Why Tracy's Furniture Is Stuck on a Grounded Ship

Tracy Alloway (0:05)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

Joe, do you remember that time I tried to ship a teddy bear in a single container from Hong Kong to New York?

Or was it LA? Well, to the US.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

Yeah, and basically the story is like, it's just so operationally complex, and paperwork, and there was no space, it would be so much, and it didn't make it in the end, right?

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

No, I couldn't, basically I couldn't get on a ship. I kept getting bumped, and bumped, and bumped, and finally it seemed like it was gonna be six months until I could even get space, and so it didn't seem worth it.

And now, now that I've moved to New York, I got to repeat this entire experiment, you know, in reality, and I got to put all my apartment belongings into a container, put them on a ship, and actually ship them from Hong Kong to New York, except, it turns out, I still can't actually ship anything from Hong Kong to New York.

Joe Weisenthal (1:04)

I love how, like, no one has more experience with the physical realities of our commodity and infrastructure system than you, between the teddy bear, between the barrel of oil that you bought and kept under your desk for a while, and now this, you seem to have a knack for experiencing firsthand what the rest of us just see as lines on a chart.

Tracy Alloway (1:23)

I think I have a knack for failed logistics, but for our listeners, those who haven't been keeping abreast of all the shipping news, there is another ship that is stuck. This time it's stuck in the Chesapeake Bay just outside the port of Baltimore. And ironically, I guess, irony isn't the right word here, but it happens to be owned by the same company that owned the Ever Given, the boat that got stuck in the Suez Canal.

This time the container ship is called the Ever Forward, only of course it's not going forward, it's stuck in the mud with all my belongings in it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:02)

So the Ever Given got a lot of attention, obviously, in part because it blocked all the traffic of the Suez Canal, which everyone knows. I take it, the Ever Forward, it doesn't seem to be blocking as much, I think, but it has all your stuff on it.

Tracy Alloway (2:16)

That is correct. So there were some news reports around this, but definitely not as much attention as the Ever Given, given that that thing was blocking an actual percentage of global trade, who could no longer go through the canal.

The Chesapeake Bay remains open, but it's interesting to me personally, for obvious reasons, but it also, the fact that this has happened again, feeds into a number of the themes that we were discussing all throughout last year. And I know we've been talking about a lot of other stuff recently, but I think we have to dive into this one. We owe it to Odd Lots listeners and ourselves.

So we are going to be speaking with Sal Mercogliano. He is a maritime historian and a history professor at Campbell University. He also runs an excellent YouTube channel, which has been going in-depth on what's actually happening with the ship, the Ever Forward. Sal, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Sal Mercogliano (3:12)

Well, thank you for having me.

Tracy Alloway (3:14)

Why don't we start with the basics? Cause you know, I read the news articles. This thing has been stuck for just over a week now.

What exactly do we think happened here? How can a massive container ship have this kind of incident for a second time?

Sal Mercogliano (3:30)

Sure, so Ever Forward was on a routine voyage. She had come through the Panama Canal and was stopping at four East Coast US ports. It stopped already at Savannah and offloaded. It had gone up to Baltimore and offloaded part of its cargo. And it departed on the evening of March 13th and was heading down to Norfolk and then eventually to New York. So the ship departed routinely, came off the berth late of the evening, early morning.

And she seemed to be following all the rules. I mean, everything seemed to be fine. They were maneuvering. There seemed to be no incidents with her.

And she's part of this new class of what's called a Neo-Panamax vessel. These are vessels that can use the new lane of the Panama Canal that was opened in 2016 So these East Coast ports have been dredging and building to accommodate vessels like this.