Well, here’s a story that sounds made-up. According to “experts,” a 1,565-ton cruise liner carrying disease-ridden rats is out there, somewhere, and could very well be headed for Britain.
The ship, which went missing a year ago, has presumably been drifting across the North Atlantic ever since. The Independent‘s account of what happened next is based in some true facts, and then fluffed up with a lot of conjecture. Here’s what appears to be going on:
Not made-up: ghost ships. That’s just the term used for ships with no living crew aboard, and according to Quartz, they’re not that rare — sailors have spotted at least seven such ships in the past 15 years.
It’s possible that this specific ghost ship, the Lyubov Orlova, sank — which would pose environmental problems of its own. But its lifeboats are designed to send off signals when they make contact with the water. Only two such signals have been received, presumably from lifeboats that fell off the ship’s side. The rest haven’t been heard from; ergo, the ship may very well still be out there.
Also not made-up: Canada did it. The Lyubov Orlova was seized by Canadian authorities after its owners racked up $250,000 in unpaid debts. En route to being sold for scrap in the Dominican Republic in January 2013, a storm snapped her tow line. Transport Canada decided not to pursue the ship, declaring that it “no longer poses a threat to the safety of [Canadian] offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment.”
Also not made-up, probably: cannibal rats. “Experts” believe the ship could still contain hundreds of rats, which naturally would only have been able to survive this long by feeding off one another. “There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other,” Belgian salvage hunter Pim de Rhoodes explained. “If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”
