Dina Spector reports on the Lyubivy Orlova, a Russian cruise ship adrift in the North Atlantic. It snapped free of towing cables while en-route from Canada to new owners in the Caribbean, and for various reasons no-one is taking responsibility. It, and its suspected payload of rats, is now just 1300 miles off the Irish coast. [BI]

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Zhou-Fang/1324842836 Zhou Fang

    It’s almost *halfway* across the Atlantic! We’re DOOMED.

    More seriously, with some rough calculations, at 0.2 knots for the average north atlantic current speed, it’ll take about 270 days to reach Ireland. More likely though, it’ll get funnelled into the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Garbage_Patch and never reach land.

  • http://twitter.com/dhparlee dhparlee

    Surely there is a submarine somewhere in the North Atlantic interested in doing a little torpedo practice.

  • http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad

    Sounds like a great training opportunity for the navy! How often do they get a chance to sink something that big? 

  • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

    A family of rats, hoping for a better life, find themselves trapped on a boat heading nowhere.  The Pixar script writes itself.  

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      There are no cats in America, and streets are paved with cheese!

      • awjt

        Instead, they find themselves beached on a rocky Irish shore, to be taken in by a clan of super rats, who survive on stolen casks of Guinness.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Duanburge/100000313244887 Mark Duanburge

           Whiskas Galore ?

      • Felton / Moderator

        There’s lots of cheese in Ame-ree-ca
        Friendly kitties in Ame-ree-ca…

  • Chentzilla

    It’s “Luybov Orlova”, as can almost clearly be seen here.
    Named for a famous Soviet actress, if anyone cares about that in that dire situation.

  • Gilbert Wham

    Yay! Free ship!

  • donovan acree

    I imagine the salvage would be quite good.

  • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

    please tell me the boat’s name is Demeter.

    • theophrastvs

      or at least Мария Селесте (~”marie celeste”)

  • Eark_the_Bunny

    WHAT!  YOU LOST THE SHIP!

    What do you mean rodents chewed through the tow cable!

    “Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight Someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight …”

  • dculberson

    Amazing that a functional cruise ship would be lost over a $250,000 debt.  Then it sat for so long that it became scrap – that’s sad.  Apparently the engines were seized (stuck, not taken) which would be the death knell for an older ship.  I can’t imagine the cost to replace the engines.

    I wish someone had been able to rescue it.  That’s a big waste of resources.  And of course the mutant in me wishes I had been the one to rescue it – who doesn’t want their own cruise ship?

    • jandrese

      It’s really no mystery why nobody wants to take responsibility for a rat infested heap of scrap metal floating free in the ocean.  Looking at the picture the thing is tiny by cruise ship standards and would undoubtedly require extensive overhauls to make usable again. 

  • Ike Dahlinger

    OMG! Totally made me think of Three Skeleton Key!

    I vividly remember hearing an old radio show performance of it that was so creepy. I just found it on archive.org!

    http://archive.org/details/ThreeSkeletonKey

    Vincent Price at his creepiest! so great! the creepy sound of rats everywhere…

    • http://twitter.com/ErnestValdemar Ernest Valdemar

       I had the same thought. I’ve read that, more than any of his early films, this radio play was responsible for Price being typecast as a horror actor. It was performed four different times, and audiences requested it as “the one with the rats.”

      BTW, here’s the original George Toudouze short-short story, in the English translation that first appeared in Esquire.

      I don’t think it’s ever been attempted on film/video/animation.

      • Ike Dahlinger

         I must have heard one of the other performances since the one on archive is missing one tiny part I remember.

        In the version I remember, the guy with the wrench kept tapping and tapping for much longer before he was stopped. Much more suspenseful to my younger mind.

  • oasisob1

    If only St. Patrick had seen this coming, Ireland would be safe.

  • ruadh

    I don’t want to alarm anybody, but I’m pretty sure Dracula’s on that boat.

  • James Penrose

    Shouldn’t ownership devolve on the person or company that bought it, hired the towing company and arranged for docking when it arrived?

    Plus the towing company would seem to bear direct responsibility since it was their equipment that failed while they had control of it.

    The modern world spends so much time avoiding personal responsibility I am amazed anything ever gets done.

    Left to drift long enough the rat problem will go away.  Or there will be one *very* dangerous rat left.  :)

  • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

    They made a Resident Evil game about an abandoned cruise ship (more like the original games rather than the newer action shoot’em ups).

  • Юрий Тихоглаз

    It goes back to Russia

  • bill_mcgonigle

    Andrei, you’ve lost another ship?

  • http://twitter.com/MarineInsight MarineInsight

    Scrapping involves money. No wonder no one wants to take the blame!