The Herald's tale of the ghost ship MV Lyubov Orlova, which could be floating  towards the Devon coast with a cargo of cannibal rats, has prompted national  discussion on the issue of abandoned vessels.

The Yugoslavian built pleasure cruiser was being towed from Canada to the  Dominican Republic for scrap when it broke free - and is believed to have  drifted across the Atlantic towards our coastline.

Experts say disease carrying rats could be on board eating their own  kind.

But the phenomenon of abandoned ships floating across our oceans is not an  unusual one.

John Murray, the maritime director of the International Chamber of Shipping,  told the Independent ships are used to navuigating around objects.

He said: "Shipping containers and adrift crafts don't creep up on ships.

"Navigation warnings from other vessels and radar usually ensure they are  spotted from quite a distance away. Ships navigate around them."

The most famous "ghost ship" is the Mary Celeste,  found floating, crewless  but well-provisioned, in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872.

In June last year, the 69ft Nina, heading to Sydney from New Zealand, was  caught in a storm and has not been seen since.

A Japanese fishing boat, the Ryou-Un Maru, floated abandoned across the seas  for 11months before being sunk by US authorities.

Even locally there have been examples.

Donald Crowhurst sailed from Teignmouth in 1969, taking part in the first  single-handed race round the world.

But as the racers logged their positions at sea, reporting in by radio at a  time long before sophisticated GPS positioning, it appeared that Crowhurst was  closing in on the favourite.

However, his voyage was a sham, and Teignmouth Electron was eventually found  drifting and abandoned in mid-Atlantic.

Crowhurst's logs revealed his anguish, and the fact that he had spent eight  months out in the Atlantic, fabricating his details.

It is thought that he jumped overboard. He was never found, and Teignmouth  Electron is believed to be somewhere in the Cayman Islands.

Colin Firth and Kate Winslet were recently reported to be in very early  discussions about starring in a film based on the Donald Crowhurst story.

The actors, both Oscar winners, have read a screenplay by Scott Burns, and  Firth would portray Crowhurst with Winslet playing his wife Clare.

Historically attested Ghost Ships

1855: HMS Resolute was discovered drifting off the coast of Baffin Island. It  had been one of four vessels from Edward Belcher's search expedition for John  Franklin that had been abandoned the previous year when it was trapped in pack  ice in Viscount Melville Sound. The ship drifted some 1,200 miles (1,900 km)  before it was found, freed from the ice.

Amazon (later renamed Mary Celeste)

Carroll A. Deering as seen from the US Coast Guard lightvessel at Cape  Lookout (North Carolina) on 28 January 1921

Ryou-Un Maru adrift near Alaska

1872: The Mary Celeste, perhaps the most historically famous derelict, was  found abandoned between mainland Portugal and the Azores archipelago. It was  devoid of all crew, but largely intact and under sail, heading toward the Strait  of Gibraltar. While Arthur Conan Doyle's story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement"  based on this ship added some strange phenomena to the tale (such as that the  tea found in the mess hall was still hot), the fact remained that the last log  entry was 11 days prior to the discovery of the ship.

1884: The Resolven was found abandoned between Baccalieu Island and Catalina,  Newfoundland and Labrador, with its lifeboat missing. Other than a broken yard,  it had suffered minimal damage. A large iceberg was sighted nearby. It has been  claimed that none of the seven crew members or four passengers were accustomed  to northern waters and it was suggested that they panicked when the ship was  damaged by ice, launched the lifeboat, and swamped, though no bodies were found.  Three years later, Resolven was wrecked while returning to Newfoundland from  Nova Scotia with a load of lumber.

1917: Zebrina, a sailing barge, departed Falmouth, England, with a cargo of  Swansea coal bound for Saint-Brieuc, France. Two days later she was discovered  aground on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, without damage except for some  disarrangement of her rigging, but with her crew missing.

1921: The Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted cargo schooner, was found  stranded on a beach on Diamond Shoals, North Carolina. The ship's final voyage  had been the subject of much debate and controversy, and was investigated by six  departments of the US government, largely because it was one of dozens of ships  that sank or went missing within a relatively short period of time. While  paranormal explanations have been advanced,  the theories of mutiny or piracy are considered more likely.

1931: The Baychimo was abandoned in the Arctic Ocean when it became trapped  in pack ice and was thought doomed to sink, but remained afloat and was sighted  numerous times over the next 38 years without ever being salvaged.

1933: A lifeboat from the 1906 wreck of the passenger steamship SS Valencia  off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island was found floating in the area in  remarkably good condition 27 years after the sinking. Sailors have also reported  seeing the ship itself in the area in the years following the sinking, often as  an apparition that followed down the coast.

1955: The MV Joyita was discovered abandoned in the Pacific. A subsequent  inquiry found the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined the fate  of passengers and crew to be "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the  inquiry".

1959: A ghost submarine was found floating without a crew in the Bay of  Biscay off northern Spain. It was later discovered that the empty sub was being  towed by another vessel and the chain had snapped.

1969: The Teignmouth Electron was found adrift and unoccupied in the Atlantic  Ocean. Investigation led to the conclusion that its sole crewmember, Donald  Crowhurst, had suffered a psychiatric breakdown while competing in a solo  around-the-world race and committed suicide by jumping overboard.

2003: The High Aim 6 was found drifting in Australian waters, 80 nautical  miles (150 km; 92 mi) east of Rowley Shoals, with its crew missing. The derelict  was subsequently scuttled.

2006: The tanker Jian Seng was found off the coast of Weipa, Queensland  Australia in March. Its origin or owner could not be determined, and its engines  had been inoperable for some time.

2006: In August the Bel Amica was discovered off the coast of Sardinia. The  Coast Guard crew that discovered the ship found half eaten Egyptian meals,  French maps of North African seas, and a flag of Luxembourg on board.

2007: A 12-metre catamaran, the Kaz II, was discovered unmanned off the coast  of Queensland, northeast Australia in April.The yacht, which had left Airlie  Beach on Sunday 15 April, was spotted about 80 nautical miles (150 km) off  Townsville, near the outer Great Barrier Reef on the following Wednesday. When  boarded on Friday, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and  GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on  board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life  jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on  board. A search for the crew was abandoned on Sunday 22nd as it was considered  unlikely that anyone could have survived for that period of time.

2008: The abandoned 50 ton Taiwanese fishing vessel Tai Ching 21 (Chinese: 大慶21號) was found drifting near Kiribati on 9 November. The ship had suffered a  fire several days previously, and its lifeboat and three life rafts were  missing. No mayday call was received, and the ship had last been heard from on  28 October. A search of 21,000 square miles (54,000 square km) of the Pacific  Ocean north of Fiji by a US Air Force C-130 Hercules and a New Zealand Air Force  P-3 Orion found no trace of the Taiwanese captain (顏金港) or crew (18 Chinese, 6  Indonesians, and 4 Filipinos).

2012: The Ryou-Un Maru, a Japanese fishing vessel swept away by the March  2011 tsunami, was found floating adrift towards Canada after nearly a year at  sea, no crew believed to be on board. The vessel was sunk on April 5, 2012 by  the United States Coast Guard.

2013: The MV Lyubov Orlova, a former Soviet cruise ship was being towed from  Canada to a scrapyard in the Caribbean in January 2013 when a cable snapped  setting it adrift in international waters. The crew did not pursue the vessel  due to safety concerns. It was most recently spotted on the other side of the  Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Ireland.