The unfortunate story of the MV Lyubov Orlova

For the past two months a “ghost ship” has been wandering the North Atlantic Ocean and is now getting dangerously close to the Irish coast. The MV Lyubov Orlova, a former Russian cruise ship, has gone through an unfortunate series of events and in the end has been abandoned and left adrift.

The ship, built in 1976, was purchased by the Canadian firm Cruise North Expeditions, who intended to use it for summer cruises in the Arctic. Due to a financial dispute with the Russian owners, it was seized in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where it remained tied from September 2010 to January 2013.

On January 23rd, the Lyubov Orlova left Canada’s shores. The plan was to tow it to a scrapyard in the Dominican Republic but something went wrong: a day after departure the cable snapped, sending the ship adrift.

After a few days an oil platform, Atlantic Hawk, spotted the vessel and secured it, but on February 4th, was compelled by Canada’s transport authority to cut it loose because of dangerous sea conditions.

Since then the Lyubov Orlova has been adrift in the North Atlantic Ocean causing much concern. As a matter of fact the ship has no crew or warning lights and, in the unfortunate case of accident or sinking, it will spill toxic liquids and other non-degradable chemicals into the water.

Since the ship is now in international waters and given the dangerous sea conditions in that area, Canada’s transport authority has decided not to pursue the vessel.

So what will happen now to this wandering “ghost ship?”

- See more at: MV Lyubov Orlova

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Five reasons the Lyubov Orlova — and its cannibal rats — are at the bottom of the Atlantic

Tristin Hopper | January 25, 2014 11:58 AM ET
M/V Lyubov Orlova
This undated handout picture shows the former Russian cruise ship "MV Lyubov Orlova."
Here are five reason's it has sunk.DIETMAR HASENPUSCH/AFP/Getty Image

This week, the internet exploded with speculation that the M/V Lyubov Orlova, a derelict Soviet-made cruise ship cut loose from Newfoundland last winter, was on the verge of smashing into Ireland or the British Isles and unleashing a terrifying cargo of cannibalistic rats.

“Once the rats make landfall, they will be very, very hungry for something besides the raw flesh of their comrades at sea,” read a Thursday post by Gawker.com that soon spawned similar speculation around the English-speaking world.

But while Canada did indeed send a derelict Soviet cruise ship on a course for the Emerald Isle — and while it is indeed populated by a colony of Newfoundland rats — the M/V Lyubov Orlova has almost certainly been consigned to a watery grave:

  1. Nobody has seen her for 12 months
    The last human eyes laid on the Lyubov Orlova belonged to the crew of the Maersk Challenger, a Transport Canada-contracted supply vessel that was in the process of towing the cruise ship away from offshore oil platforms when the towline broke. The ship had originally found itself adrift in the North Atlantic when it broke free of an underpowered tugboat attempting to haul it St. John’s, Newfoundland to a scrapyard in the Caribbean.

    Ever since, even as she bobbed around one of the world’s busiest ocean trade routes, nobody has been able to get a visual on the 90 meter long former cruise ship. And it’s not for lack of trying: Reports of a rat-infested ghost ship have a way of narrowing the eyes of North Atlantic mariners, particularly when they’ve had to worry about getting their freighters to Halifax or New York without hitting the damn thing.

  2. If it’s going to hit Europe, it’s way behind schedule
    Ireland is only 3,000 kilometers from Newfoundland. At that distance, the Lyubov Orlova would only need to have drifted eight kilometers a day in order to now be entering Irish territorial waters. By contrast, 12 months is all it took for a small fishing vessel cut loose by the 2011 Japanese tsunami to travel 8,000 kilometers and appear off the coast of British Columbia.

    And as shall be shown below, although the ship is without power, authorities have been able to receive scattered positioning signals from the vessel’s emergency equipment. The last recorded position, made in March, was less than 700 nautical miles from the Irish Coast. This indicates that the ship was already well past the halfway mark. At that rate, if she was still afloat, she should have been appearing off Galway harbour by June.


    Related: National Post (Canada) October 2013
  3. Ireland isn’t worried
    As one would guess, one of the chief responsibilities of the Irish Coast Guard is to prevent rat-infested hulks from hitting Ireland. And indeed, from the moment Canadian officials sheepishly told the Irish to keep watch for a rusty ship heading in their direction, they have been keeping a very close eye.

    In a February, 2013 email to the National Post, Irish Department of Transport spokeswoman Caroline Ryan said they were poring over satellite imagery, drawing up ocean drift models and readying aircraft patrols to make sure they could intercept the wayward ship before it could emerge out of the fog and take out an Irish ferry or two.

    After a fruitless year of such searching, Ireland is pretty confident the Lyubov Orlova is gone.
    “Our belief is that it has more than likely sunk, given the storms that have gone through the region,” Chris Reynolds from the Irish Coast Guard told the Irish Independent on Friday.

  4. The Atlantic is a harsh mistress
    The East Coast of Canada was subject to three-meter waves when the Lyubov Orlova broke its final tow line. In the 12 months since, the ship has spun aimlessly through iceberg-infested waters and been pounded by all manner of swells, storms and gales.

    And it’s not like the Lyubov Orlova was in tip-top condition to begin with. Before going to sea, the ship had spent three years deteriorating in St. John’s harbour and tellingly, the only buyer she could fetch was a scrap dealer.

    In the October words of Irish Coast Director Chris Reynolds, she was less a cruise ship than “4,000 tonnes of metal,” he told the BBC.

    The Lyubov Orlova’s immense size certainly makes it a bit heartier, but not immune. Take the example of the MTS Oceanos, a Greek-owned cruise ship that was 60 meters longer than the Lyubov Orlova. In 1991, the vessel was on a routine cruise off the coast of South Africa when [it sank].

  5. The Lyubov Orlova’s “we are sinking” transponders were activated months ago
    That’s right; the ship itself has told us she’s sunk.

    Like any modern cruise vessel, the Lyubov Orlova carried EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Rescue Beacon), safety devices that are strapped to the ship’s lifeboats and activated automatically when they come into contact with salt water. In late February, Transport Canada confirmed that an EPIRB from the vessel had been activated.

    Two weeks later, another EPIRB was switched online, prompting Canada to send an aircraft over its reported position. What the patrol was a single lifeboat drifting alone in the North Atlantic, and no sign of the Lyubov Orlova.

Of course, it’s possible that the signals simply came from lifeboats that fell away and hit the water—and that the Lyubov Orlova itself is still proudly coursing towards Ireland with its complement of Canadian rodents.

But as the Irish Coast Guard’s Mr. Reynolds has often told European media, they may never know for sure. “You can’t prove a negative,” he said this week.