Thursday 9 September 2021 · below the Index · spike
Container ship runs aground in Suez Canal
A container ship ran aground and briefly blocked the Suez Canal on September 9, 2021. The incident caused renewed attention to shipping chokepoints following the earlier Ever Given blockade.
Peak 68.1 on Thursday 9 September 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Mixed-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 68% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Wednesday 4 August 2021.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: human drama. Trade press was 2% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 81% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Déjà Vu: Bulk Carrier Suffers 'Temporary Delinquency' Incident In Suez Canalgcaptain.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal briefly blocked as container ship runs agroundmsn.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal blocked AGAIN as container ship runs aground months after global meltdownthesun.co.uk · 2021-09-09
- Bulk carrier vessel runs aground briefly blocking Suez Canalnbcnews.com · 2021-09-09
- Suez Canal blocked briefly as cargo ship runs aground | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwidehellenicshippingnews.com · 2021-09-09
- Cargo Ship Stuck in Suez Canal Freed After 15 Minutesbusinessinsider.com · 2021-09-09
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (48/280 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Container ship runs aground in Suez Canal, peak 68.1 on 9 September 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-container-ship-runs-aground-in-suez-canal/