By: Ishita Goel
June 16 2023
Video of ships caught in a storm is old, unrelated to cyclone Biparjoy
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The viral video consists old footage from two different instances of ships caught amid storms. They are unrelated to the ongoing cyclone Biparjoy.
Claim ID 641ddd16
Context
Cyclone Biparjo made landfall in Gujarat on Thursday. As a "very severe cyclonic storm," Biparjoy, which means "disaster" in Bengali, brought with it heavy rain and a storm surge, reported The Hindu. The Gujarat government evacuated people from the coasts and issued prohibitory orders.
Amid this, false and misleading visuals and videos about the cyclone are being shared on social media. One such video shows two ships floundering in a sea due to heavy wind and strong waves. The first ship can be seen at the beginning of the video, and the second ship at the 0:49 mark.
However, the claim is false, and the videos are both old and unrelated to Biparjoy.
In Fact
Through a reverse image search, we found that the first part of the video is from 2021. Getty Images published the video and titled it "Oil Tanker Caught In Horrible Storm In the North Sea." The description read, "An Oil Tanker sailing through a massive storm on August 16, 2021, in the North Sea." The footage was credited to Thomas A.D./Licet Studio.
The same video was uploaded to Newsflare, an online video news community, on August 16, 2021, captioned: "Terrifying captains-eye-view of an oil tanker on heavy seas during a storm off Denmark."
We can match the bow of the ship at the 0:02 timestamp in the viral video and 0:05 in the video by Getty Images. Similarly, the room with the ship's controls can be matched at the 0:06 mark in the viral video and at 0:39 in the video by Getty Images. This shows the viral video is from 2021 and not from cyclone Biporjoy.
Similarly, we found the second part of the video to be at least a decade old. YouTube user 'mzaul' posted an extended version of the viral video on November 14, 2012, captioning it, "Ship in bad weather nortwest of England." We were able to match the viral video at the 0:49 mark to the video on YouTube at the 2:06 timestamp, showing the windshield wiper and the bow. Further, we can match the two rectangular boards with papers in the ship's interior, a desktop computer, and the side windshield wiper on the left from the viral video at 1:01 and 2:09 from the video by mzaul. This shows that this video is also old.
Similarly, on November 20, 2016, a YouTube channel called 'Trending Video Channel' also shared a video of the same ship in the storm, writing, "Cargo Ship In STORM Horrible FOOTAGE - 80 Foot Wave Hits Ship."
Logically Facts could not independently verify where the video of the second ship is from. However, as it has been online since at least 2012, it cannot show footage of the impact of the ongoing cyclone Biparjoy.
The Verdict
The two videos of the ships in the viral video are both old and from two different locations. The first one is from the U.S. in 2021, and the second is at least ten years old. Both of them are unrelated to cyclone Biparjoy. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.