>the hydrodynamic effects of these large ships in relatively shallow and narrow canals is underappreciated

I'm really surprised I haven't seen this mentioned. A long time ago, I was trained as a merchant ship's navigation officer. One of the things we were taught (but unfortunately had few opportunities to practice), was using "bank cushion" or "bank suction" to use the hydraulic interaction between the hull and a narrow body of water like a river to navigate tight curves. These days, there are simulations that I'm sure capture these effects to it's easier to get some experience with them.

Of course, in the case of the Ever Given it seems that the grounding was mainly due to not compensating for the strong cross winds.

That and going ridiculously fast during a sandstorm.

Juan Brown/Blancolirio channel has a good overview and he touches on hydronic interactions you reference too: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5iyn2q6s1Sk

I learned about the bank effect from this article

https://www.ft.com/content/171c92ec-0a44-4dc5-acab-81ee2620d...

There is one thing I cannot find an answer for: Why did it draw a penis?

Boredom. Because of covid-19 and the fact that no particular nation is required by maritime law to take on shoreleave-seekers, crews have been at sea for between 2 to 3 times a standard rotation. You find your own way to make your fun.

It is pretty funny though. I have to imagine the captain realizing his track had been discovered is every developer who ever put a comment like /* this is stupid but I'm doing it because my boss is also stupid */ somewhere in a million lines of code, thinking it would never come up in an audit.

> ... not compensating for the strong cross winds.

Not compensating or not being able to compensate? One implies negligence, the other unavoidable.

> Unavoidable

Not really, weather forecasts are readily available and windage calculations are a thing.

Oh gosh why didn't the expert sailors whom all have many years of experience think about this trivial matter?

Or could it be that navigating a 400mx60m, 220,000 tonne, 60m tall ship through a canal that is barely double the width with only 4m clearance is just a tad more difficult than that?

Well quite, that's why they might have waited for more favourable conditions instead of trying to take such a big ship through in force 7 'near gale' with poor visibility due to a sandstorm. Seems like a risky thing to do, no? Here's the risk assessment: Can you see where you are going? No. Is it harder to go in a straight line than normal? Yes. Is there anything nearby to hit? Yes.

But the crew of the ship never do close quarters manoeuvring anyway it is the job of the local pilot to get the ship to near to the dock and tug crews who berth it. Maybe in the future the canal will change their risk assessment to hold ships this large when the weather conditions are unfavourable. Or maybe this is at the pilot's discretion already, but there was a 'human factors' issue as there is a post elsewhere suggesting that there might have been some friction with the pilot who was meant to be giving helm orders but was refusing to do so? Who knows?

I don't know if you read this account that was posted here last week [0], but you'll note that there is quite a lot of "pilot's discretion" going on, mostly their discretion to say "that's enough cartons of cigarettes". They do mention wind conditions delaying them, but it's not clear what the threshold might be (or whether a sandstorm might kick up suddenly).

[0] http://www.sailsafely.com/suez_canal.htm

As long as we're idly speculating...

Vessel has a schedule. Has to arrive at a certain berth at a certain time and is expected to only stay there for a certain maximum number of hours because another vessel will be arriving to take its place. Especially if they're already running late, there will be a lot of pressure to keep that schedule and that can lead to doing things that are usually safe, right up until they aren't.

The history of transportation, hell, the history of Mankind, is full of examples.

I believe the ft article says that they had 30 kts wind, and steered 'into the wind' to compensate. And since they were in a narrow canal, a sudden lull in the wind was enough.

That doesn't contradict the 'going too fast' though. Just like we don't drive 55 mph in a residential neighborhood, thinking 'if a kid runs into the street that is not my fault, it was unforeseeable'.

With a ship of this size couldn't they have the same problem if they go too slow?

Yes. The ship needs to have a certain amount of water going over the rudder to effect steering.

> Policy makers in the US aren't able to pick just a few cities to focus investment in.

Policy makers in the US aren't even able to repeal Jones Act, with its disastrous consequences for US shipping industry. You can't expect much from them.

What is the Jones Act and what are its consequences, disastrous and otherwise?

You got a good response from someone else below, but here is an example of insanities Jones Act leads to. There have been companies running LNG vessels, sailing from Russia to Northeastern US, selling Russian natural gas there, and then sailing south to buy American natural gas in southern states for much lower price, and than sailing back east to sell it in Europe or further east. Northeastern states buy expensive Russian gas instead of cheap American gas, because there is no vessel that could ship gas from south to north: because of Jones Act, it would have to be American built American operated vessel, and such vessel quite simply does not exist.

The Jones Act[0] requires that goods transported by water between US ports to fly under the US flag, use ships constructed in the US, owned by US companies, and be crewed by US citizens. This results in a substantial cost increase for water traffic. It's otherwise quite cheap to transport goods by water but because of the act highways and trucks are used instead. An OEDC study[1] found that repealing the act would benefit the economy from $19-64 billion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/local-c...

Maybe it's easier to read that Twitter thread here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1375868552129863681.html

The Suez canal has also increased in size over time, it's cross sectional area has steadily increased.

Fantastic thread! Thank you for sharing. This has dramatically expanded my "to read" list

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.