Now that the container ship Ever Given has been freed from the bank of the Suez Canal, where its massive bow had been lodged for nearly a week, let’s take a moment to reflect on what happened. The round-the-clock news coverage of the crisis focused largely on the mechanics of the rescue operation and the cost to global trade—$1 billion a day according to some estimates.

Summing up the crisis, Statista observed, “As billions of dollars’ worth of goods and supplies were stuck in what was essentially a giant seaborne traffic jam, the vulnerabilities of global supply chains were once again put on display. With every day, the financial damages caused by the delays were mounting. Meanwhile container ports around the world, which are already strained by heightened demand due to the pandemic, are bracing for chaos now that the canal is passable again.”

Citing data published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Statista noted that globalization has caused a steep increase in maritime trade over the past few decades, with the total volume growing from 4,000 million tons loaded in 1990 to more than 11,000 million tons loaded in 2019. As the accompanying Statista chart illustrates, container shipping in particular has boomed over the past three decades, with total shipping volume growing nearly eightfold since 1990.

Apart from the metrics of the Ever Given crisis, the incident also brought us together in a way rarely seen these days. People all over the world breathed a sigh of relief when the small army of workers who used tugboats, cranes and digging equipment finally freed the ship on Monday. Granted, the motivation may have been materialistic, a global outcry roughly translated as “We want our stuff now!” But, cynicism aside, how many times in recent history have so many of us were rooted for the same team, even for a moment?