Local celeb Michael Hanscom was writing about the remake of a 70s era disaster movie when he stumbled in the realm of imagination made real.
Whoa. Such [rogue] waves are real? Apparently so!
Rogue waves are freakishly large waves, much bigger than the surrounding swell. They seem to rear up out of nowhere, sometimes out of a fairly calm sea, and disappear just as quickly. Mariners have recounted tales of such waves for centuries, but until recently oceanographers discounted them, along with sightings of sea monsters and mermaids. Naval architects, however, have analyzed the wrecks of ships sunk in recent decades, and have found that a large proportion of them have damage consistent with an encounter with a rogue wave, which can reach heights of a hundred feet. Even supertankers have been sunk by these monster waves. Now the evidence is too great to ignore, and physicists are trying to understand how rogue waves are generated. The issue is important not only for our understanding of the ocean, but also because rogue waves seem to be responsible for the loss of many lives at sea.
Piqued my interest, especially the bit about supertankers being sunk by these monsters.
Turns out 2 ships — by ships, I mean 600+ foot long container ships and the like — are lost every week. That’s 100 a year. You’d think that would be more widely known.
Scotsman.com News – Latest News – Giant Waves ‘More Common Than Thought’:
“The same phenomenon could have sunk many less lucky vessels. Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to ‘bad weather’.”
Some clips:
Newsday.com: ‘Nightmare’ trip:
Maritime experts say so-called “rogue waves” are not that unusual, and several cruise liners have been hit by them in recent years. In fact, Robison said another Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, the Norwegian Majesty, was hit by a huge wave last year while traveling from Bermuda to Boston. A window was damaged, but nobody was injured, she said. Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 encountered a wave estimated at 95 feet high in February 1995 in the North Atlantic, but nobody was injured.
Four years ago, waves of similar sizes hit two cruise ships, Hapag-Lloyd’s Bremen and the Caledonian Star of Lindblad Expeditions, within one week in the South Atlantic, smashing windows.
The New York Times > Magazine > Giga-Waves:
In March 2001, the first officer of the cruise ship Caledonian Star saw a wave that chilled his soul. It stood almost 100 feet tall, towering over the surrounding waves, and it didn’t slope — it was a sheer wall of water. It smashed into the ship with such force that it broke windows and flooded the command deck.
So much for my thinking an ocean crossing by ship was likely to be less eventful than flying . . .