There is a cannibal rat ship:
A ghost ship supposedly crewed by hundreds of cannibal rats could be heading to British shores, experts fear.
The Lyubov Orlova cruise ship, named after a Russian actress, has been adrift in the North Atlantic for the past 12 months.
Coastguards now believe the floating derelict, cut loose near Canada in 2013, could be driven thousands of miles towards Britain following the recent storms, according to the Sun.
‘She is floating around out there somewhere,’ researcher Belgian Pim de Rhoodes told the newspaper.
‘There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other.
‘If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.’
There is no cannibal rat ship:
According to some sources, the ship is infested with “cannibal rats.” But this is more theory than fact, as no one has been on the ship in a year. The cannibal rat theory comes from Pim De Rhoodes, a Belgian salvage hunter, who told tabloid The Sun, “There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.” De Rhoodes has no actual information about whether there are rats on the boat, or whether they’re diseased, cannibalistic or perfectly civilized.
According to the BBC, the ship has yet to be sighted off English waters. The Irish Coast Guard isn’t worried, nor is the U.K. Maritime and Coastguard Agency. For more Orlova sightings, the blog Where is Lyubov Orlova tracks sightings and theories about the ship. You can see map of sightings, as well as the ship’s deck plan, and there are shirts and mugs on offer for the most intrepid Orlova hunters.
1. The ocean is a very big place, to claim to know with absolute certainty that there cannot be a cannibal ghost rat ship (or RATBOAT) seems to me the height of arrogance.
2. The burden of proof lays with those who — dangerously, in my opinion — claim that there is no RATBOAT. “The burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi) is the obligation resting on a party in a trial to produce the evidence that will shift the conclusion away from the default position to one’s own position.
The burden of proof is often associated with the Latin maxim semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit, the best translation of which seems to be: “the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges.”
He who does not carry the burden of proof carries the benefit of assumption, meaning he needs no evidence to support his claim. Fulfilling the burden of proof effectively captures the benefit of assumption, passing the burden of proof off to another party.”
3. The absence of (ghost rat ship) evidence is not the evidence of (ghost rat ship) absence. “Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, (1) true, (2) false, (3) unknown between true or false, and (4) being unknowable (among the first three). In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.”
4. No one ever called the rats ‘diseased,’ Smithsonian Magazine. Where are you getting your information? Suspicious.
5. The absence of one ghost-rat ship does not equal the absence of all possible ghost-rat ships.
6. The ocean is full of ships; the world is full of rats. It feels premature to definitively claim there are NO Ratboats anywhere right now. We need more studies.
7. I believe the Smithsonian Magazine should retract their spurious and sensationalist headline. By their own admission, “according to some sources, the ship is infested with cannibal rats. But this is [a] theory…no one has been on the ship in a year.” They admit that they themselves have not been on Ratboat! They have not swept the decks of Ratboat clean and found it ratless. They are damned by their very own words.
8. If there is no Ratboat, where did Brian Jacques get the idea for Rathelm in the Redwall series?
9. There are rats. There are ships. It is not impossible for a rat to be on a ship. It is not impossible for a rat to eat another rat. In four easy steps I have brought you to the possibility of Ratboat. Draw the Venn diagram yourself.
10. There is a Catboat in the canals of Amsterdam. Is anyone prepared for the culture clash (and cat-rat war) that must inevitably arise when Catboat and Ratboat meet on the icy waves of the Atlantic?
Tags: pascal’s wager, philosophy, ratboat, Schrödinger’s Box
I went looking for the Catboat in Amsterdam, and as of a couple weeks ago, it’s no longer there. THE ANIMALBOATS ARE A LIE.
get out of here
I looked for it when I was there a few years ago too, and also couldn’t find it! The Flying Dutchmen of cats, it is.
This is a weird time to post my first comment (hi, everyone) but I can verify that the catboat was there, as advertised, when I visited in October 2013. I guess it’s like Brigadoon, maybe?
I WANT TO BELIEVE
I want to know why people have to get on the RATBOAT to deal with it. Just Viking Funeral that sucker from a distance.
(#8 is more than enough proof for me.)
Do you think that cannibal rats will be stopped by fire? Do you think they will be sunk by water? Do you think that the rats are not wiser, more cunning, more hardened by life on their hellish home? There is no ending the RATBOAT. We must find our Gods and pray for mercy.
For realsies. Then we’ll be invaded by diseased cannibal rats which are also on fire!
diseased cannibal rats which are also on fire and sunk. and probably drunk too.
eh, can’t be any worse than old white men. Bring on the ratocracy, I say
DID YOU NOT READ “THE BATTLE FOR THE CASTLE” AS A CHILD??
BURNING THE RATBOAT WILL SOLVE NOTHING. DO NOT SET THE RATBOAT ON FIRE, AS YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE.
(I am sorry for the caps. That book was serious business.)
ah, but the cannibal rat eats fire for breakfast.
when it’s not eating other rats, i mean.
Even cannibals cook their food.
Forget even the Viking Funeral approach – isn’t this what smart bomb technology is for?
You know, I mean, this and taking out killer asteroids…
I am weirdly fascinated with Weird Things About the Ocean And Its Inhabitants, as well as Stories about Unusual Wildlife, so you can imagine how amazing this entire story arc has been for me. LIKE CHRISTMAS.
ME TOO. As a kid I had a book about weird stuff that happened on (or in) the sea, and I used read it over and over again. I might still remember details about the Andrea Doria and the Kraken.
The only thing I am taking away from this is that “Cannibal Rat Ship” would be an excellent band name.
But is there a rat king on it
THE Rat King
No, but Jareth the goblin king lives there during the summers. The rats dance together in tattered gowns. After the ball, they eat each other. Jareth does nothing to stop this.
Rats are not perfectly civilized- entire argument against cannibal rats must be discarded.
I feel like the phrase “cannibal rat” is redundant. I mean, they already eat their babies if they’re sickly or weak, so cannibalism is pretty much a base rat trait.
These rats on a sinking boat
Had nary a wheat grain or oat
So they looked to their gang
When the dinner bell rang
Never realizing they still were afloat
I was irrationally irritated by the Smithsonian debunking. 90% because yes, Smithsonian, we read the original article and are well aware of the theoretical/sketchy nature of these claims, come on now, you would have led with “cannibal rat ghost ship” if you’d snagged that quote. 10% because I desperately want this to be real. SO THANK YOU.
The ghost rat ship is an emissary of the Old Ones. Any attempt to interfere with the onboard rats will cause their awakening and bring about a Lovecraftian apocalypse. I hope de Rhoodes is aware of the potential repercussions before he suits up to do combat with them. Also, poison? Pffft, flamethrower or nothing.
Thank god this exists.
The absence of one ghost-rat ship does not equal the absence of all possible ghost-rat ships.
I love you, Mallory. Let’s be friends.
k
I love that the CatBoat site URL is “http://www.poezenboot.nl/”.
Well, that is Dutch for cat boat…..
If you like watching people do insane things, I highly recommend spending some time here today, http://www.mavericksinvitational.com/
In order to have a trifecta of Canadian-associated ghost ships (Mary Celeste built in NS, Lyubov Orlova left adrift by Coast Guard), we now need a fancy sailing yacht, with the dining room set for an elegant repast, abandoned but for the horde of rats now living in the hardened shell of fondant that once covered a wedding cake, and a tattered veil, streaming from the top of the mainmast.
(In ghost stories, even the rats would rather eat each other than that vile paste called “fondant”)
PS: Maybe it would be even better if the wedding guests were asleep among the remains of the wedding feast and the rats, a little Dawn Treader-ish? I do not know. Will have to think this one through.
definitely has hints of Great Expectations as well. Perhaps the jilted bride sits among the rats, using them to bring about her revenge?
This ship was a huge local news story here in Newfoundland for the longest while because it was SO WEIRD, there was this ship stuck in the harbour for months and months that wouldn’t leave and we couldn’t do anything about it and the dudes who had worked on it hadn’t been paid and were stuck here, and it was all so weird! But I’m delighted to see how it has taken a turn from weird to terrifying and bizarre and CANNIBAL RATS.
Why is no one discussing the possibility that the ratboat rats are likely ZOMBIE ratboat rats? ZOMBRATS. They are eating each other, after all. We cannot let the zombrat boat make landfall! I don’t want to live in a world like The Walking Dead in which annoying, dirty men named Rick run about ordering everyone to do things in questionable drawls. Oh, and the zombies would suck, too.
Amen, sister. Amen.
#RATBORDT
Why would you just…set it adrift and not dismantle it? It’s that like, super littering?
THIS IS MY QUESTION TOO. is that really what happens to boats no one wants anymore? wouldn’t the oceans just be full of haunted boats by now? are the oceans full of haunted boats?
Yet another reason for me to never go near it.
I think the glamor of the RATBOAT is blinding us all to a crucial detail: It was cut loose IN CANADA, presumably by A CANADIAN. What is their Grand RATBOAT Plan? Will USians be spared because we share a continent? Is RATBOAT directed specifically at Britain?
Yes. At Britain. Prime Minister Stephen Harper felt rebuffed by the Brits’ failure to invite him for biscuits and tea after he renamed everything in the Canadian Armed Forces “Royal”. This is his revenge. When he redesigns the Canadian flag to resemble the US flag, only with maple leafs instead of stars, YOU BETTER RECOGNIZE, because you don’t want to know what he’ll think up for you guys.
I am completely willing to accept that Harper spends his days sulking in his room, fixating on imagined slights by other world leaders and plotting improbable revenges involving the introduction of cannibal beasts to their lands.
It was actually (sort of) an American who did it — the ship was sold for scrap to an American, he hired a boat to tow it back to wherever he was, but the tow broke and it drifted off to sea. And then if I remember correctly, it was heading for an oil rig, the oil company hired their own boat to pull it somewhere safer, but THAT tow broke and it drifted off again. So this thing goes WAY DEEPER than just the Canadian government, clearly — looks like Canada, America, and the oil companies are in cahoots!
I trust your insane conspiracy theory because you actually read the article and extracted facts. Well done.
Rats, exciting and new
Come aboard, were expecting you
Rats, lifes sweetest reward
Let it flow, it floats back to you
Rat Boat soon will be making another run
The Rat Boat promises something for everyone
Set a course for adventure
Your mind on a new romance
Rats wont hurt anymore
Its an open smile on a friendly shore
Yes rats…
Its rats…
Oceans of love coming your way
-No food? Listen to the boy. Of course there’s food. Look at how the bodies of the fallen litter the deck.
-I’m supposed to eat Tom? I’m supposed to eat Squeak?
-He’s not around to care anymore, is he? Rats don’t make ghosts, as far as I know. There’s only one phantom here and that’s the moldy bitch beneath our feet.
-It’s just, I feel bad.
-Bad, he says. There’s no room for misbegotten mercy on the high sea.
Yesterday I wroted a conversation between two of the rats on the ratghostboat.
Obviously what’s going to happen is that the Cannibal Rat Boat is going to eventually connect with the 2-mile long garbage island out there in the Pacific and provide the rats with a home and food supply and they will declare an independent republic and LIVE FOREVER la la la.
“The burden of proof lays with those who — dangerously, in my opinion — claim that there is no RATBOAT.”
This is very true, but the burden of proof can’t lay anyone, being only A Concept and not a sentient, material being. (It could lie with someone, though!) GRAMMAR POLICE OUT.
yup
As Mycroft Holmes says, “Balance of probabilities.” I think it’s clearly in favor of the existence of RATBOAT.
If RATBOAT did not exist, mankind would have to invent it.
Oh, wait, I think I just argued the other side.
There is more than one rat boat. There is a PIRATE RAT SQUID boat in Alaska – or at least there was in 2011, and I refuse to research more to find out if that has changed: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2016418480…
As soon as I started reading this article, I started waiting for the Redwall reference, and it was so satisfying when it arrived. Well done, Ortberg! And thank you for sharing that singular childhood experience with me of reading those delightful tomes.
I think it is the height of arrogance for people from wealthy western countries to judge cannibal rats by their own inherited values and cultural standards.
Cannibal rats have their own culture, their own history and their own traditions. We should respect this.
There were some rats pouring out of a coffin on the boat, is that what you were thinking of? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA9ZkYWzK0U
to live and produce young rats need input of energy. Once all the food on the ship was used up and rats resorted to cannibalism there is no more input of energy and after the last rat has knawed off its own leg the rats must die. That is why there is no cannibal rat ship and no zombie apocalypse.
I trust your insane conspiracy theory because you actually read the article and extracted facts. Well done.
I woke up to a skeptical story about RATBOAT on NPR this morning. They were arguing that the rats are probably all dead by now, rat-cannibalism or no.
Piffle. I just want an excuse to keep saying “RATBOAT.”
I’m not even bothered about the rats, just elated that Canada decided to just litter in the ocean, and that in our modern age you can still just LOSE A BOAT out there in the vast Atlantic, to only be found when someone runs into it, or when it CRASHES ASHORE.
A RATBOAT is a veritable smorgasbord, orgasboard, orgasboard! Oh, what a ratly feast!!
Speaking of Brian Jacques, let us not forget his previous contribution to the scientific literature on undead-creature-infested ghost ships, “Castaways of the Flying Dutchman”. http://www.amazon.com/Castaways-Flying-Dutchman-B…
OMG I think I just saw cat-rat war. Err.. nevermind it’s only Tom and Jerry.
Riff Life Movie