Suez Canal ship draws unfortunate crude picture on location tracker before blocking trade route

A giant container ship blocking the Suez Canal charted an incredibly unfortunate course before it ran aground during bad weather earlier this week.

The ship, which is the length of four football pitches, became wedged across the famous Egyptian canal on Tuesday morning, disrupting one of the world’s busiest trade routes and much hilarity on social media.

Experts have warned it could take days before the ship (the Ever Given) can be removed from the channel and continue on its journey to the Mediterranean.

And if you’re wondering just how bad the blockage is, well… take a look at the picture below:

To add to the embarrassment, it also emerged overnight that misfortune struck the Ever Given even before it entered the canal, as it charted a very NSFW course…

Read more:

• TikTok user’s bikini pic accidentally features an X-rated optical illusion
• White headmaster forces black student to apologise the ‘African way’
• Uber passenger who coughed on driver faces up to 16 years in jail
• People are hijacking the Joe Biden fall hashtag to make an important point

Tracking data from vesselfinder.com showed that the ship’s path through the Red Sea produced an outline that looked a lot like a giant... *ahem* penis:

If that’s not a sign that the ship’s journey was cursed, we don’t know what is…

While the incident is clearly funny, it could also have a serious knock-on effect for global shipping.

Salvatore R Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and associate professor of history at North Carolina’s Campbell University, told AP on Wednesday:

“Every day, 50 vessels on average go through that canal, so the closing of the canal means no vessels are transiting north and south.

“Every day the canal is closed ... container ships and tankers are not delivering food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe and goods are not being exported from Europe to the Far East.”

Vessels currently stuck due to the blockage are reportedly being diverted to an older channel until the Ever Given can move again - but it will take a while before travel through the route is back to normal.

All in all, not a great day for anyone working on the Suez Canal...

More: What we can learn about AI, the digital space, and activism from a CEO and podcast expert