The Red Sea Crisis: Why Ships Stopped Taking the Shortcut

In late 2026, a handful of container ships are cautiously testing the Red Sea again. Most of the world's container fleet still is not. This video explains why, in a crisis that keeps resetting rather than ending.

The Suez Canal and the Red Sea corridor behind it normally carry about 12% of world maritime trade and 30% of Asia-Europe container volume. That shortcut broke on 19 November 2023, when Houthi forces from Yemen hijacked the car carrier Galaxy Leader and opened a sustained campaign of missile, drone and boarding attacks on merchant shipping. Within weeks, Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd - the world's four biggest container lines - all suspended Red Sea transits and rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope instead.

That detour adds roughly 7 to 14 extra days and far more fuel, and pushed war-risk insurance to 0.5-1.0% of a ship's hull value, against about 0.0001% for a comparable Persian Gulf voyage (S&P Global Commodity Insights, 25 September 2024). Shanghai-Rotterdam freight rates roughly quadrupled, from about $1,050 to about $4,680 per forty-foot container between September 2023 and September 2024 (Drewry World Container Index).

A lull followed the last attack of that phase, on 29 September 2025 - but by January 2026, Suez Canal traffic was still 60% below 2023 levels, 100 days on (BIMCO). The calm broke again on 28 February 2026, when US and Israeli strikes on Iran led Houthi forces to resume targeting shipping; a month later, on 28 March 2026, the Houthis formally joined the wider Iran war. A June 2026 ceasefire between the US and Iran stopped that war, but not a separate Houthi campaign: an embargo on Saudi exports in July, a deadly attack on the cargo ship Tihamah in August, and by September 2026, the seizure of the Mayyun, Hanish and Zuqar islands that command the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

Even so, some carriers have started edging back. By September 2026, the Gemini Cooperation (Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd) had returned four more services to Suez, reaching roughly 27% of pre-crisis Red Sea container routing; by October, canal-wide traffic of all kinds was up, though still running at about half its pre-crisis weekly rate. The video closes on the open question its angle poses: is the world building lasting redundancy into its supply chains, or quietly accepting a slower, costlier shipping as the price of doing business - and the record so far does not point cleanly to either answer.

Educational documentary. Not financial or investment advice.