It was a brief shock that hit the route planners in the shipping companies around the world in Europe early Monday morning: again a ship got stuck in the bottleneck of sea traffic.

This time it was the Marshall Islands-flagged Glory, a bulk carrier owned by the Greek shipping company Target Marine.

It operates a total of ten ships.

The accident was explosive because the 225 meter long Glory had loaded corn from the embattled Ukraine whose destination is China.

Christopher Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia/Pacific based in Singapore.

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But the logistics industry was alarmed because the memory of the Ever Given immediately came to mind: almost two years ago, one of the largest container freighters in the world had turned across the Suez Canal.

Nothing worked.

What followed was a challenging six-day salvage that showed the world how dependent it is on global trade.

Because every day of the blockade cost world trade an estimated 9 billion dollars.

At that time, ships were dammed up on both sides of the canal, anchored, circled, and finally chose the expensive detour around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

Since the canal was tight when the supply chains were stretched to the breaking point due to the corona pandemic, there were additional traffic jams in front of world ports such as Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Singapore and Shanghai.

It didn't get that far on Monday.

After a few hours, three tugboats from the canal administration had towed the Glory free.

The danger was also lower: On the one hand, the grain carrier is only half the length of the huge Ever Given.

More importantly, the Glory lay lengthwise in the canal, while the Ever Given lay across like a dam.

Her bow and her stern had settled on either side of the canal.

It took a high tide, experienced salvage contractors, excavators, an armada of tugboats and lots of luck to get them free.

The accident on the Glory in the early hours of the morning cost just under 20 ships a delay in addition to the nerves of the logisticians and the canal administration.

She will have to be caught up.

It is unclear what caused the emergence.

Bad weather and wind had hit parts of Egypt overnight.

Because of its special mission, the ship itself had been examined by Russians, Ukrainians, Turks and United Nations employees a few days ago in Istanbul and approved as seaworthy.

However, Monday showed again how dangerous the canal is for world trade: Because the Glory ran aground in the single-lane part of the waterway just before Port Said - no ship could pass it anymore.

Even if no noticeable damage has occurred, logisticians and shipowners will again have debates about the risks posed in the Suez Canal, in the Panama Canal and in the artery of world trade, the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Singapore on one side, Indonesia on the other, lurk.

There is a fear that terrorists could block the straits by sinking a ship.

However, the supply of North Asia, with the major raw material customers China, Japan and South Korea, depends on its free flow.