False information and rumors are numerous and particularly viral since the collision between a container ship and the Francis-Scott-Key bridge in Baltimore on Tuesday around 1:30 a.m. local time.
Among the most popular is the claim that the captain of the boat that collapsed the bridge, causing the disappearance of six people, now presumed dead, is of Ukrainian nationality. These assertions implicitly serve to accuse Ukraine of being responsible for the Baltimore accident.
We find this assertion shared on numerous social networks such as Facebook,
The publications are often accompanied by an image, a screenshot of the site balticshipping.com, a database which provides information on maritime traffic. In the image, which shows the site page dedicated to Dalíname of the boat which hit the bridge, appears the profile of a person designated as “Master” (captain), of Ukrainian nationality.
FAKE OFF
The Ukrainian man who appears in the screenshot from the website balticshipping.com as the captain of the Dalí only worked on the boat for a short time and several years ago: from March 19, 2016 to July 27, 2016.
This is what the website indicated in the “Sea services” section on this person’s profile. Still accessible on Tuesday, this profile no longer appears on the site. It is nevertheless possible to see this in screenshots taken before the profile disappeared from the page, such as the one taken by BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh.
Above all, it was not the captain of the boat who was carrying out the maneuvers when the bridge was hit. As Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld indicated, during a press conference, specialized pilots took the controls to “get ships in and out of the port of Baltimore.” The question of the captain’s nationality is therefore particularly unjustified.
All crew members are Indian
Furthermore, no member of the crew of the Dalí does not have Ukrainian nationality. The boat is operated by the company Synergie Group, which communicated about the collision on its website.
We can read that the 22 members of the crew are “all Indian”. The company advises that all crew members and the two pilots who were on board are “safe”, and that one injured crew member has been treated and has now been released from hospital.