This is the boat in which Jose Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman from El Salvador, apparently drifted 8,000 miles from the coast of Mexico during a remarkable 13-month voyage across the Pacific Ocean.

Amid fierce speculation about the veracity of Mr Alvarenga's tale, the photographs show that the 37-year-old landed in the Marshall Islands in a heavily-damaged small fibreglass vessel with a broken motor.

The boat, about 24-feet long, was empty aside from a small blue container in which Mr Alvarenga would hide, to seek shelter from the sun. It was emblazoned with the name Camaroneros de la Costa, apparently the fishing cooperative for which Mr Alvarenga worked in Mexico.

Mr Alvarenga washed onto a remote atoll last week, saying he had been adrift for more than a year and survived on birds, sharks, turtles, fish and barnacles. He said he left Mexico in December 2012 on a one-day fishing trip with a 15-year-old, whom he knew only as Ezekiel. The teenager died four months into the voyage after refusing to eat.

The boat remains on Ebon Atoll, a barely-populated cluster of islands, and is yet to be transported to Majuro, the capital.

Police have inspected the boat. It is understood no traces of any drugs were found.

Mr Alvarenga has been transferred from a hospital to a hotel in Majuro. He broke down in tears as he spoke to his parents and 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, who live in a small fishing village in El Salvador, and his brothers, who live in the United States.

Mexican officials are due to arrive in the Marshall Islands on Wednesday evening to speak to Alvarenga. They are hoping to return him to his home town, and to investigate the death of Ezekiel.

Authorities in the Marshall Islands are still trying to verify Mr Alvarenga's account.

"I don't know whether he is telling us the truth until we get the facts from his fingerprints and everything," George Lanwi, commissioner of the Marshall Islands police force, told The Telegraph.

"We are trying to verify what he said as far as where he is from, and who he was involved with back in El Salvador. We are trying to prove all that he has been telling people. Why didn't they report him missing to authorities in Mexico?"

Mr Lanwi said the boat appeared to be old and "was in bad shape".

"It looks like it has been water for that long," he said. "All kinds of algae were on it and even inside the boat."