Ship of ghouls - Empty liner adrift for 12 months - Only crew are 100s of hungry rats - Now it's heading for British coast
But now coastguards and other authorities are worried storms may have driven her thousands of miles towards BRITAIN’S coast.
The 40-year-old Soviet-built cruise ship has nothing aboard but packs of vicious, disease-ridden rodents preying on each other to survive.
Her position is unknown despite several high-level searches.
Last year satellites picked up an unidentified blip off Scotland large enough to be the ship — but search planes found nothing.
Now adventurers and salvage hunters — drawn by the lure of the 4,250-ton vessel’s £600,000 value as scrap — are also scouring the lonely seas for her.
They think the 300ft liner is still afloat because four liferaft transmitters have not been activated, as they would have if she had sunk.
Two distress beacons which did activate, weeks apart, are believed to have been on liferafts that broke off and fell into the water.
If the ship makes landfall it is likely to be on the west coast of Ireland, Scotland or the far southern tip of England. One searcher, Belgian-based Pim de Rhoodes, said: “She is floating around out there somewhere.
“There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”
The Lyubov Orlova — named after a Russian actress — was built to carry 110 passengers to far-flung destinations including the polar regions. But in 2010 she was impounded in Newfoundland in a debts row and deserted by her unpaid crew.
After two years tied up in port she was ordered to be towed to the Dominican Republic and scrapped.
When the tow-line to a tug broke in heavy seas the Canadian government got another ship to drag her far out to sea and release her.
Irish coastguard chief Chris Reynolds said: “There have been huge storms in recent months but it takes a lot to sink a vessel as big as that. We must stay vigilant.”
