Ghost Ship Filled With Cannibal Rats Drifting Toward Irish Coast [Report]
The Lyubov Orlova, a Russian ghost ship believed to be infested with cannibal rats, could crash into the Irish coast.
If the vessel does make landfall, will there be rats deserting a sinking ship, as the saying goes?
As The Inquisitr previously reported, the ship broke loose from a tug boat last year when it was on its way to a scrapyard in the Dominican Republic from Canada. It was re-secured by a supply vessel which was able to tow the Russian ship for a short time until it broke free again. It has been drifting in the North Atlantic since then.
According to the Mirror of London, “The 300-ft vessel, built 40 years ago in the Soviet Union, has nothing aboard but packs of disease-ridden rodents who are forced to prey on one another to survive.” The Herald quotes Belgian-based searcher Pim de Rhoodes that “She is floating around there somewhere. There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other.”
An update from the Irish Coast Guard suggests, however, that the abandoned, rodent-infested ship may have sunk following storms on the high seas, although a Coast Guard official said that “we must stay vigilant.”
The Lyubov Orlova ghost ship has an interesting history: “It’s a Yugoslavian-built cruise ship that bears the name of a beloved 1930s star of Russian cinema, Lyubov Petrovna Orlova. Stalin in 1934 dubbed her the ‘honorable actor’ of the Russian Federation. The Orlova was built in 1976 for pleasure cruises to the Antarctic and Arctic Circle… in 2010, the ship was impounded in Newfoundland, Canada, because of a dispute over debts. The crew was unpaid and deserted their ship, which moldered in port for two years before it was decided it should be towed to the Dominican Republic and turned into scrap metal.But on the way to the scrap heap, the tow-line to the tug broke and the ship was lost at sea. Canadian authorities reportedly captured it later, dragged it out to international waters and let it loose.”
[image credit: Lilpop,Rau&Loewenstein]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3vrkCttgU0
