However, you're wrong about ship size being a problem. A suez canal pilot is guaranteed to be very familiar with container ships of the suezmax size, specially considering that to become a pilot, you have to have been a captain yourself.
It'll be interesting how it plays out, but the captain is ultimately responsible and can overrule the 'guide'. So the captain is not off the hook here.
but you are right. we'll just have to wait until we know more about what really happened
No doubt. This is going to take years to sort out. The Egyption government has a lot of power here because they can simply bar Evergreen Marine from crossing the Suez and ostensibly destroy them as a business ... but then they wouldn't get anything either. Most likely it will be quietly settled in a way that all sides save face, especially if the appointed guides made a mistake.
But by your logic, couldn't one argue that reaction time plays a rather large role? If you are navigating a narrow canal with thin margins for error, wouldn't you need good timing to start a manuever at a certain point so that the ship is able to respond by the time that you need to truly adjust it's position? If some sort of weather event/anomaly caused an unexpected change of course, wouldn't reaction time be even more critical because you have less time to make a correction if you don't act immediately?
i don't have any experience with ships larger than a small sailing yacht myself and i guess, either you see a problem coming, then you have enough time to react, or you don't see it, and then it's to late either way.
The ship size is also common for the canal, pilots are trained especially to be able to route such big ships through the canal.
But it still likely a chain of bad coincidences which you can't really blame on anyone. Including a unusual strong sandstorm and an engine failure as far as I can tell.
It literally might have been sand storm => engine failure due to sandstorm (air intake getting clogged up or similar) => wind moves ship onto shore without anyone being able to do anything against it. Not I said it might. It needs a proper investigation as far as I can tell.
so even if this was human error, it's not likely that the actual captain was responsible. but i can also imagine that a guide, while familiar with the local conditions was less familiar with the ship itself, a ship that large, which has a different response time than smaller ships. this alone should increase the risk for innocent mistakes. so i find it hard to believe that there should be anyone to blame.