UNUSUAL HISTORY: The Suez Canal and the Yellow Fleet

Attempts to free the Ever Given, March 2021


The blocking of the Suez Canal by the running aground of the freighter Ever Given has brought much attention to the importance of the Suez Canal as an international shipping lane.  News reports have noted that the other route – around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope – contains added risks of severe weather and piracy.  This is not the first time that the operations of the Suez Canal have been halted – and past incidents include the unusual story of what became known as the Yellow Fleet. 

The 1967 Arab-Israeli War, sometimes referred to as the Six Day War, led to Egypt blocking both ends of the canal.  Debris, sunken ships, and explosives trapped ships from the UK, the USA, France, West Germany, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.  Caught in the desert winds, sand soon began to cover the ships, clinging to the metal, turning the ships to a dusty shade of yellow and giving the ships were colloquial name – the Yellow Fleet.  The fourteen ships which would remain stranded in the canal were far fewer than the estimated three hundred ships currently forming a maritime traffic jam in the Middle East today, but they have so far been there for a far shorter amount of time.  Far from being able to leave at the end of the 1967 war, the ships of the Yellow Fleet would be stranded there for a total of 8 years.  It was only in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab Israeli War (also called the Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War) that the canal was reopened. 

The Yellow Fleet, 1967

The blocking of the canal to all shipping sprang from a strategy by the Egyptian government to deny the canal to Israeli shipping – since they could not keep it open and exclude Israeli traffic the decision was taken to seal both ends of the canal.  In reality the financial cost of running the canal would have been too much for the Egyptian government – since few companies would risk sending freight through a no mans land of a bitter war.  This left the fourteen of the fifteen ships that had been heading north trapped in the canal.  This in turn led to the forming of the Great Bitter Lake Association (which  took its name from the area of the canal in which the ships were anchored – the widest portion of the canal itself).  It was a mutual support agreement between the officers and crew of the ships.  The Association even organised the ‘Bitter Lake Olympic Games’ to run at the time of the 1968 Summer Olympics.  The Association even implemented its own postal service producing handcrafted stamps which were recognised by the Egyptian postal service.  These stamps are now highly sort after by private collectors. 
Over time the shipping companies were able to reduce the number of crew on each vessel, who rotated every three months, until care of the ships was handed to a Norwegian company in 1972.  In 1975 the ships were finally freed.  Only two of the fourteen were able to make it to their destinations under their own power after years exposed in the canal.  The longest journey was the Munsterland whose voyage to Australia had finally taken a total of eight years, three months, and five days.  The story of the Yellow Fleet was revisited around 2015 with the publication of two books on the subject in a short space of time.  

Both the blocking of the Canal by the Ever Given and the incident of the Yellow Fleet serve to highlight the importance of the Suez canal, and how much international trade relies on these vast freighters travelling along long established sea routes.  


 

Popular posts from this blog

HISTORY OF MEDICINE: The Anglesey Leg

Image
C/W: Contains description of surgery and amputation.  The story of prosthetics is one of human ingenuity.  Based on the existing evidence the earliest entry in this story is of an individual who would eventually be buried near the ancient city of Thebes some time between 950 and 710 BC.  This individual at some point found themselves in need of a replacement big toe, and a prosthetic was made.  Their mummified remains, complete with their prosthetic toe, were discovered in AD 2000, and ten years later a team of biomechanical engineers would discover that the design of the prosthetic was such that it did not require the individual to wear any kind of specialist shoe to hold it in place - they could walk barefoot or in normal Egyptian sandals.  The previous earliest prosthetic we have (or rather had) physical evidence for dated from 300 BC - known as the Capua leg, named for the site of its discovery - it was held by the Royal College of Surgeons, but was destroye...
Read more

ROMA HISTORY AND CULTURE: ‘Gibberish’ was a racial slur.

Image
We are at tipping point in a years-long struggle against racism.  Protests have sprung up all over the world, stemming from events in the USA.  This post is not intended to provide commentary on these events – there are many people far better placed to provide such comment – but rather to highlight something which I think is not completely understood regarding the etymology of a particular word, which can in context be considered a racial slur.  It has been in my mind to write this post for some time – stemming from conversations at the IMC in Leeds in 2019.  I decided to finish it off due to a recent conversation with a student with a similar background to me which revolved around the misunderstanding and misrepresentation of minority cultures.  Gibberish.   It’s a term that’s often thrown around in discussion and criticism.   A critic may condemn a writer’s prose style as ‘bordering on gibberish’.   A politician may call their opponent’s...
Read more

PERSONAL: So, what do you do?

This post is basically a very quick introduction to me. I'm known as Jude.  I'm a postgraduate student in Medieval Studies.  I'm currently reading for my PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, but all views expressed here are entirely my own and unrelated to the institution where I study. My main research topic is to do with disability in miracle literature from around AD 1100 to around AD 1350.  I look at a combination of magic, miracle, medicine and palaeopathology.  My other primary research is in the archaeology of disease - particularly pathogens and pandemics. My other main interests include the civil war in England between 1135 and 1153, and the ecclesiastical politics of the Papal Reform movement. Most of my research relies on a combination of literary and archaeological evidence.  I'm passionate about sharing history in new ways. I have a wonky brain - due to oxygen starvation at birth I have motor function problems and suffer from seizur...
Read more