MV Lyubov Orlowa

A story has exploded across the UK press about the Lyubov Orlova, a cruise ship which broke free from its tow in a winter storm and was abandoned in the Atlantic in February of last year.  What evidence exists suggests that the ship sank in the mid-Atlantic in March.  Nevertheless, in the past 24 hours more than a half-dozen newspapers in the UK and the commonwealth have published stories with lurid headlines like that of the Independent, which screams “Ghost ship ‘crewed by cannibal rats heading to Britain.”  Similar stories have been published by the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Metro, the Mirror, This is Cornwall, News.com.au and the International Business Times. Even the German Web.de gets into the act with its article, “Geisterschiff: Treibt das “Rattenschiff” auf Großbritannien zu?”

This makes such a wonderful story because, while all evidence suggests that the the ship sank last year, there is no absolute proof that it did. Also, all rats are cannibals and it is likely that there rats aboard the ship when it was towed out of Newfoundland.  So, viola, the lost and probably sunken ship becomes the “Ghost Ship Crewed by Cannibal Rats Drifting Toward the UK.”  Except that it probably isn’t drifting anywhere, and if it were the rats aboard may have already eaten each other, so that if the ship is afloat, there may only be one fat rat left, if it doesn’t starve first.

What triggered the sudden hysteria over a ship that has probably been on the bottom of the Atlantic for the past ten months? One name keeps appearing in the various articles — Chris Reynolds, director of the Irish Coast Guard. The Irish Coast Guard was significantly annoyed last year when the Canadian government was rather slow in notifying it that the ship was adrift and could possibly be heading toward Ireland.  The Irish Independent quoted Reynolds last March.  “It was over ten days from when it went missing to when we were told about it. It has no heat, it has no light, it’s basically a black ship in darkness. We would have been much happier if they told us much earlier. We could have sank it or towed it in for salvage.”

After the Irish got annoyed the press started reporting that the ship was “off the coast of Ireland.”  In February of last year the Huffington Post headline was  “Lyubov Orlova, Russian ‘Ghost Ship,’ Located Off The Coast Of Ireland.”  If you read the article, you realized that the ship was estimated to be 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Ireland! As it is only roughly 2,000 nautical miles from Newfoundland to Ireland, this actually put the ship far closer to Canada than to the Emerald Isle.  The headline should have read that the Lyubov Orlova was still off the coast of Canada except that Canadian officials would have been happy to forget that the ship ever existed and the Irish authorities were complaining loudly.

All evidence suggests that the Lyubov Orlova never got too much closer to Ireland. In late February and early March signals from two EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons) aboard the ship were picked up by the Irish Coast Guard from the mid-Atlantic. As EPIRBs can be triggered by immersion in water, it appears likely that these were triggered by the sinking of the ship.  The position of the EPIRBs suggests that the ship was roughly 700 miles off the Irish Coast, when it likely sank.  As reported by the Irish Echo on March 1, 2013, “The coast guard spokeswoman said a satellite was sent over the location of the last signal from the Lyubov Orlova’s EPIRB but there was no sign of the ship. That lead officials to the conclusion that it had probably sunk.”   There has been no confirmed sighting of the ship since then.

Drifting Russian ship may have sunk 700 miles off coast

Nevertheless, Chris Reynolds, director of the Irish Coast Guard, has seen fit to opine last October, “We’d never be able to prove that it sank.”  Recently the Metro reports: Irish coastguard chief Chris Reynolds believes the 4,250-ton vessel, spotted 1,300 nautical miles off Ireland last year, is likely to be still afloat. ‘There have been huge storms in recent months but it takes a lot to sink a vessel as big as that,’ he said. ‘We must stay vigilant.’

There is also apparently someone described by the Mirror as a “Belgian searcher” named Pim de Rhoodes, who is quoted saying “She is floating around out there somewhere. There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”

So there you have it. A slow news day and phony hysteria over a ship that is probably at the bottom of the Atlantic.