[Citizen Tom Paine]

I suspect the ship was heading north in the Gulf Stream which flows north. I suspect that the gale force winds (greater that 35 knots) was blowing from the north. This makes the wind direction opposite to current direction.

With those conditions, large waves are generated. They are not "freak" waves. They are not "tidal" waves. They are a special wave type found under those conditions.

The same things happen off the east coast of Africa. There they sometimes sink an oil tanker.

[SlowBoat407]

Another possible cause is the fact that when a storm is young, the waves are all moving in the same direction because only one sector of the low pressure system has affected the area, meaning that the wind has only come from one quadrant. As the storm ages, though, the circulation brings wind from two or more different directions and causes waves to pile up from several different directions as well. As these waves intermingle, some cancel each other out, and some become additive, raching many times the normal wave height for the wind speeds. I've seen waves mount up fifteen feet above my head in a sheer wall before breaking (42-foot sailboat on a transatlantic cruise) and it's always been worst after the worst winds of the storm have passed.