--- title: "Watch the Amazing Moment as the Giant Ship Finally Gets Unstuck" description: "After six days of being wedged in the banks of the Suez Canal, the \"Ever Given\" finally broke free on Monday afternoon local time." date: "2021-03-29" modified: "2021-03-29" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-amazing-moment-giant-ship-gets-unstuck" categories: - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "Egypt" - "shipping containers" - "suez canal" - "the digest" --- # Watch the Amazing Moment as the Giant Ship Finally Gets Unstuck ![After six days of being wedged in the banks of the Suez Canal, the "Ever Given" finally broke free on Monday afternoon local time.]() *\Image: Maxar\* ## Ever Given After six days of being wedged in the banks of the Suez Canal, the giant container ship known as the "Ever Given" finally broke free on Monday afternoon local time. It posed a massive disruption as it blocked the waterway, with hundreds of cargo ships waiting at either end of the canal. The canal accounts for an astonishing 12 percent of global trade. But now, videos uploaded to social media show the skyscraper-sized container ship slowly making its way down the canal. https://twitter.com/rafsanchez/status/1376520457420177411?s=20 ## Tireless Effort Salvage teams worked tirelessly to get the ship moving again for five days and nights. The stern — that's the rear end — of the ship broke free first earlier this morning. Hours later, the bow, a massive bulb of steel that wedged itself head on into the side of the canal's walls was also successfully dislodged. Monday turned out to be the ideal time to break it free. That's thanks to Sunday's full moon providing teams with a few extra inches of tidal flow during high tide, as [*The New York Times* reports](). It was a gigantic undertaking, involving countless operators, tugboats, and excavators working against the clock. Specialized dredgers, which are essentially colossal vacuum cleaners, sucked up 2,000 cubic meters of material per hour to dig out the Ever Given's bow. That was in addition to entire teams of divers who had a look beneath the ship to inspect it for damage, according to the *Times*. ## Let My Containers Go Egypt's president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi claimed the event as a dramatic win for the Middle Eastern nation. "Egyptians have succeeded today in ending the crisis of the stuck ship in the Suez Canal despite the great complexities surrounding this situation in every aspect," he wrote in [a statement]() on Twitter. The blockade is not over yet. Engineers will now be inspecting the chopped up canal for damage to ensure safe passage over the next couple of days, according to *NYT*. The dramatic events will come as a huge relief to a vast number of industries relying on the canal to ship their wares internationally — except for one group: internet pundits, who are [in firm belief]() the ship should get stuck again. **READ MORE:** [After days of struggle, salvage crews freed the giant container ship.]() \[*The New York Times*\] ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()