World News for Students of English

16-09-2021 07:00

In March 2021, the Ever Given megaship was stuck in the Suez Canal for six days.

Almost 200,000 tons of cargo were on the ship, which meant that people could not get things like IKEA furniture, fruit and vegetables, or electronics in time. After the accident, people finally saw how big these ships were.

Megaships very quickly increase the number of things which they can carry. The number doubles every few years, and transportation companies do it because it makes transport cheaper. It brings more problems, too.

Bigger ships need deeper water, larger equipment, and more space in docks. These ships go slower which means that customers wait longer for things. When the weather is bad, megaships have bigger problems at sea. It happens more and more often that such big ships lose their cargo in sea. Since they go slower, pirates also attack them more often.

Difficult words: cargo (things which a ship, plane, or other vehicle carries), transport (when you take things from one place to another), dock (a place in a port to load and unload things and to repair ships).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.