It is not irreplaceable - you can avoid it as a shipping route and take a longer route. It's just more costly because it is a long route. Which means higher oil prices, which is universally unpopular everywhere with the citizens. (In oil-importing economies, oil prices have a rippling effect as any increase in oil prices increases the transportation cost of goods there by resulting in price increases of all such goods).
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That's pretty much what I've been thinking. Maybe I'm underestimating how much more expensive, but it seems for most of those ships if they'd got going on an alternative route instead of crowding around the peninsula they'd be arriving soon. For all I know the goods they're carrying may already have been sold at a rate assuming the cheap freight of course...