The continuing saga of the good ship Lyubov Orlova

Last Thursday must have been a very slow local news day,

because our local evening newspaper The Evening Herald, 

carried a story with this wonderfully lurid headline,

Ghost ship full of cannibal rats 

could be about to crash into Devon coast

"There are fears a ghost ship full of diseased cannibal rats could be about to crash into the coast of Devon or Cornwall.

The abandoned Lyubov Orlova has been missing since it cut adrift while being towed from Canada nearly a year ago.

The 40-year-old liner has been driven across the Atlantic by high winds and is thought close to the UK shore.

Based on emergency beacons activated last year aboard the ship, it is feared the 40-year-old Yugoslavian liner registered to Russia could crash into the shore of Devon, Cornwall, Ireland or Scotland.

Those searching for the ship say there are likely to be thousands of disease-ridden rats on board with no source of food except each other.

The 4,250-ton ship built to carry 110 passengers was impounded in Canada in 2010 after being deserted by her crew in a debt row.

Two years later, she was towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped - but abandoned when she broke free".

Well the story worked because as Sam Blackledge,  a Herald Columnist, wrote a day or so later,

"Our story went live at about 9am. By 3pm it had attracted more than 50,000 hits, roughly the amount we usually get for the whole website in a 24-hour period. By the end of the day it had more than 180,000".