One of the world’s largest container ships has become stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal, preventing other vessels from passing.
Maritime enthusiasts and other interested parties are currently using ship-tracking sites like Vessel Finder to monitor the situation. The 400-meter-long, 59-meter-wide Ever Given became stuck in the major waterway on Tuesday.
Linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the Suez Canal offers a short sea link between Europe and Asia. The narrow channel is one of the most heavily used shipping routes in the world and is hugely important for international trade. But at the moment it’s completely blocked.
A number of photos have started to appear online showing the ship in its rather awkward position …
Look at the size of the ship blocking the #SuezCanal if you zoom into the bow of the ship you can see a digger for size reference pic.twitter.com/428ha5ejav
— Brendan Cruise (@brendancruise) March 23, 2021
A look at Vessel Finder’s wider map (below) shows other ships backed up at various locations while several tug boats attempt to free the Ever Given, which is operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine. Another site, TankerTrackers, noted that besides container ships, “tankers carrying Saudi, Russian, Omani and U.S. oil” are waiting at both ends of the canal.
The Panama-registered container ship was on its way from China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands when it became stuck. It’s not currently clear what happened, but some reports suggest the ship ran aground while attempting to turn in the narrow channel.
Sites like Vessel Finder let you track ships as they traverse the world’s oceans and waterways. While there’s little drama most of the time, events like this generate a lot of interest in such online tools as people flock to the sites for updates.
For a more mesmerizing rendition of global shipping traffic, check out this wonderful animated map created a few years ago by data visualization firm Kiln and University College London’s Energy Institute. And no, there’s not a stuck ship in sight.
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts your internet traffic and routes it through a server run by the VPN provider. Websites see the VPN server’s IP address instead of yours, and you can get around geo-blocks, censorship, and ISP throttling. The best VPN services are paid, but there are still a handful of free options that do the job well.
Most free VPNs come with a hidden cost, because running servers isn’t cheap and a company that doesn’t charge you has to make its money somewhere else. Many do so by logging your browsing activity and selling it to advertisers, while others flood you with ads and track you across apps.
A stocked computer cache may be convenient for logging into and out of go-to sites in seconds flat, but a major buildup of these tracking codes could significantly impact your PC’s performance. If you’ve noticed that your PC has been running rather slow of late, or you’re using a new browser and don’t know how to clear its cache, we’ve got you covered with the following guide.
If you’re looking to clean up your Gmail inbox, but you don’t want to delete anything permanently, then choosing the archive option is your best bet. Whenever you archive an email, it is removed from your inbox folder while still remaining accessible. Here’s how to access any emails you have archived previously, as well as how to move such messages back to your regular inbox for fast access.