The Yellow Fleet
An article on international friendship, war, and 15 ships
We all know how important cargo is. Ships deliver cargo and you, the reader is the consumer. It is not very complicated. Speaking of cargo and ships we all know about the Suez canal. A very beneficial canal for trading between Europe and Asia. The Suez canal lies between Egypt and Israel. You may be thinking that I am twisting and turning this topic to make the article longer but, believe me, that this is a very important part of the story. We need to acknowledge the war between Egypt and Israel. It is more like a conflict honestly but we can also consider it as a war. This is the part where we learn about the yellow fleet. You, the confused reader might think that it’s more like a military fleet from China but surprising lt is actually about trade ships. They set sail in 1967. Going on a twelve days cargo journey. What they did not know however was the fact that a sudden war would erupt their peaceful journey. When they were passing through the Suez Canal, the Israelis started an airstrike which was bad news for them and Egypt. During the war, Israel took over the whole Sinai peninsula and the Suez canal was the new border between the two nemeses. So, Egypt egocentrically filled the whole canal with mines and ships so traveling was a suicide mission. During this time the ships were told to stay put and set anchor at great Bitter lake and so they did. What they did not know was that they were gonna be there for the next 8 years. The main problem was that there were ships from Poland and Germany and as you may have guessed they were at their worst behavior. As more time passed and the area became a no-mans zone and mines were growing in numbers, they understood that they won’t be out of here any time soon. So did the most sensible thing. They steered the boats close together and soon they were friends and life was O.K. At one point they created a society and soon they were living their best life out at the Suez canal. The church service for the crew was on the German boat and movies on the Bulgarian one and they even had pool parties on the American boat. They even hosted lake Bitter Olympic to amuse themselves. They did not have any problems with food and water because there was a lot of that stuff. Egypt started to clean the Suez canal and soon the Sinai peninsula was handed back to Egypt. But they could not just escape the no-mans land. The only ship that could set sail after 8 years of doing nothing. Was only the german one that would work so they all hopped onto that one and that brings us to the end of this article. THANK YOU FOR READING.
