It seems the 328-foot-long Russian cruise ship Lyubov Orlova might have met with a watery death.
According to a Yahoo! News Weather report released today on yahoo.com, the ship, which spent months drifting across the North Atlantic and was last seen off the coast of Ireland several months ago, is presumed sunk.
Lyubov Orlova, named for a famous 1930s Russian actress, was originally built in 1976 and chartered for expeditions to polar waters, the new report states. But after the ship was abandoned in 2010 in Newfoundland, Canada, she was sold for scrap to a buyer in the Dominican Republic. En route to her new home in January 2013, her tow line snapped in rough seas, causing the Lyubov Orlova to drift eastward across the Atlantic.
In February, according to the Yahoo! report, she was spotted by an oil industry supply ship that reconnected her tow line and saved her from an aimless life of driftage. However, shortly after her eventual rescue, Transport Canada ordered the ship be released, since it was technically adrift in international waters and out of Canadian jurisdiction.
Months passed until she was again spotted by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency some 1,300 nautical miles west of the Irish coast, the news report states.
The Lyubov Orlova hasn’t been seen since and is now presumed sunk. The Irish Coast Guard received a signal in March from the boat’s EPIRB, which is automatically activated when it contacts water.
Photo courtesy of CBC
