If you REALLY want to have your hair stand on end check out the thread running that tells about the famous (infamous) typhoon of 1944 in the Pacific, where we lost three destroyers and damaged any number of other surface ships.
Huge waives, winds to 130 MPH, and a barometer that fell to 27.3 inches. That is low; the Beaufort scale meant less than nothing after that.
High seas regards,
Jimmy, I think I have seen enough to put the fear of God in me concerning the ocean. Makes me feel very small indeed.
The heaviest recorded survived roll of a ship was a US Navy destroyer in that typhoon.
When I was up in the North Atlantic in 1976 aboard the USS JFK as attached squadron personnel, I remember seeing one of our escorts, the bow was taking green water, then you could see the screws come out of the water, and the whole time, the ship was rolling and yawing. The water was so whipped up that the surface was white and frothy.
Nobody was allowed on deck, all the planes had 24 point tiedowns. Me and two of my buddies wanted to see what it looked like at the bow, so we went out in the catwalk (keeping our heads down so they couldn't see us from the bridge)
We watched the big, bulbous bow of the carrier come ponderously up out of the water, and TONS and TONS of water cascaded off of it...it was stunningly unbelievable! Then the ship paused, and that bow went back into the water...the only thing I can compare it to is that picture of the North Sea lighthouse with the wave crashing around it....
It looked like the whole bow of the carrier was going to submerge the way the bow entered the water and kept going...the three off us nearly killed each other leaving footprints on each others backs trying to get through the hatch!
Needless to say, we weren't in any danger. No way the bow was even close to going under, but it sure didn't look that way to us. Without a doubt, that was the most vivid memory I have of all the time I spent at sea.