Liupov Orlova-Looking for a modern ghost ship lost in the North Atlantic

On the endless grey Atlantic Ocean, a lone boat is drifting along. Its restaurant is only the sound of the sea breeze, its kitchen only the smell of rust. The cabin, which once accommodated 100 passengers, was empty and a figure disappeared. Near the bow, a line of rusty letters spelled out the name of the ship-Liupov Orlova (Lyubov Orlova) ...

Orlova is a modern ghost ship. It disappeared on the way to Domincan Rep. on February 4, 2013, without power or crew. The disappearance sparked a global search in which the centaurs were involved. The coastguard wants to find it before it is stranded or hit an oil rig, and the new satellite system operator wants to use it to prove the effectiveness of the system, and even a team of treasure-seekers wants to find it. Each team is looking for prizes: disaster prevention, fame, or millions of dollars in bounty. So how hard is this task?

In fact, it's very, very simple. This naturally raises two important questions: in this era of global surveillance, when planes and satellites scout our movements, how could a 1400-ton ocean wheel disappear? Besides, what has been discarded, forgotten, floating on the rough sea?

Liupov Orlova, named after a Soviet actress, was assembled in Yugoslavia in 1976. In its heyday, it sailed to the north and south poles. Its bow has been strengthened to open an air route through the broken ice. Visitors to the boat either shoot sparkling icebergs on the deck or sip drinks in the lounge.

In January this year, however, Orlova was in a lamentable position: it was frozen outside St. John's port in Newfoundland, Canada. The crew dissolved, the power vanished, and the pest became the only resident on board.

Traffic Canada, the government agency that manages St. John's Port, wants the ship to leave. Things went as they wished: the Orlova was bought, and the new owner hired a tugboat to tow it to the Domincan Rep. and hand it over to the thrift dealer. The days of Orlova are over--but wait!

January 24 The ship left Hong Kong, then the waves, tore the rope. The Orlova was taken away by the waves and floated to dangerous waters near the well. Husky Energy, the oil company, was forced to send a ship to intercept the Orlova and reconnect to the tow rope. It then hung the tow rope on a ship from traffic Canada. This, the fate of the Orlova sent to the ship-breaking site seems doomed. But just then, the tow rope broke again.

It is also possible that someone deliberately let it go--the Canadian Department of Transportation declined to comment. Whatever the truth, by early February, the Orlova had drifted into the waters of the high seas. It was deserted and floated and disappeared.

About a week later, at the other end of the Atlantic, someone was aware of the problem: February 11, the Irish Coast Guard Captain Chris Renos (Chris Reynolds) called an acquaintance of the Canadian Coast Guard and asked him to help arrange the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (Chris Hadfield) received an interview on national radio in Ireland. At the end of the telephone conversation, the Canadian official released an explosive message: "By the way, we lost a ship." ”

Reynolds knows what this means: on the Atlantic Ocean from west to east, the ship will eventually drift to Ireland. It may run aground, cause mass cleanup, and may drift into waterways or oil fields, endangering life. He must find this ship.

Reynolds a lifetime of dealing with the sea, but he has never dealt with such a scale of accidents. Although abandoned ships are not uncommon, there are often containers and debris floating on the surface, but it is rare to abandon a ship 100 meters long like the Orlova. In the last two years, one of the larger abandoned ships is to count Japan's "fishing pill". It is a trawler, 50 meters long, was swept into the ocean by the Japanese tsunami in 2011 and appeared on the coast of the United States in 2012. Within a few days, Reynolds and his team organized a search operation across the oceans.

The Irish team soon understood the enormity of the task. It is not difficult to find a ship, because by law all large ships will have to install a transmitter called "Automatic Identification System" (AIS) to broadcast its position. However, the AIS of Orlova was broken and could not be traced. It's not possible to witness a boat--the ocean is too big to see. Satellite photography is also not helping: these cameras need to be magnified to find ships, but to magnify them, you need to know where to aim first. Moreover, the North Atlantic is often cloudy, making filming more difficult. As a result, Reynolds enabled specialized search and rescue software, hoping to calculate the location of the Orlova number based on known currents and wind directions.

However, it turns out that it is extremely difficult to speculate on the course of a ship. The function of the software is to look for small things, such as water bikes and sailing boats, rather than large vessels that are blown around by sea breezes. Moreover, the Orlova has been missing for more than one weeks and the sea area needed to be searched is already vast.

Looking for Orlova, it's not just Reynolds's team. After the ship's disappearance, the news reached Antwerp, Belgium, and reached the ears of Captain Pim Drudes (Pim de rhoodes), Foucault. Drudes has a group of men eager to take risks, usually to salvage the wreck for a living. Drudes knew that if Orlova was found on the high seas, it would be a windfall.

Once they find a dumping ship, they can either earn a hefty refund, or they can own the boat and sell it to a thrift merchant at a high price of 700,000 euros. It was even suggested to sell the furniture and equipment on board. The Ghost Ship souvenirs are sure to be able to sell a good price online-this time, the online has been a fake Orlova Twitter account, a smartphone application, there is a sale of Orlova t-shirt blog. On the February 16, Drudes and a group of volunteer crews headed toward the Atlantic, hoping for good luck.

For Reynolds, good luck has been elusive until he made a phone call to make a difference. The man who spoke to him was Guey Thomas, a maritime alert advisor who worked in Baltimore, Maryland. Thomas had previously invited Reynolds to speak at a seminar. Reynolds said he might not be able to make it, because "there is a ship drifting towards us." Thomas came into the mood with a sound. He came up with a way: There was a project that had been studied for years. He said to Reynolds: "As long as it floats, we should be able to help you find it." "Liupov Orlova also had glorious years, but now lost in the Atlantic Ocean, whereabouts unknown."

Thomas worked as a guard engineer for the U.S. Navy, and spent most of his time observing the ocean. One thing that frustrated him was that the ships of pirates and illegal fishers were almost invisible. Later he discovered that a sensor could mark the vessels without active search.

That is the satellite synthetic aperture Radar (SAR) system, which functions to measure surface features such as terrain. They emit radio pulses to a wide area, and then calculate the shape of the Earth's surface according to the time and type of reflection of the signal. Unlike cameras, they can comb large areas of the sea and get images that are clear enough to see a ship-not only that it can penetrate clouds. Thomas had previously launched a project called "C-sigma", designed to bring together the operators of SAR satellites and maritime agencies. Now he needs to convince them that the project will work, and finding Orlova is the best demonstration of the project.

Thomas contacted an Italian SAR satellite operator named E-geos. E-geos has 4 moons between North and South Poles, and Thomas rented their time. The Irish team provided what they considered to be the most likely coordinates of the ship. Satellite action.

After the first image was returned, the Irish removed the radar signal from the ship that the AIS system was still working on, hoping to find a silent signal. A few times they thought they had found it, but when the satellite flew again, the signal disappeared again. Orlova is not here.

On the surface of the ocean, Drudes and his crew are also searching. In the winter Atlantic, the waves are as scary as peaks. As they drove to a one-day voyage from the search sea, the two engines on board broke down. Reluctantly, they dragged the boat back to Antwerp, determined to fix it and set sail again.

Rumors began to spread around. A US maritime agency discovered the Orlova on February 21, and others claimed to have seen it in the Caribbean, an AFP article said. But none of these claims have been substantiated.

Just then, things turned around: on February 23, the Irish Coast Guard suddenly received a distress signal from an emergency radio beacon from Orlova. These beacons are activated only when the ship sinks or the lifeboat falls overboard. It looks as if the sign still has some power left to point out a precise position for the guard-the location in the northeast corner of the area they are searching for.

Almost everyone thinks that this is Orlova's last call, and now it must have sunk. The danger of collision or stranding has ceased, and satellite searches have been canceled.

But two weeks later, the accident happened: Another sign sent out a distress signal. This is puzzling: if the Orlova has sunk, where does this signal come from? Maybe it's releasing the Lifeboat? Or is the ship capsized, partly submerged, but partly above the water? For whatever reason, this signal cannot be ignored. The Irish started the search again.

Will the Belgians beat them to the next step? At this point, Drudes is close to the target sea, thanks to an unexpected clue: one day, a uniformed Irishman came to him, claiming that he knew the location of the Orlova number. Drudesby to the other news, think he said the coordinates may be true, so led the men set out. It turned out that their destinations and the position of the second signal were indeed very close.

by March 22, Drudes's team had reached their destination. They sent helicopters to search the nearby waters. The sea is rough, take-off and landing are dangerous, but the danger is worth it: with helicopters, they can search the 50-kilometer-wide sea at once. They saw an oil tanker and a passenger liner farther away. "That's it!" Drudes thought. But that's not. The other captain responded to their radio calls.

They found 5 ships altogether, but none was a ghost ship. A few days later, Drudes decided to take the final shot, turning off the engine and letting his boat drift along with the waves to see where the currents took the Orlova. Surprisingly, the sea breeze pushes them up the west. ' We can't find the ship, ' he said. Then the weather got worse and he had to turn around.

The Irish are searching harder. Reynolds request satellite Scan again, this time finally succeeded! They received two signals, one could be a lifeboat, the other a strong one, probably an ocean-going wheel, floating quietly in the ocean between Iceland and Scotland. Then it's time to send a plane.

In early April, two planes took off ashore, each tracking a signal. Reynolds plans to present the image of the ghost ship to the audience at a maritime alert meeting in Dublin Castle. However, the first plane reached the weaker sea, but found nothing. Even if there was a lifeboat, it has now sunk. The second plane continues to patrol the northeastern waters of Ireland. Finally, it found a ship. is Orlova finally going to show up?

Recall that time, Reynolds annoyed to laugh. "It was a Spanish fishing boat, the transmitter of the ship," he said. "The fishing boat is working where it shouldn't.

Orlova missing. 6 months have passed and it is still unaccounted for.

Disappointed? There must be. White busy? Reynolds didn't see it that way. It teaches us that-even in the 21st century, we still don't know what's going on in the ocean. If it's so hard to find the Orlova, what do we expect to find in pirates and illegal fishing boats?

In Reynolds's view, the vast sea is outside the law. He pointed out that we are good at identifying typical behavior and discovering the rules of the ship. "But our system doesn't find people who don't want to appear." "He also argues that if we are prepared to use the wind and tidal energy at sea, and are prepared to stop illegal fishing, and to secure the use of resources and transit vessels, we need more advanced management tools." "All said to rely on maritime vigilance to catch the bad guys, but I think the key is to let good people do good deeds." ”

Radar monitoring is not everything, but the search for Orlova shows that it is easy to find a boat if the method is right. "We can already set up a maritime alert system," said Thomas. ”

So the Orlova has sunk to the bottom of the sea? We have several reasons to think that this is impossible. First of all, the Orlova strong buoyancy, even in the storm will not sink. It is also equipped with 6 lifeboats, each with a distress beacon. If they have all gone into the water, why only two of them have signaled? "In my opinion, it floats for several years," Drudes said. "If you know the location, I'm sure I will. ”

It is no precedent that ships or large objects have been missing for a long while at sea. In 2012, a 20-metre floating dock was washed up on the coast of the United States--one of the 3 Oregon State of the Japanese tsunami 15 months ago. Since 2000, humans have found at least 7 ghost ships, including the 80-metre-long rust tanker floating in Australia, the owner of an unidentified ship, and an unmanned sailboat that haunts and eats half the food in the vicinity of Sardinia. The number of containers dropped from the ship is about 2000 a year, and 1/3 of them are floating on the sea.

The longest-drifting record holder is a Swedish steam boat called "Bechimo" (Baychimo). It plunged into an ice floe in 1931, and the crew abandoned the ship, and in the next more than 30 years, it was sometimes seen floating along the Alaska. The last time someone witnessed it was 1969 years. The Alaska State government launched a search in 2006 and found nothing.

Perhaps the fate of the Orlova. In the gray ocean, it may still be floating quietly, the only movement is the sound of the waves beating metal, so lonely lost, until forever.