Stuck in the Suez Canal – the short version (2021)

On 5 June 1967 an Israeli air assault marked the outbreak of the Six-Day War while a northbound convoy approached the Great Bitter Lake. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered 14 merchant ships from eight nations to halt and then blocked the Suez Canal, trapping about 200 seafarers and vast cargoes of food, drink and industrial goods between opposing forces. Isolated and initially short of fresh water and supplies, crews distilled seawater, exchanged provisions between ships and later dumped hundreds of tonnes of rotting fruit. Owners, governments and Egyptian authorities negotiated relief rotations after two months, but ongoing hostilities - the War of Attrition and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War - prolonged the limbo and delayed reopening. The canal’s closure also forced ships to consider an 8,200 km detour around the Cape of Good Hope.

In October 1967 the trapped crews formed the Great Bitter Lake Association, declaring equality across Cold War divides and organizing communal life. Sunday gatherings became planning forums; lifeboats and rowing boats were rigged for monthly regattas, a deck on one ship became a rough football pitch, and the Polish crew staged a Mini Olympics in 1968 with medals and anthems. Creative pastimes included painstakingly hand-printed GBLA stamps. Cost-cutting reduced crews to about 50 by 1970, but social rituals endured until international salvage cleared wartime wreckage and mines; in May 1975 the weathered, well-maintained ships were finally allowed to depart.