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The stalemate created by the huge ship that has been blocking the Suez Canal since Tuesday, after getting stuck, is reminiscent in some ways when the same pass was blocked for different reasons more than fifty years ago. In 1967 fifteen merchant ships remained closed in the canal and would remain there for eight years, due to the conflicts between Egyptians and Israelis: they would become famous as the “yellow fleet”, for the color they had taken while standing in the waters. from the canal and be covered by the sand of the surrounding desert, as journalist Ferdinando Cotugno recalled on Twitter.
If you are interested in the facts of the Suez Canal, know that in 1967, when the Six Day War broke out, Egypt closed it and the ships that were inside were blocked and remained there for eight years. They called them the Yellow Fleet, because of the sand that had settled over them. pic.twitter.com/I3rKoGStJF
– Ferdinando Cotugno (@FerdinandoC) March 25, 2021
The Six Day War began in June of that year as a result of ancient tensions between Israel and Egypt dating back twenty years, when Israel was founded. Shortly before the war began, the ships were in the Red Sea, heading north to cross the Suez Canal. However, at the time of the crossing, Israeli shelling began not far from the canal, in the Sinai area. To prevent his opponents from taking him away, then-Egyptian President Gamal Nasser closed the canal with ships inside.
– Read also: The war that changed the Middle East
While a war was being fought abroad that did not concern them at all, the ships were forced to drop anchor in the Great Bitter Lake, one of the salty lakes along the canal. About a mile from them was a military airport, so they saw the war practically live as it unfolded. “We were outside, on the bridge,” he told years later to Al jazeera Mick Miles, a sailor on the British ship Port Invercargill. “And we used to see the battles, the planes. The captain told us to be careful, but we watched them anyway. We didn’t sleep much in those six days.
In addition to Port Invercargill there were also three other British ships, two Swedish, two American (one of which was moored not far away on Lake Timish), two Poles, two Germans (from West Germany), one French, one Bulgarian and one Czechoslovakian. Most of them transported goods of various kinds, from toys to leather to raw materials such as wheat and wool. In all there were fourteen ships in the Great Bitter Lake.
At the end of the Six Day War, Israel, despite being outnumbered, conquered an entire part of Egyptian territory east of the Suez Canal, including the Gaza Strip and especially the Sinai. The new border line between the armies of the two countries was established precisely in the Suez Canal: the crews of the ships were therefore with the Egyptian troops to the west and the Israeli troops to the east, in a stalemate that did not seem to be. easily solved.
Nasser decided that the passengers on the ships could continue, cargo ships sometimes carry people, but crews and cargo cannot. To avoid canal navigation, in addition to closing the two entrances, he scattered the waters with old sunken ships, debris and even bombs. His main concern was to prevent Israel from making claims on the Suez Canal, which Nasser had nationalized more than a decade earlier, despite pressure and contrary views from France and the United Kingdom. For Nasser, the canal was not only an important source of income, but also the political symbol of his leadership, and he could not lose it.
A ship sunk to obstruct the passage of the Suez Canal, June 23, 1967 (AP Photo / Aly Mahmoud)
In fact, the crews were hostages. In the months after the end of the Six Day War, the International Red Cross mobilized to figure out how to bring the sailors out of the deadlock and persuade the two sides to let them go. The captains of the ships suggested keeping only the essential part of the crew, and the Israeli and Egyptian authorities agreed that an airlift should be made between Athens and Cairo to send at least some of the sailors home. “The first month was like a vacation,” said the captain of the Polish ship Jakarta, Miroslaw Proskurnicki, in 1974. “The second month was more difficult. At the end of the third month it became terrible. ‘
Five months after the end of the Six Day War, the stranded crews began struggling to make the situation more livable. The Great Bitter Lake Association was born, organizing recreational activities and events such as card games, soccer games on boat decks, barbecues, and waterskiing days. On the Bulgarian ship you went to see movies, on the Swedish one was the association’s swimming pool, while on one of the two German ships you could go to church.
The sailors also created their own postal system, with personalized stamps, more as testimony than usefulness since the stamps were not considered valid by anyone. The idea behind those stamps – hundreds of them were made over the years – was to affirm the independence of the community that had been created: “We were neither with the Egyptians nor with the Israelis,” explained John McPherson, a sailor from the British company. Melampus. “We were a community and we were alone. So, to make our identity we made the stamps ». Before the letters were sent, actual Egyptian stamps were added, even if it is said that some letters reached their destination even with only the Great Bitter Lake Association stamp.
– Read also: The history of the Suez Canal
A year after the start of the stalemate, the Bitter Lake Olympics were organized, in conjunction with the official ones in Mexico City. Sailors competed in archery, diving, sailing, running, and high jump, and there were awards and medals, lead and painted, just like in the real Olympics. The Polish crew won the most races of all, followed by the Germans and the British.
During the eight years there was a frequent turnover of the minimal crews dealing with the ships, so that no sailor was trapped during the full eight years of the canal closure. However, despite attempts at maintenance, it took little time for the large ships to go bankrupt. In the end, only the German ships were able to move on their own, while the others were towed away. One of the ships, the American African Glen, had even sunk after being hit by an Israeli rocket in 1973, during another armed conflict between Israeli Arabs, the Yom Kippur War, after which the Suez Canal was finally reopened thanks to an international agreement. .
It took a year to clear the canal of all debris and sunken ships. To commemorate the moment, the Great Bitter Lake Association made a set of dedicated stamps. The two German ships, the only ones able to continue the journey that had stopped eight years earlier, arrived in Hamburg celebrated by tens of thousands of people. Furthermore, they were also the only ships in the group to get something out of the whole thing, because they carried raw materials – wool, minerals, steel, and lead – that doubled in value during the years they remained immobile.
Nordwind and Münsterland photographed in Hamburg in May 1975 (AP Photo)
According to Cath Senker, who wrote a book on the history of the “yellow fleet”, one of the two German ships, the Münsterland, set a world record for taking the longest commercial sea voyage in history: eight years, three months and five days.
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