The forecast for Tuesday, March 23, showed wind gusts of more than 64 kph and sand storms sweeping through northern Egypt. Indeed, such weather is common in the Sinai desert at this time of year.
The Suez Canal — one of the most critical, yet precarious waterways on the planet — remained open. Ships were starting to form the daily convoy as the gusts picked up. One of the world’s biggest container vessels, the Ever Given, joined it. The decision would reverberate globally within hours.
By 7:40 a.m. local time, the megaship — loaded with containers that would stretch more than 120 kilometers end to end and carrying everything from frozen fish to furniture — was stuck. Its grounding would not only lay bare the intricacies of navigating a human-made trench of water in a vessel the size of the Eiffel Tower, but also the fragility of a global network of markets and economies that takes for granted the flow of goods through it.