Social media reacts to video of Silversea ship’s violent exit from Port of Durban

Onlookers watching the Silversea expedition cruise ship Silver Cloud depart from Durban on Saturday were left shocked at her violent exit once she passed the breakwater.

Silver Cloud was setting sail from Durban on Saturday following a port call on her 12-day voyage from Port Elizabeth to Zanzibar. The ship set off from Port Elizabeth on April 4th and was bound for Richard’s Bay at the time the video was filmed.

In a video posted to social media site TikTok, the  luxury expedition cruise ship looks stable enough until she passes the breakwater, which protects the harbour mouth from the waves of the Indian Ocean, some of which travel uninterrupted across almost 5,000 nautical miles of open ocean.

As Silver Cloud encounters these rolling ocean swells, she begins to roll and pitch, and with little headway on her, the motion becomes evermore severe. 

The captain reacts quickly, bringing the ship’s head into the swell, and because of the angle at which the video is filmed you can see the severe degree of pitch on the ship as she heads further into open water.

The video posted by @koogs21 was captioned, “The scariest way to start you cruise! Durban, South Africa”, and comments on the video compared the ship to Titanic, but in reality the vessel was never in any danger. 

Even if the captain had not altered course to bring the ship into the waves, the rolling motion would have been mildly uncomfortable for passengers, but not dangerous at all.

Cruise ships are designed to weather waves much larger than those in the video, and Durban sits on a notoriously rough coastline due to its exposure to the open Indian Ocean.

Cruise ships are typically designed to withstand waves of up to 15-metres or 50 feet, and can roll to up to 60 degrees before they are in danger of capsizing. 

Most South Africans will remember the story of the SS Waratah, the cargo-passenger liner that disappeared without trace sailing from Durban to Cape Town in 1909. 

Although the cause of the sinking of the ship has never been confirmed, it is widelty believed that she was struck by a freak wave during her voyage. 

It was not until 1991 that another passenger ship would sink in South African waters due to bad weather, when MV Oceanos was lost in almost the same location as SS Waratah’s believed last location.