- Ships large navigating the canal normally do so through pilots specialized in it provided by whoever operates the canal. And while the captain still is in control he/she delegates the control to this pilots under his/here supervision (as they are still responsible for the ship I think). So even if the captain is responsible he/she wasn't "really" navigating the ship...
- There was a unusual large sand storm, it is possible that things had been 100% outside of the control of anyone navigating the ship. Just consider a causality chain like sand-storm => engine failure(cause by it) => wind drives ship onto shore before restart of engines is possible.
So it's completely pointless to name anyone human involved until the actual causality chain is properly investigates.
A thing which tbh. should be done much more in other cases, too.
Citation needed. HN is going down the drain with low quality comments like these. Identities are probably hidden to prevent Western media from spinning a bullshit narrative about how the crew nationality was a factor in the accident and get more clicks with clickbait headlines.
However the reality we see is that the News doesn't think so. So what, in this case, is different?
Different countries/societies choose this trade-off differently.
Or look at the reporting about the airliner that crashed in Indonesia earlier this year: While the pilots name is public knowledge, its also not really been part of the reporting because it's not especially relevant yet and there is nothing interesting to say about them. (Apparently the voice recorder has been found, so if there is anything interesting on there expect that to change)
so even if this was human error, it's not likely that the actual captain was responsible. but i can also imagine that a guide, while familiar with the local conditions was less familiar with the ship itself, a ship that large, which has a different response time than smaller ships. this alone should increase the risk for innocent mistakes. so i find it hard to believe that there should be anyone to blame.
It'll be interesting how it plays out, but the captain is ultimately responsible and can overrule the 'guide'. So the captain is not off the hook here.
but you are right. we'll just have to wait until we know more about what really happened
No doubt. This is going to take years to sort out. The Egyption government has a lot of power here because they can simply bar Evergreen Marine from crossing the Suez and ostensibly destroy them as a business ... but then they wouldn't get anything either. Most likely it will be quietly settled in a way that all sides save face, especially if the appointed guides made a mistake.
i don't have any experience with ships larger than a small sailing yacht myself and i guess, either you see a problem coming, then you have enough time to react, or you don't see it, and then it's to late either way.
But by your logic, couldn't one argue that reaction time plays a rather large role? If you are navigating a narrow canal with thin margins for error, wouldn't you need good timing to start a manuever at a certain point so that the ship is able to respond by the time that you need to truly adjust it's position? If some sort of weather event/anomaly caused an unexpected change of course, wouldn't reaction time be even more critical because you have less time to make a correction if you don't act immediately?
However, you're wrong about ship size being a problem. A suez canal pilot is guaranteed to be very familiar with container ships of the suezmax size, specially considering that to become a pilot, you have to have been a captain yourself.
The ship size is also common for the canal, pilots are trained especially to be able to route such big ships through the canal.
But it still likely a chain of bad coincidences which you can't really blame on anyone. Including a unusual strong sandstorm and an engine failure as far as I can tell.
It literally might have been sand storm => engine failure due to sandstorm (air intake getting clogged up or similar) => wind moves ship onto shore without anyone being able to do anything against it. Not I said it might. It needs a proper investigation as far as I can tell.
I think even on this site there was a link documenting the crazy amount of bribery needed to easily transit.