As the Suez canal reopened from the blockage of the Ever Given another giant cargo vessel, the PF Carmen, ran aground near the site of the Ever Given misadventure. This time, as captured by a video crew from Le Monde, it appears that the grounding was caused by a cyber attack on the ships control system. Videos clearly show the confusion amongst the bridge crew on the Carmen as the ship makes a turn to the right and the engines accelerate.
Capt. Passepartout of the Carmen confirmed that the video accurately captured the scene on the bridge this afternoon. “We were taking every precaution; the pilot was keeping the ship steady down the center of the canal when the ship started veering to the right. The helmsman attempted to correct to the left, but the ship did not respond.”
Monique La Roche, the Le Monde reporter working with the video team, said that just before she and her crew were told to leave the bridge, there was discussion amongst the crew of a potential cyber attack as the cause of the change in course of the ship. Passepartout would not confirm that, nor would the corporate headquarters in London.
An engineer working with the Egyptian team that freed the Ever Given told reporters that the PF Carmen was slightly smaller than the Ever Given, so it might be easier to unblock the canal this time, especially with the experience that the team on site had with the earlier blockage. “The bow does appear to be further aground this time as the ships engines continued pushing the ship further into the sand before they could be manually shut down,” the engineer said.
Gary Record of the International Shipping Chamber told reporters that this second blockage, no matter how short, is throwing the international shipping situation even further into chaos. “Ships that had turned back from exiting the Mediterranean on the announcement of the clearance of the Ever Given do not know what to do. Taking the longer track around Africa is becoming more hazardous as there are increasing reports of pirate attacks off the Nigerian coast, but the Suez route has become less secure with this apparent cyberattack,” Record told reporters.
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