Rat-Infested Ghost Ship May Be Heading For Britain
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” It sounds like a plotline to a Stephen King story — a ghost ship afloat on the high seas is drifting toward the British Isles; its only passengers are cannibal rats who have had nothing to eat but each other since the ship was set adrift.
Many people would probably pay good money to read such a story or watch it on the large screen, but they can watch it play out on the small screen — in the news. It’s a real happening involving a real ship — the Lyubov Orlova — cut loose off the coast of Canada in January 2013. It is believed to be infested with rats that have nothing to eat but other rats in order to survive their high-seas ordeal. And, it’s unaccounted for.Built in the former Yugoslavia, the Ice-class passenger cruise ship (featuring a strengthened hull to withstand impacts with ice) has seen duty as on Antarctic and Arctic expeditions. It was seized in Newfoundland in 2010 due to outstanding money owed to a cruise charterer and it was revealed the crew had not been paid in five months. To settle debts, the ship was sold off and towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped. However, the tow rope snapped in stormy seas and the ship began to drift eastward off Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula (near the Hibernia oil fields).
Under contract from Husky Oil, the offshore supply vessel Atlantic Hawk regained control of the derelict ship but was ordered to set her adrift once in international waters because it “no longer poses a threat to the safety of offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment.”
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