© 2006 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
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For centuries sailors have been telling stories of encountering monstrous ocean waves which tower over one hundred feet in the air and toss ships about like corks. Historically oceanographers have discounted these reports as tall tales— the embellished stories of mariners with too much time at sea. But in the last eleven years scientists have discovered strong evidence indicating that such massive rogue waves do exist. The phenomenon has become the subject of recent scientific study, but their origin remains a mystery of the deep.
About one ship is lost every week in the world’s oceans, mostly due to poor seamanship or severe weather. But it now seems likely that at least a small percentage of sea disappearances are due to encounters with these destructive waves. Over the years experienced captains have made very credible reports of meeting behemoth waves which appear spontaneously, cause extensive damage to their ships, and shrug back into the sea just as mysteriously as they had appeared. One account describes the appearance of a giant wave trough which onlookers likened to a “hole in the sea”, followed by a twelve-story-tall “wall of water.” To further compound the mystery, some such waves have been said to appear mid-ocean, and often in calm weather.
On the open sea, waves can commonly reach seven meters in height; or even up to fifteen in extreme weather. In contrast, some reported rogue waves have exceeded thirty meters in height. Curiously, rogue waves are often seen traveling against the prevailing current and wave directions; and unlike a tsunami, rogue waves are localized and very short-lived. Most modern merchant vessels are designed to withstand about fifteen tons of pressure per square meter, but these unusual waves exert a pressure of about one hundred tons per square meter. Needless to say, a rogue wave means big trouble for any ship it meets.
Encounters with rogue waves have been rare but memorable. In 1933 in the North Pacific, the US Navy transport USS Ramapo triangulated a rogue wave at thirty-four meters in height. In 1942, the RMS Queen Mary was transporting 15,000 US troops to Europe when it was hit by a twenty-three meter wave and nearly capsized. The giant vessel listed by about 52 degrees due to the impact, after which it slowly righted itself.
In 1978, the 37,000-ton MS Munchen radioed a garbled distress call from the mid-Atlantic. When rescuers arrived, they found only “a few bits of wreckage,” including an unlaunched lifeboat with one of its attachment pins “twisted as though hit by an extreme force.” It is now believed that a rogue wave hit the ship, causing it to capsize and sink. No survivors were ever found.
In 1996, the Queen Elizabeth 2 encountered a rogue wave of twenty-nine meters, which the Captain said “came out of the darkness” and “looked like the White Cliffs of Dover.” London newspapers said that the captain situated the vessel to “surf” the wave to avoid being sunk.
Despite these and other encounters with rogue waves, scientists long rejected such claims as unlikely. Anecdotal evidence is often unreliable, so researchers used computer modelling to predict the likelihood of such massive waves. Oceanographers’ findings indicated that waves higher than fifteen meters were probably very rare events, occurring perhaps once in 10,000 years. That all changed in 1995 when a freak wave hit the Draupner North Sea oil platform. The oil rig swayed a little, suffering minor damage, but its onboard measuring equipment successfully recorded the wave height at nineteen meters.
More recently, satellite photos and radar imagery have documented the existence of numerous rogue waves, and it turns out that they are far more common than previously thought. During a three-week study in 2001, radar scanning detected ten monster waves in a 1.5 million square kilometer area. Satellites and direct observations have also established that rogue waves can happen anywhere, but they are most numerous in the North Atlantic and off the western shore of South Africa. In spite of their frequency, monster waves rarely meet with sea vessels because they are so short-lived.
The cause of rogue waves is still an area of active research. One theory under investigation cites “constructive interference,” which is a result of several smaller waves overlapping in phase, combining to produce one massive wave. Another working hypothesis is based on the “non-linear Schrödinger effect,” in which energy is “soaked up” from neighboring waves to create a monster wave. Still other researchers are looking into the possibility that wave energy is being focused by the surrounding environments, or that wind action on the surface is amplifying existing effects.
Science is necessarily skeptical of things which are beyond our observation, but now that rogue waves are a measurable phenomenon they have been officially upgraded from legend to reality. This recent finding is very telling about how little we really know about our world’s oceans, and how many secrets the sea must still hold.
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10 storey waves. It doesn’t seem to be too surprising, given the number of disappearances at sea through recorded history. How about sudden vacuum cavities in the water created by large and ultra hot bodies falling to the ocean?
I recall hearing about a phenomenon related to this known as the “Three Sisters” on the Great Lakes. They are essentially three very large waves in a storm, each one larger than the last. There was a theory that the Edmund Fitzgerald was a victim of these waves, but has since been surpassed by other theories about her sinking. Good topic and read!
Many years ago I spent a few weeks on the gaff-rigged topsail schooner Tradewind. I noticed one of the gaffs had a distinct bow in it and asked the skipper about it. He said they were hit broadside on by a rogue wave in sub-Antarctic waters south of New Zealand. The steel gaff had been bent by the force of the water. He pointed to the radar, mounted high on the foremast. It had been swept away by the wave, he said. And the radar was 44 feet above the waterline. He also mentioned the wave had enough force to buckle the steel plates of the deckhouse. It was quarter inch steel plate, he said, on 18 inch frames. And the pressure had been enough to dent the plates inwards between the frames. I had a look at the deckhouse and you could certainly see that the plates were buckled inwards.
Excellent article. I particularly like the “statistical” evaluation that excessively large waves happen only every 10,000 years. Every time someone tries to “prove” something with math (for example, argue in favor of UFOs as spaceships on the grounds that life _must_ exist on other planets) I remind them that math has no content, and statistical studies mean nothing without some actual sampling.
Gotta love stick-in-the-mud scientists. “Our current theory does not have a place for these waves, therefore they must not exist, no matter how many people tell us they have seen it first hand”.
It never ceases to amaze me. When will scientists realize how little they really know?
Reminds me of the DI article: Unskilled and Unaware of It
Damn interesting Greg, thanks!
…THAR SHE BLOWS!
…aside from the forces involved when rogue waves encounter “little toy boats” on the open ocean, there is also the problem that a ship floating on ends with no water under the middle…has nothing to support the center. Boat hulls are not designed to carry such compressive loads. Hence, they break in two and sink.
A similar situation is when the ship center is riding the crest of the wave…now there’s nothing to support the ends. Boat hulls are not desibned to carry such tensile loads either. Hence, another reason why ships break in two and sink.
Least we forget….
Rogue, Rogue, Rogue your boat,
Gently down the river.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is sometimes bitter (sweet).
You’ve got to admire the brave (or foolhardy) souls who did all that pioneering work for us. Who’d be a sailor given that lot? SimonTeWs story is possibly enough to drive me to the centre of the continent.
Metryq, you’re quite right; getting some real samples is a brilliant idea. Only then can you reason about the frequency of these events. Something nice and peaceful like satellite monitoring; http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html
I always believed they cause of such massive waves would be started by some sort of undersea activity such as the release of large air bubbles of the heating of water in the depth, but I am probably wrong, as I know nothing on the subject other than it would be amazing to see one of them beasts . . don’t you think?
Does anyone know if Paul Gallico had any nautical experience before writing The Poseidon Adventure? I remember when the first movie version came out in the early ’70s, the idea of a giant wave capsizing an ocean liner was pretty much dismissed as science fiction. I believe there was a cargo ship about that same time (the Anita?) which had its hatch covers ripped off by a strong wave, and it flooded and sank before a distress call could be sent out (a few survivors were rescued). Also, there is the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from the Flannan Islands lighthouse in 1900 and two lighthouse keepers from the Great Isaac Rock lighthouse in the Bahamas in 1969 which could possibly be explained by rogue waves (if, in fact, they occur near shore).
Metryq, FMZ: exactly! I guess the ignorance of some (not all) scientists really clouds their research and in their minds they already “decided” that such a thing doesn’t exist.
RE: Metryq, FMZ, 1c3d0g
It’s impossible to make a scientific statement about something if you don’t understand how it happened in the first place. So, while it might be foolhardy for scientists to deny the existence of rogue waves, it makes sense that they couldn’t say anything about them if they didn’t fit into any of their models for wave structure.
has anyone seen the Endless Summer surfing videos? they surfed these waves that i think were about this size and they didn’t break. they said in the video that the waves were caused by some reef formations. in the video a helicopter had to bring them to the top of each wave.
i searched briefly on the internet but i couldn’t find any pictures or anything
In the best tradition of Damn Interesting. Learned a lot, and it was damn interesting. Thanks!
prabhuly, is this the sort of thing you mean?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhBdYJxZOiA
(although Jaws breaks of course)
I have heard stories of large waves in the north north being caused from large chunks of ice falling into the water. There is a ccount of it leveling trees and such.
No matter what field you look in, you’ll always find someone who is willing to make statements that are beyond their expertise. Scientists are human beings, and I’m sure most scientists said something more like, “Well, from what we understand now it’s probably pretty unlikely, but we don’t really have enough data to say for sure yet.” However, that’s boring, so the only people who get quoted are the few who are willing to make big claims based on little evidence.
That being said, this is still a rather rare and briefly lived phenomenon, and prior to satellite surveys there wasn’t any good way to study these events. As such, the burden of proof lay on the people who claimed that the waves were real to prove that they were real, and not on others to disprove them. Now that that proof has been provided, scientists are totally willing to accept these waves are a real phenomenon. Scientists are usually not dogmatic, they just need good evidence before they’re willing to accept a claim. Accepting a claim based on hearsay alone is neither good science nor good reasoning.
As for the article, I had just heard about these rogue waves elsewhere recently as an explanation for what might have happened to some of the “Bermuda Triangle” lost ships. Apparently the area has a lot of turbulence due to the Gulf Stream, so it was thought that they might have more of these rogue waves in that region. The show later pointed out that other oceanic regions with similar weather patterns have similar rates of lost ships, so the Triangle isn’t really any more dangerous or unusual than other regions of ocean that are similar to it. I’m not sure if that contradicts their “more rogue waves” hypothesis or not.
Good article, Greg. Good read.
Odd how people are jumping on the backs of “scientists” because without proof they didn’t believe the stories of rogue waves from the same group of people who concocted mermaids, Davey Jones and sailing off the edge of the world. But when proof is found, there aren’t any scientists that are going to deny their existance.
Shii: all I’m saying is, they should keep an open mind on the subject they’re researching. It’s hard to prove the existence of something if their minds are already made up that it doesn’t exist, ain’t it? ;-)
Hell No (I WOULD NEVER F*CKING LIVE THERE) But da article was DAMN INTERESTING!!!!!!!
Metryq
U R SUCH A NERD AT WRITING :)
Metryq said: “Excellent article. I particularly like the “statistical” evaluation that excessively large waves happen only every 10,000 years. Every time someone tries to “prove” something with math (for example, argue in favor of UFOs as spaceships on the grounds that life _must_ exist on other planets) I remind them that math has no content, and statistical studies mean nothing without some actual sampling.”
METRYQ IS GAY CANT ANY OF YALL HOES FIGURE DAT OUT STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS JUST LOOK AT DE WAY HE WRITES SO GAY I MEAN HE/SHE IS SOY FUCKIN HOMOSEXUAL
Hey Leo, why don’t you go play somewhere else where you can find kids your own age.
A rogue wave was documented as recently as 2005. On April 16th, 2005 the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn was struck by a wave 70 feet high, wrecking windows on the ninth and tenth decks.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/300826p-257523c.html
How come with every article comes some retard who goes “Damn Interesting!”? It’s so stupid.
How come with every article comes some retard who goes “Damn Interesting!”? It’s so stupid.
thats a damn interesting point
Well, I think with science, they don’t deny the existence of something unless they have proof of it not existing. Likewise they don’t confirm something unless they have proof of it existing.
Or to clarify, the existence of something is not scientifically denied unless there is proof to back it up.
Didoka said: “How come with every article comes some retard who goes “Damn Interesting!”? It’s so stupid.”
Perhaps it is a bit overused, but to the eyes of the volunteer writers here at the site, “Damn Interesting!” or “DI!” are some of the highest compliments that can be paid. Just as a Broadway headliner may have heard “bravo!” shouted too many times to count, the praise still means something important, I think.
Didoka said: “How come with every article comes some retard who goes “Damn Interesting!”? It’s so stupid.”
How is this any different from being dugg, farked, googled or slashdotted. It’s a good thing. The site has a punch line.. And to me.. That Damn Interesting, good work guys..
Didoka, how about trolling elsewhere?
This leads me to think about the Bermuda Triangle ……. suggestions for an article? please
HiEv said: “Scientists are usually not dogmatic, they just need good evidence before they’re willing to accept a claim. Accepting a claim based on hearsay alone is neither good science nor good reasoning.”
Well said.
Some years ago the PBS show Nova did an exhaustive investigation of the facts about the Bermuda Triangle. Turns out: traveling in the BT is safer than most areas of the world’s oceans, and much safer than traveling in the center of this continent.
Don’t you love how science (in general) tends to sneer at everything until *they* say it officially exists? You can’t learn anything unless first you say: “I don’t know.” Oh, and I love french toast, too.
I am a firm believer in rogue waves. I was out in the North Atlantic on an aircraft carrier in 1988 when we were hit by one. It carried away the starboard motor whaleboat and pushed a hatch through it’s coaming. (The hatch opened outward onto the weather deck. The wave pushed it inward through the hatchway.) All of this took place 50+ feet over the waterline.
By the way, french toast is nasty.
Fascinating stuff. I also wonder what’s the closest these rogue waves ever get to shore. I mean, is there any documentation of a huge wave just appearing on the horizon, bearing down on the shore while everyone yells “Tsunami!”, and then disappearing into nothing before it hits?
Also, I want to make the stupid but personally amusing comment: It’s the sea monsters what done it! ^_^
And a third viewpoint: the only french toast I don’t find nasty is my aunt’s.
As nasty as the weather can be in the North Atlantic, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a rogue wave and high seas. Back in the day, in a Perry-class frigate, we regularly took green water way over the bow, and a few times a day just below the pilothouse during fall storms at around 60 degrees north. That’s just plain bad weather, I guess. Of course, over the bow or at the bridge didn’t matter to me – I was hanging over the edge feeding the fishies!
I wrote a book on the Bermuda Triangle twenty years ago (The Evidence for the Bermuda Triangle, Aquarian, 1984) and basically concluded that out of 211 cases of disappearances, fewer than half a dozen could genuinely be classified as mysterious.
Shandooga said: “Don’t you love how science (in general) tends to sneer at everything until *they* say it officially exists? You can’t learn anything unless first you say: “I don’t know.”
Shandooga, you’ve shown a lot of ill feeling here, lately, toward science and/or scientists. May we know what is the problem, please?
Not all scientists are what I might call “Proper Scientists” — those with the inquisitive but neutral attitude necessary for effective learning. However, to say that “science (in general) tends to sneer at everything” is to slander science and its practitioners, through hyperbole at the very least. In my view, and in my experience in the sciences, it is NOT the general case that scientists dogmatically refuse to examine data or to question assumptions — but there is understandable reluctance to dash after just any old notion that gets put forth, because there are way too many genuine crackpots out there. (The deliberate spreaders of misinformation compound the problems stemming from the deluded and the ignorant, but fortunately they are few.)
So, IMVHO, you need to lighten up. Be less dogmatic. Be less ready to display the very attitude that you decry: sneering at what you believe is not “proper, acceptable” action, when you (perhaps) don’t have all the data, or all the answers, yourself.
Conventional storm waves can get big, too — 27.7 meters (and possibly up to 40 meters) from Hurricane Ivan:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/197440/hurricane_ivan_generated_monster_waves/index.html
(Which markup does this site use?) Makes me glad to be a landlubber.
Thanks for the article, Greg!
Interesting. I read an article about this somewhere. I think someone was blaming it for the Bermuda triangle. But then, if this is what causes the Bermuda triangle, how do you explain the aeroplanes that have disappeared? Extra-large waves? Or extraterrestrial activity? Or, a good conspiracy theory? I love a good old conspiriacy theory!
Didoka, how about trolling elsewhere?
Trolling? What does that mean? I love this website. The articles are great. I just dislike it when it comes down to the comments. But that’s not the makers’ fault. It’s one of my favorite websites.
Didoka, the remedy to relieving your stress is simple. Read the articles and ignore the comments. I think I learn just as much from the comments (sometimes more) as I do the articles. Regardless, the more open the mind the more information can be absorbed.
Shandooga said: “Don’t you love how science (in general) tends to sneer at everything until *they* say it officially exists? You can’t learn anything unless first you say: ‘I don’t know.'”
Science cannot “sneer” as science is a method, not a person. In general, people should not accept grand claims as being true until good evidence has first been provided. That doesn’t mean that they rule them out, BTW. Saying that we don’t yet have good evidence and the current theories don’t support such a claim when that’s true isn’t “sneering,” it’s rational behavior. Most scientists were saying “I don’t know” and some said “probably not,” but none of them had ruled it out. It’s also not “sneering” to want objective evidence that can be examined first hand.
Only once objective evidence is found and can it be examined by others, preferably with some sort of peer review, replication, and attempts to make sure that there are not other possible explanations, should it become a well accepted claim. And even then, new evidence should be able to overcome well accepted claims if it is strong enough. Now that we have objective evidence, the existence of rogue waves is something you can verify for yourself. That’s how science works.
It should be pointed out that it was scientists who went looking for that evidence, found it, and published it, so that we can now examine that evidence as well. If science was “sneering” at the claims, how do you explain that it was science that provided the evidence upon which we now base the general acceptance of that claim? Obviously they weren’t “sneering,” they considered that it might be true so they went about looking for objective evidence for the phenomenon.
The point is, if people accepted any claim because a few people said it was true then we’d be living in a world where everyone thinks breaking mirrors causes seven years bad luck, the Easter Bunny is real, and the Sun orbits the Earth. Fortunately most people realize that none of those things are true just because a few people claim they are, so they examine the claims and look for things that would support or weaken them. Without that you just have people standing around insisting that things are true.
Umm, I am completely oblivious to the world and how it works. But is this type of stuff related to something like what’s it called…White Squall?
DI article Greg. Although I suppose theoretically constructive interference can create rogue waves, has constructive interference ever been observed to such a high amplitude?
PS: I wouldn’t bother replying to Shandooga’s posts. I’ve never seen him reply after he posts pretty much the same line in every article he reads and leaves. He might be a troll bot for all I know.
This is so cool. I’m in a natural disaster course in college, and we just covered rogue waves.
Great article Greg, I’ve been interested in rogue waves ever since I saw a special about them on the History Channel.
Funny, I was in the US Navy and never once experienced such waves and back then I had no fear of such, but now, 30…+? (trying to do math in my head here) anyway…now days whenever I see video footage of high sees, especially the stuff about the fishermen off the coast of Alaska etc., I get these eebeegeebs about drowning at sea and it horrifies me. I never gave it a second thought back then…
(heading off to look for my life vest here in Texas LOL)
Very interesting though ;)
“Scientists are usually not dogmatic”
ROFL…I’d wager the good ol’ boys club where you’re smeared when you go against the norm is more prevalent than you’d imagine. Human nature after all. Just because you’re a “scientist” doesn’t mean you escape it by default. I’d be careful of the weight you attribute to your mentors.
My former father-in-law was a Master Mate and Pilot for Bethlehem Steel. He went to work on the Great Lakes at age 17, retired at 65.He was an unassuming, gentle person who didn’t care for the spotlight. The things he experienced on the Great Lakes were absolutely terrifying, especially in the fall season. Waves of 30-40 feet on the Great Lakes are common, so how much more so on the ocean. Just ask anyone who has ever worked as a seaman for a living.
There is footage of one of these waves on Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch. It was filmed from inside the cabin and nearly capsized the ship.
Well, it is about time science has caught up with experience. In 1978 an off season tropical depression became a hurricane. In the Atlantic, I was at the helm of a 176ft schooner, Te Quest. During the worst of the storm, I stood on the deck house roof, usually 20ft off the water line. I remember for one terrible set of waves looking upward past 90 degrees, and incredibly above our mast were enormous breakers while our ship was in the traugh of each of these waves. Our mast was 165ft above the deck house roof! You do the math. The back side of each of those waves had to exceed 80ft. During that storm a 400ft Belgim freighter sunk several hours ahead of us in the same set of waves. How we survived those super waves I don’t know, but what I do know is that I haven’t seen a single wave documented at Jaws that was as big as any of that wave set during that terrific storm.
One post note here. We measured the wave from the back side to the crest. So my wave description of the curl to the traugh of 165ft to 185ft would be divided by two, or 82.5 ft or 92.5ft on the back side. I just read the article about the monster waves in Huricane Ivan, and they “estimate had crest-to-trough wave heights exceeding 40 meters or 130 feet”1. To me this isn’t how to measure a wave, but according to that article, the waves we experienced were more than 30ft higher than their monster waves. Regardless, I know for a fact, having seen such terrifying waves first hand, they do exist and am glad for this article about satellite radar scanning that proves to scientists about the common nature of such giants during hurricanes. This is a very nice article.
Reference: 1 http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/197440/hurricane_ivan_generated_monster_waves/index.htm
This reminds me of something i learnt in college called ‘Resonance’. It referred to sound waves, but i wonder if it could apply to oceanic waves as well.
Here is a wikipedia article about it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance
I remember the same thing of such tremendous Atlantic waves in fall of 1977 or early winter of 1978, and wonder if there were deep ocean currents that had intensified those years?
I thought that they proved that the Bermuda triangle sank ships and downed planes because of large amounts of methane gas. When a large pocket comes up under neath a ship the it could snap in half because the hull cant take its own weight. The planes would go down because the methane would remove all of the oxygen and the engines would stop, also since the methane is lighter then air their gauges would tell them that they were going up in altitude even when they could feel the plane slipping out from beneath them.
heres an article that supports part of my argument http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/22/1066631498889.html
srry for double post but wiki has a good explanation too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle
It’s the extra crazy magnetic field that for some reason happens to be located at the “Bermuda Triangle” that fucks pilots/sailors up. It makes their compasses go ape shit and without the sun they can become very disoriented. After awhile of going around in circles you run out of fuel and because it’s such a large area it is like finding a needle in a hay stack for would be rescuers (especially so back in the day with less technology). So now you have one less conspiracy to thing about. Saw it on the History Channel or NatGeo.
Great article and very informative. I was listening to a show on pay tv here in Oz and the guy on there stated that, “had we not observed them with our own eyes and from space, cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons should not be possible under the laws of physics/thermo dynamics.” I guess its just another example of human science making claims before the results are in i.e. rogue waves dont exist as they have never been documented and our theories say there not possible. My thoughts on what causes rogue waves? Aliens landing and departing from the ocean with large interstellar vehicles. :)
I listened to my father talk about encountering waves close to 100 feet while serving on a U.S. Naval ship which was a rescue ship. He claims that a very salty commanders experience is why they survived.
My father did not BS about anything ever (old school mid western roots).
hehe its 2018
I had never heard of this phenomenon before – thanks for writing it.
Also, I am astounded that nearly a ship a week is lost. Interesting that these missing ships and men never appear in the news. If they were aircraft, the media would be all over it, especially CNN.