buying a pack of cigarettes. Haggling is an art form there.

I got an impression that any lawsuit goes like that everywhere. A claimant asks for outrageously high compensation and settles for much less.

> This applies from billion dollar lawsuits to buying a pack of cigarettes. Haggling is an art form there.

Some sellers in markets in the region will get offended if you don’t try and haggle, even it means they’ll make 10x the profit that they’d settle for.

It is not the about the money.

Traders would sometimes take a hit even for a good argument. There is no fun in making 10x money that way. They want to earn it.

You will find such traders in all over West Asia/arabic world like Egypt, Istanbul and as far off as delhi, not everyone is like that however, plenty will straight up cheat.

Do you have even anecdotal example of this behavior on industrial level, or just projecting your own touristic experience?

Yes - my business provided ecommerce infrastructure for a major Egyptian brand. The negotiations were... actually rather fun. It all started by phone and email, they tried to rip us off, we poked fun at their attempts, and returned in kind. Ultimately I flew out to Alexandria and after an afternoon of Very Serious Business we shook on it, and became best friends.

Elsewhere, there’s always a degree of horse trading, but the focus is on getting the deal done - here, the focus was very much on doing the deal. The negotiations over terms were far more of an assessment of us than the RFQ and the pitch were, whereas with western brands, the inverse is true.

It has nothing to do with cultural reasons. Every lawsuit in the U.S. and other places does the exact same thing, claim very high numbers, then perhaps settle for much less.

Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions, but wouldn't such a lawsuit be filed in an Egyptian court? It could be very easy to find them guilty. In the article the port authority is already holding the ship hostage for the money, and they could easily bar Evergreen from using the canal if they don't pay up. What motivation do they have to negotiate?

I doubt that the contract between the company operating the ship and the canal authority includes the settlement of disputes in Egyptian court. If it goes this way, the company may seek for compensation abroad - this will damage the reputation of Egypt and result in a very long and difficult litigations everywhere around the world.

Besides that, new risks associated to this route may push shippers to look more closely to an alternative route. Northern route is much shorter, does not have vessel size limits and it becomes more easier to navigate with global warming. It's not hard to imagine ice class nuclear merchant ships carrying 30-40k TEU there in 10 years.

> nuclear merchant ships [...] in 10 years.

This is very hard for me to imagine.

They already exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

The only question is if it is economically viable at current level of technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker

Imagine one of these with stuff on it.

I imagine that it's not so much the "nuclear ship" part as much as it is the "nuclear merchant ship" part. Of course you can build big nuclear-powered vessels. But how many governments are willing to part with enough uranium to power such a vessel? Civilian use of nuclear material is extremely restricted and enforcement of maritime law is already something of a problem area due to how international the whole thing is.

Well, Russia already operates such fleet and generally considers it as the only feasible way to go with Northern route - to break ice you need a lot of power. I'm pretty sure China won't see a problem with admitting such vessels in their ports or even operating some on their own. With Northern route it's the only way to go in next 50 years, while Arctic is still fully freezing.

The United States did in 1959:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah

I'm not convinced Egypt's reputation matters much when a company is calculating whether to go through the Suez Canal vs. around South Africa? As long as the Suez is substantially cheaper, the only effect of this kind of tail risk will be in the cost of insurance.

Evergreen is also probably facing liabilities from affected customers if the cargo were to never reach it's destination. It would apparently create the need for whoever is receiving the goods to perhaps negotiate with Egypt separately in such an event.

My guess is that if Egypt decides to push responsibility entirely on the ship's owners and operators then it would open itself up to more vocal criticism from other customers afraid of also being sued for mistakes caused by Suez being unfit.

They do have contracts and Terms of Service when there's a six figure number involved just to cross the channel. How the contracts are judged could indeed be a matter of jurisdiction, but the terms wont be nice to begin with.

At one billion I reckon its a matter of foreign relation so they won't be ripped off in a dark back alley.

And in return they receive protection from other claimants, who will have to bear their own risks no doubt.

Especially if it was force majeure as the GP implied.

> The captain has ultimate authority

This is a slightly complicated issue: the ship was being piloted so the person with the authority is basically the pilot (someone who’s job is to take ships through the canal but not anywhere else). The captain can order the pilot off the ship (and then take control) but not much else. And doing that in the middle of a sandstorm would probably not be so clever.

I can't find the quote, but I recall one ship captain saying in the multiple decades he'd been transiting, he'd never had the Suez Canal pilots leave their crew quarters between start and finish.

Seems most boats that wish to transit have to come prepared with many bribes, and be ready for multiple shakedowns: http://www.sailsafely.com/suez_canal.htm

Clearly this is Egypt's authorities trying to save face and deflect blame for their failure to provide actual, competent piloting.

The captain in this video has also transited the Suez Canal many times and talks a bit about the corruption and bribes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICrgh5sJa-A

I don't know that we need to assign blame. It is possible this accident was unavoidable. It is not like this is a recurring occurrence.

It is possible, but not likely.

I dont hear this being a once-in-a-century sandstorm.

This may not be a recurring ocurrence precisely because weather-induced groundings on that zone are particularly strange, because its not an area with weather that can impair a bih ship cruising by

Yeah I guess that may well be the case. I was going based on the way things traditionally worked for a pilot taking a ship into harbour.

> If the Ever Given really was ran aground to due a once-in-a-75-year-sandstorm then it's hardly the fault of either the captain or the port authority to predict such a freak weather occurrence.

An interesting hypothesis that I ran across (on gCaptain? blancolirio?) is that it may actually have been a wind lull that caused the issue.

There was supposedly a steady cross wind in the area in question, and given the ship is 400m long and 13 storeys high, that's a lot of area. The wind seems to have been coming from the west/port-side, so the ship had rudder to port to counteract the pushing to starboard/east.

When the wind dropped suddenly, the pushing-to-starboard force suddenly disappeared, and so the steering to port all of a sudden became 'unnecessary' and if it was not corrected soon enough may have been the reason why the ship steered to port and into the channel wall.

Just an hypothesis though.

I'm sure a sorts of folks will be looking at the sensor logs.

I wonder if the Canal authority has any kind of instruments along the route to measure conditions. If not, they should consider it. Perhaps set up some "buoys" on land next to the channel that broadcast things out via AIS so pilots and captains can see things on their chart plotters.

> An interesting hypothesis that I ran across

Here [1] is a link from the Financial Times that talks about the hypothesis you mention, where a combination of a lull in the wind and the bank effect pushed the bow of the ship away from the bank while pulling the stern in.

[1] https://archive.is/pmUEm

Staggered windsocks would be pretty cheap and simple I think, just as you’d deploy at airports.

Even with modern weather prediction technology and windsocks, it can happen that airplane encounter very unexpected wind drafts up or down during takeoff or landing. Sometimes you just have bad luck.

> it's hardly the fault of either the captain or the port authority to predict such a freak weather occurrence.

Yes. It is. And to be insured against it happening. So at this stage the Egyptian authorities don't necessarily know who they are picking a fight with.

I disagree. The captain of the ship relinquishes control to the pilots from the port authority because of their knowledge of the port at hand.

If there was a sandstorm with strong winds that pushed the ship aground what could the captain do? Dismiss the pilot and gain control of an already out-of-control ship? The pilots know more about this area, so before the point of no return the captain, I'd imagine, would trust their judgement. Remember: pilots from port authority's are experts about the ports they pilot through.

Also, the pilots are not meteorologists and even if they were how many times does your local weather station, or mine, or anyone else's, get the weather forecast wrong.

Huge ships of this size have so much momentum that I'd imagine as a captain or a pilot or anyone else who works in the bridge concerning the ships movement has to plan dozens of minutes and kilometres in advance. Want to stop the ship? That requires about 3 Km of runway. Want to turn around? About a 2 Km radius of turn space required. That's a lot of planning. By the time the ship is definitely running aground it's too late to do anything about it and before then the best the captain can do is "umm" and "ahh" every decision the pilots are making.

Yes there should be an insurance claim but it's not against the Ever Given it should be against this freak weather event much like how if a tornado blows a house down you have a claim for a natural disaster and not a claim against your local council you live in.

>The captain of the ship relinquishes control to the pilots from the port authority

This isn't quite true and has to be worded carefully to explain how responsibility is assigned.

The ship is not allowed permission to come into port/harbor/canal without a local pilot on board. That's very different from relinquishing control to the local pilot.

The local pilot acts more like an advisor and guide for navigation but the ship's helmsman & captain still retain physical control of the ship's speed and steering.

From the reports I read of this specific Ever Given incident, the local guide pilot didn't command the helmsman to speed up to 13 knots. The ship's captain is still ultimately responsible for what happens.

Does that mean that even when I'm required to use the local pilot, he still can't be blamed for things going wrong?!? Yes, that's how it works. The ship has no choice of not accepting that deal if it wants access to that port.

EDIT : I found a video with a chief engineer from a cargo ship explaining maritime responsibility. Deep link: https://youtu.be/ltdHRdtEHE4?t=3m14s

Thats sounds to me like this: if you want drive though my land, I am driving, but if i hit anyone you go to jail.

I dont know much about ships, but thanksfully on land law doesnt work that wY

Think of pilots like the air traffic controller in a airport

The pilots don't drive anything. they are only supposed to advice on local geography and weather etc.

Most experienced captains will basically ignore them and keep them in their cabins for the journey in crossing the suez.

The system is inherited from hundreds of years maritime practice, back in those days pilots were essential to maneuver through local complexities in geography and weather, and were bribed for better service/smuggling etc.

Giving bribes in ports is very old practice even the US navy got into hot water recently in Asia for it.

Isn't that Suez specific. Panama doesn't work this way (and given the complexity, can't work this way)

> I disagree. The captain of the ship relinquishes control to the pilots from the port authority because of their knowledge of the port at hand.

I thought these where on board in advisory, hands-off-controls roles only.

So the real fight will happen around the cabin logs and recordings, to whether the ship pilot followed all the advisor pilots demands or not, and even then it is going a long, complicate mess to pin down responsabilities.

But the log will eventually surface and these will be super interesting.

Ships afaik do not have as evolved FDR type systems to record interactions between people they way planes do.

Besides such interactions do not need to be conducted on the bridge at all.

Lot more likely the insurance company will negotiate for actual salvage plus some compensation to the government, plus few palms will be greased.

>> He said in a phone interview with a pro-government TV talk show that the amount takes into account the salvage operation, costs of stalled traffic, and lost transit fees for the week that the Ever Given had blocked the Suez Canal. <<

It makes no sense for the lost transit fees to be paid by the insurance companies as most vessels waited the 6-day period and then got to traverse the canal with some days in delay (so Egypt still got that money).

In the end the claim seems exaggerate and might be indicative of Egypt's lack of focus on long term relations. It's one thing to pay 500'000 USD for a passage, but if I know that I have a 0.05% probability of paying 1 billion dollars (which is another 500'000 USD expected payout on average) then surrounding Africa without any fees is all of a sudden a lot more attractive.

Having company with minimal balance and ready to go bankrupt if necessary is a lot more attractive.

> It makes no sense for the lost transit fees to be paid by the insurance companies as most vessels waited the 6-day period and then got to traverse the canal with some days in delay (so Egypt still got that money).

Except during those six days no ships went through, and so no revenues were collect. That is, Egypt could have gotten more revenue if no ships were delayed—and remember some ships started going around Cape Horn in South Africa.

It's about the 'opportunity cost' of the blockage.

So is the opportunity cost 6 days of outage or maybe 0.2 days since most of the traffic was just delayed rather than Re-routed?

Also I am not a lawyer, but if I were one, I would wonder if there have been previous outages like this and how has that cost been recovered? And how many times has the canal delayed the ships anyways and not paid them?

Also would the canal pay from this money the ships that were delayed as they were also an affected party.

The game can be played from multiple sides.

  > It's about the 'opportunity cost' of the blockage.

It should be noted in context that the Suez canal occasionally closes preemptively when high winds are expected or experienced.

The number may have been chosen for legal reasons. Here in Ontario, we have no fault insurance, but if you're in an accident with another car from out-of-province, and you caused the accident, you/your insurance will be sued for $10M. It'll always be $10M, because that's the maximum that can be awarded; if you did $3000 in damage and they ask for $3000, then $3000 is the most they can get, but if they ask for $3000 in damages and $9,997,000 in punitive damages... they'll probably still get $3000, but they might more, so why not?

> Here in Ontario, we have no fault insurance […]

I really wish it was named something else, because it causes all sorts of confusion:

> A common misconception about no-fault insurance is that insurance companies won't determine who is at fault after an accident. However, this isn't the case. According to the Ontario Insurance Act, in every accident with multiple drivers, insurance companies must always assign a percentage of fault to each driver involved. Other provinces have similar laws.

> No-fault insurance simply means your insurance company will handle your claim and pay your damages regardless of who is determined to be at fault for causing the collision. The other person’s insurance company will do the same.

* https://www.insurancehotline.com/resources/no-fault-insuranc...

There are legislated rules on determining fault in the most common cases:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Fault_Determination_Ru...

It depends on whether there is a sufficient force majeure clause in the contract.

> If the Ever Given really was ran aground to due a once-in-a-75-year-sandstorm then it's hardly the fault of either the captain or the port authority to predict such a freak weather occurrence.

The second part of your sentence does not follow from the first part. If you have a large storm every with low but non-zero probability (and, actually, a higher probability than 1/(36575) given the weather conditions, let's say 1/(4075) = 1/3000) - then the parties to the agreement regarding the use of the canal need to plan for this contingency; and I assume the contract governs who has responsibility for such planning: The canal for salvages/re-floating, or the ships for being able to maintain buoyancy even in this kind of conditions.

In other words: The point is not to predict the occurrence, it's to be ready for when it occurs.

--

PS - I've ignored the question of insurance.

There is an article in the latest economist about this. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/03/30/...

(Probably unfortunately behind a PayWall)

The super short summary is that they say a further expansion is not necessary. Even the previous one wasn't needed an hasn't brought in the benefits they had hoped/promised.

https://archive.vn/SFJiH

Particularly if it was an employee from the canal authority at the wheel.

there was a video shortly before/after the crash showing that the sandstorm was just a false rumor