The legend of the ghost ships resurfaces in the Atlantic

The story of Lyoubov Orlova begins like a fairy tale: it is a cruise ship named after a famous Russian actress and intended for the Soviet nomenklatura, which sails quiet days on all the seas of the globe. But his end of life is less happy. In 2010, the ship was seized by Canada and then sent for scrapping in the Dominican Republic. This is when the legend begins.

Because the Lyoubov Orlova, in the middle of a storm, will break its moorings and disappear, uninhabited, at the sight of its tug. Then begins a long drift of several months in the waters of the Atlantic. Twice, the ship will emit a signal suggesting that it is taking on water. The second, March 12, 2013 indicates that the old ship is about to sink. Since then, absolute silence. The Sun will however rekindle the fuse by announcing that the ship could be off the British coast, infested with "cannibal" rats having no other alternative to survive than to eat each other... But, says the Sun, no one knows exactly where it is...

And for good reason, the sleeping beauty most likely lies several thousand meters deep somewhere in the Atlantic, rusting gently while releasing into the deep waters the thousands of kilos of toxic materials contained in its sides...

Like a match in a powder keg

However, the match thrown by the Sun in a barrel of powder will have caused a real explosion on the web, thousands of sites seizing the story of the ghost ship and its rats hallucinated by hunger. The British authorities may deny the presence of the ship, but nothing helps! Because the legend of the ghost ships is one of the most powerful myths in the West. For centuries, the wives of sailors who set off on an adventure to conquer the world have had nightmares about these skiffs that have returned without their men, these disappearances at sea, these undead who have never returned from their dreams of gold and glory. In Brittany, legend has it that a ship that disappeared at sea returns with its deceased, larger than it was, to haunt the living.

The "Flying Dutchman" roams the seas of the globe

Perhaps the most famous of the ghost ships is the sinister Captain Fokke's Flying Dutchman. At the helm of his ship, Fokke performed feats of speed, rallying Holland to distant islands in times so improbable for the time that some saw it as the work of the devil. Then one day, the "Flying Dutchman" disappeared body and soul... His legend gave birth to a veritable literary, musical and even cinematographic work since the famous Pirates of the Caribbean series is notably inspired by it. Born in the 17th century but probably rooted in even older stories, the legend will rebound from time to time, as more or less - and rather less than more - credible testimonies report chance encounters with a large ship that seems to have arisen from the waves at the height of a thick fog, served by a zombie crew led by Fokke. According to the time and the places, the legend varied a lot. It has also sometimes been associated with the plague, in reference to the rats that infested ships and spread the terrible bacillus throughout the world. The emphasis on "cannibalistic" rats in the story of Lyubov Orlova is also reminiscent of this trait of marine myth.

In the same waters of the North Atlantic where the Lyoubov Orlova probably sank, was also born the enigma of the Celestial Mary. The brig on which the captain, his wife and his young daughter, as well as seven sailors were traveling, was found empty without any trace of a fight or assault. No one ever knew what became of the crew and the captain's family; and many fanciful anecdotes subsequently flourished about this strange disappearance. The marine chronicle is full of other examples of the same kind, always based on ships actually found empty without the mystery ever being solved.

A universal myth

But why do these stories fascinate us so much? For some, it should be seen as the persistence of a universal myth: that of the passage from the world of the living to the kingdom of the dead, a passage which often takes place on a boat driven by a smuggler like the crossing of the river Styx , at the Ancients, by borrowing the boat of old Charon, destination the Underworld. The Celts also cultivated this type of myth, which will last until the beginning of the 20th century in Brittany. The "bag noz" or "boats of the night" that we never manage to dock, transport the souls of the deceased to imaginary islands. Seeing them never bodes well... References that can be found throughout history, moving from the realm of myths and funerary rites to that of poetry. Thus this poem by the English pre-romantic William Blake:

(...) His mast is still so high, his hull still has the strength to carry his human load. His total disappearance from my sight is in me, not in him. And just when someone near me says : "He is gone", there are others who, seeing him pointing on the horizon and coming towards them, exclaim with joy: "Here he is". There are no dead, But living on both shores.

Surfing on the fame of the Flying Dutchman, Victor Hugo also celebrated the "sinister pirate of the infinite" and Wagner, in the Flying Dutchman evokes the passage from life to death, with the suicide for love of Senta, the young girl promised to the Dutchman.

Mythology, literature, tales and legends mixed with true stories... This is why the rumor revived by the Sun mobilizes our imagination so much and, in the great whirlwind of online media and social networks, acquires an almost universal resonance. The blog "Where is the Lyubov Orlova?" has fun listing everything that is said, written or transferred about him. It also contains archives and testimonies from ex-passengers of the ship. And even if the Lyoubov Orlova should never be stranded on the rocks of the Irish, Scottish or Welsh coast, it will undoubtedly still return to haunt the gazettes at regular intervals. And also our minds always in search of the fantastic.

Thomas Nagant (@thomasnagant)