Bermuda made international headlines this week as multiple media outlets appeared to confuse the island for its Caribbean cousin, Barbuda.

The Reuters news agency reported that as part of the United States “blockade” of oil tankers around Venezuela, the US Coast Guard had sought to intercept the empty supertanker Bella 1, which was subsequently said to be “drifting northeast of Bermuda in the Caribbean”.

Other news outlets, includingThe Guardian, also reported that the ship was near Bermuda before correcting their coverage to state the ship was “northeast of the Caribbean”.

Tensions have run high in the region over President Donald Trump’s standoff with Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, accompanied by a growing US naval presence in the Caribbean.

Three oil tankers have been targeted by US authorities for what Mr Trump has described as underhanded and illegal deals with Venezuela.

The Bella 1, the third such ship, refused to stop when it was challenged by the Coast Guard on Monday, and was pursued into the Atlantic.

The error was not the first time the international media mixed up Bermuda with Barbuda — despite the islands being more than 1,000 miles apart.

In September 2017, it was estimated that more than 3,000 trips to Bermuda were cancelled after The New York Times, the BBC and NBC News all confused the two islands in their coverage of Hurricane Irma’s devastating impact on Barbuda.