For those who need more context on the issue, the Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway that serves as a massive shortcut between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. It is one of the main routes of many ships traveling between Europe, parts of Africa and Asia.
How important is the Suez Canal for logistics? Well, in 2020 alone, nearly 19,000 ships chose to travel through there, averaging around 51.5 ships per day. You can imagine just how many Ali Express, Amazon, and various other orders have been transported through this tiny canal alone.
So, the stuck massive cargo ship is called the MV Ever Given (Evergreen) and is one of the biggest cargo ships in the world, measuring at around 400 meters in length with a gross tonnage of over 220,000.
Reports state that while the ship was crossing the canal, high winds and a dust storm hit it and it was rendered uncontrollable—so much, in fact, that it was pushed sideways and got stuck by hitting the bottom of the canal.
Local operations have been launched to get the ship unstuck, but it has been a full 3 days at the moment of this article that the ship has been stuck and some speculate that it may take days if not weeks to set it free.
Because this is such a big deal, of course the internet took the opportunity to have some fun with it by commenting and meming the whole thing.
Many admired the efforts that are being made by equating the tiny excavator doing its darned best to free the massive ship with things like trying to get a thesis done or the progress of one’s to-do list.
Others likened the situation to how Austin Powers was trying to turn around a baggage carrier in a narrow corridor, and yet others poked fun at how there are ideas to take the beached cargo ship and convert it into a camper “and post updates,” ridiculing today’s re-purposing trend.
Social platforms like Twitter and Facebook as well as Imgur and Reddit have been booming with memes, gaining hundreds of thousands of views, upvotes, and other forms of internet currency.
Many joked that they are pretty sure that some of their orders are on that ship and that they’re gonna have to now wait until it gets unstuck. Others joked how this could be an awesome plot idea for “Fast And Furious: Suez Drift,” except it’s not that fast and not that furious at this point.
Yet others jested that some magical hand should now pop out of the heavens and reposition the ship, hinting at some sim video games. The most evil idea by internauts was if people canceled whatever orders they possibly had on that ship, making the ship travel back full and get stuck again.
