Past the canal: An anthropology of maritime passages

Abstract

On a normal day, an average of 50 + ships pass through the Suez Canal. The journey through this connecting point between Asia and Europe usually takes a vessel between 12and 16 h. The 23rd of March 2021, however, would prove to be a day out of the ordinary: the passage of the Ever Given, an ultra-large container ship, came to a halt when strong winds steered the vessel sideways, lodging it into the sandy banks of the narrowwaterway. Operated by a Taiwanese shipping company, sailing under the Panama flag, and on its way from China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Ever Given was amongst the worst contenders for an accident of this kind: with a holding capacity of up to 20,000 twenty foot freight containers (TEUs), it ranks among the world’s largest container vessels. Indeed, despite the massive efforts made by the Canal Authority, the Ever Given would not move; with the queue of waiting ships growing to more than 300 by the time the salvage operation finally succeeded after six long days. In the meantime, the unexpected canal obstruction caused an estimated loss of 400 million US Dollars per hour to the world economy (Vlamis 2021). During the days of the frantic mission to release the ship from the Canal’s banks, the vessel had not only brought maritime traffic between Asia and Europe to a temporary halt. It also sparked unprecedented public interest in contemporary maritime transportation and the global histories behind it. In an effort to steer these conversations into anthropological terrain, we put forward a collection of short essays that focuses onmaritime passages, their interruptions, and on the multifaceted figures that accompany them. The passage, in its most dominant meaning, refers to a path, movement, or channel, which is often, but not always, of the oceanic kind, as the reflections ofWalter Benjamin on the concrete, and land-based urban Passagen (that is arcades) also attest to (Benjamin 2002). Secondly, in figurative speech, ‘the passage of time’ refers to the unstoppable elapsing of minutes, days, and years, which are pictured as gradually flowing away from us. This temporal dimension of ‘passage’ is equally as relevant to our argument around the Suez Canal’s temporary closure. And finally, a passage can refer to a brief composition, both of a written and musical nature – a condensed genre which we also aspire towards in the short interventions presented. The Canal’s obstruction, and the global public attention it received, represents an extraordinary accident-turned-spectacle. While most maritime accidents occur outside