The Little Digger Trying to Save the World : Stop the Press, Its Free!

The news that a giant 400m-long container ship was stuck in the Suez Canal and was trying to be rescued by a veteran Komatsu excavator should have been guaranteed Digger Man Blog fodder, unfortunately it got gobbled up in our news section on this occasion, but not to be left out, I’m happy to give this incident some space here on the blog.

As I go to launch this blog this morning, I hear that the ship has finally been freed!

The vessel, called Ever Given and run by Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen Marine Corp, got into difficult on Tuesday (March 23rd) and has remained stuck ever since. Some reports suggest the ship suffered a blackout, whilst others claim strong winds were to blame.

As attempts were made to free the stricken ship which weighs a colossal 200,000 tonnes, initial photos flying around the internet showed a tiny Caterpillar wheeled loading shovel and later a 1990’s era Dash-3 Komatsu excavator with a long reach dipper arm which looked totally dwarfed by the behemoth vessel!

If ever there was a chance for one of the major manufacturers to get some free global exposure now would be the time to put a shiny new machine in there to assist with the rescue operation, however at the time of writing this, (on Saturday afternoon) it doesn’t appear to have happened and the ship is still stuck fast!

The 120-mile-long Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, and provides a passageway for oil, natural gas and various other types of cargo to travel north beyond Cairo, which sits to the west of the waterway. The Ever Given’s grounding has caused a serious traffic jam south of Suez in the Red Sea, the fallout from this incident could be far reaching for many weeks ahead.

A spoof Twitter account has also been created called, Guy with the Digger At Suez Canal aka @SuezDiggerGuy which takes a light hearted and humerous look at the unfolding drama and which has already amassed 35.6k followers, impressive going by anyone’s standards!