![]() The second officer had to keep waking him up for instructions.Ī satellite handout image show s the Ever Givenlodged sideways across Suez Canal. This is offensive to those Egyptians who believe the canal is a source of great national pride, but on my trip I watched the Suez pilot eat his way through the whole lunch menu, then snooze – on the sofa, on the captain’s chair, on the watch officer’s chair. “They couldn’t have: they didn’t have Marlboro then.” “I don’t think the Egyptians could have built the pyramids,” a senior engineer once told me. It is well known that these officers must be “lubricated” with cartons of Marlboro and goodies from the bond locker (the ship tuck-shop), leading to another crew nickname for Suez: the Marlboro canal. Ships take on board a “Suez pilot” and a “Suez crew”, who are mandated for their local knowledge. Suez may look serene, but navigating big ships in shallow canals can be tricky. “When I came back, I said, ‘Where’s the bloody pilot?’” Then I saw his head popping up. The captain stepped in by overruling the pilot, got the ship off the bank, then took a much-deserved break. Once, he recalled, he was leaving the container terminal to enter the canal when the pilot beached the ship on sand. After a few hours, I understood why the crew had scorned it as “a ditch in a desert.” Even the laconic first officer was moved to express an opinion: “Sand, sand, sand.” Mishap seems impossible, I told the captain at the time, as we stood on the bridge while the pilot dozed. It was also dull: green water, sand, some habitation here and there. When I transited Suez on a container ship in 2010, I remember it feeling like an amble. Ever Given left her harbour and set off at 8 knots. Not only was there a wind of 30mph coming from the port quarter – the back left – but there was also a sandstorm. Ships wait to pass the Suez Canal on the Great Bitter Lake.
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