I wonder how much the couple of excavators helped. I saw people on HN saying having two measly excavators was just to give the appearance of doing something and not an actual attempt to get the boat unstuck. But when I saw a photo of the digging, it looked like there was some serious progress made.
I read it was six, running 24 hours a day, which moved 27,000 metric tons of sand.
Which, sounds like a lot of sand to me. Seems like software engineers would have the best understanding of slowly but steadily working towards a goal since that's been my life since I started in this field!
But, also, I admittedly bit the hype train too on how hard it was going to be to get this thing dislodged.
A cubic meter of wet sand weighs about 2 metric tons. 24/7 excavation is easy to underestimate like sailing ship traversal under way: yes, a sailing ship only makes 4 knots (or whatever), but it dies so for 168 hours a week.
Aye by dredge boats running massively large slurry pumps. My partner works for a company that manufactures said pumps, they can MOVE SOME SLUDGE. Think the same sort of setup they use for underwater gold mining, but on a way way more massive scale. You can literally stand up inside some of the impellers they make.
One picture from very early on in the crisis (the one with the single excavator) was used as the mental model for the site long after pictures stopped being seen from there.
I’m actually really curious about this! It was built in the mid 19th century, was there excavators then? Or was it shovels and manpower? I looked on wikipedia hoping to find some info, but was sadly disappointed. I would TOTALLY read an in depth article on how, practically, the Suez canal was actually built.
"Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived"
Slavery doesn't have to do with whether it was paid or not (many slaves have historically been paid as well) but rather the voluntariness of their work.
