An abandoned cruise ship has been floating in international waters for months, since it came loose in a storm while being towed off the coast of Newfoundland. The company that intended to sell the Lyubov Orlova for scrap, Transport Canada, wrote the ship off after it determined that the ship “no longer poses a threat to the safety of [Canadian] offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment.” But now it is feared that the drifting ship may be nearing the UK.
Two signals were picked up on the 12 and 23 March last year, presumably from lifeboats which fell away and hit the water, showing the vessel had made it two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic and was heading east.
A week later, an unidentified object of about the right size was spotted on radar just off the coast of Scotland – but search planes never verified the find.
Pim de Rhoodes, a Belgian salvage hunter who is among a number looking for the Lyubov Orlova off the UK coastline, told The Sun: “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.”
The head of the Irish coastguard, Chris Reynolds, said the ship was more likely than not to still pose a threat.
Rats eating each other? The most reasonable response I can think of is KILL IT WITH FIRE! Or nuke it from space -it's the only way to be sure. Read about the Lyubov Orlova at The Independent. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Lilpop,Rau&Loewenstein)
(A few cats will take care of that rat problem in no time.)