[aculeus]

Such seas are thought to have sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships without trace during the past two decades.

Believable?

[Libertarianize the GOP]

If you saw the damage to one Cargo Container ship that made it into Seattle after being hit by such a wave you would believe.

[stlrocket]

200 Super tankers sunk? Maybe it was this? (Caution Graphic)

WATCH OUT FOR THESE!

[okie01]

"Believable?"

I was brought up short by that "over 200 in two decades" figure, too.

Roughly one supertanker or container ship gone missing, without a trace, every month.

I'd be more likely to blame piracy than "monster waves".

Wonder if any of these sinkings have ever been caught by surveillance satellites....

[nunya bidness]

Mother Ocean does not like to be trifled with.

I'm living proof.

[Texas_Jarhead]

Believable?

Certainly. My father is in the sea shipping business and for years had a picture of one their vessels on the wall. Once I asked him what was the the deal with that particular picture. He told me that it had went down at sea with all hands lost. An investigation into the disappearance concluded that either a giant wave had lifted the ship in the middle of the bow and it broke in half or that two large waves lifted the ship up at the ends and broke it in half.

FReegards

[RippleFire]

"Even in the tank the effect was awe-inspiring," said Prof Clauss. "The exploding wave was so powerful that it broke through the ceiling of the building in which the tank is located," he added.

Kids! Don't try this at home!

[Texas_Jarhead]

Follow up post. The 200 figure could be correct if it includes foreign owned/operated container ships.

[Pistolshot]

The REAL reason monster waves exist.

[holman]

I was aboard the USS Shreveport (infantry marine) not long after (a previous deployment) she was struck by a freak wave. The crew said it came in and hit the bridge (about five stories high) and killed the captain.

I did a search: "The USS Shreveport met such a wave while operating in the Virginia Capes operational area (OPAREA). The wave washed over the Shreveport’s bow and crashed into the superstructure at bridge level. It knocked out every window in the bridge, and men and equipment were battered. Before meeting this freak wave, the seas were normal, based on the wind conditions at the time. "

When we traveled through the Bermuda Triangle, the engines shut down for an hour, inexplicably.

[Servant of the Nine]

The Queen Mary took an ultimate wave on her Starboard Bow during a winter storm in the North Atlantic. No one could see just how high the wave was in the dark, but solid water smashed all the glass in the pilothouse 90 feet above the waterline and badly injured the occupants. She rolled to within 2° of the point of no return.

There are certainly plenty of witnesses that the QE2 and the Bremin met Ultiate waves and were very lucky to survive. There are no records of a ship ever being hit broadside, because no ship hit broadside has ever survived.

So9

[JohnBovenmyer]

Shackleton survived one of these on his boat trip to South Georgia.

[beerhead]

"Yet until now scientists and oceanographers had been unable to determine exactly what formed such gigantic "one-off" seas that are capable of breaking a 600ft-long ship in half and sending it to the bottom within seconds. "

NUTS! I read about concoidal-rogue waves in Scientific American back in the 1970's.

[MississippiMan]

I wouldn't even have thought a total of 200 ships would've sunk in the past 20 years!

MM

[PatrioticAmerican]

Wave theory always seemed so common sense. Waves building on waves. Any sailor has seen this happen at least on a small scale. I have been in calm open sea and have watched a 30 foot swell travel across from no where, and have been in 15 foot swells when a single 20-30 foot breaker washes by.

[AZLiberty]

Interesting that this comes on the heels of a recent article offering a mathematical explanation for why buses seem to arrive in clumps rather than evenly spaced. The explanation was that, if a bus ever had any reason to slow down, then additional passengers would accumulate at stops in front of it so that it would slow down even more at each successive stop. Furthermore, the gap between this bus and the one behind it would decrease so that the second bus would see fewer passengers at each stop. Hence the second bus would start accelerating at the same time that the first bus was slowing down, until the two buses were practically on top of each other.

A similar thing must happen with waves.

[BluH2o]

Sailed from MA to Gibraltar on a 44' sailboat this past summer ... my seventh trans-Atlantic crossing. All the other crossings were on US Navy ships. I've survived gale force winds and one hurricane while at sea ... and fortunately have been spared a so called "killer wave". All of the major storms I've experienced at sea were on large ships.
Thank you Lord.

[goodieD]

I don't know about the numbers. But giant waves sinking ships (not without a trace), has been well documented. I find the whole thing fascinating for some reason.

[Dakmar]

I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

[razorback-bert]

I saw this on cable awhile back.

[VOA]

BUMP