A rogue wave ended my maritime career in October 1997. I promised myself that if I made it through I would never cast off again, and I kept my word. These waves are very real and the damage they inflict is staggering. We lost over half our containers, sherd the pins in half, all the lifeboats and probably two-thirds of the lifebuoys were swept away. We never lost propulsion, but lost three of the five generators, all the food spoiled and we were unable to make fresh water and had to turn the showers off and use the remaining fresh water for drinking and it had to be manually pumped from the tanks. Lost all eight of the antennas and both satellite servers were down for eight days. We had no way to warn or contact the outside world for the better part of fourteen days, it really was hell on the water.
They just don't make documentaries like this anymore, no constant flashbacks for people who cannot remember a damn thing happening 5 minutes ago, a godly narrator, interesting content... I miss the good times of documentaries.
I agree I think TV documentaries are just about gone. I watch Sky F1 a lot and every so often the adverts go through a phase constantly pushing documentaries about things I couldn't give 2 twats about. But there's a guy on RUclips (you've probably heard of him) called Lemmino and he is amazing. Production quality to put Nat geo, history channel and many others to shame, amazing narration that's really compelling, an unbiased and objective look at the evidence and facts. He doesn't sensationalise things unless it's absolutely necessary. pretty much everything in his documentaries are perfect. Of course there's a good chance you've already heard of him though.
Yeah, thats about the time nature goes "eh? Right, hold my beer!" I respect little in life as much as I do nature, in any form, be that animals or weather.
This can occur on any scale. It’s all about perspective. Many years ago I was south of Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico in my 20’ Glastron when a storm came up. I pointed the compass north and was riding 6 to 8 foot waves in with little concern, when into my view came a wall twice that height. I don’t recall seeing any breaking at the top, but the steap drop into it was for real. The bow plunged in windshield deep, and the water funneled through and over the split windshield. That was the last time I took that boat outside site of land. No, I didn’t face a 30 meter monster that day, but my vessel wasn’t 3 football fields long either. It’s all relative.
long ago i read this on a naval engineering paper from the tech university of southampton: any vessel caught beam-on at waves 60%+ higher than its LOA will capsize. for your vessel any wave around 5m and up is just too risky.
These waves can occur in warm sunny condition's without a breath of wind too. They can travel very long distances unfortunately. A Hurricane can be 1000km away that you wouldn't know anything about & the wave most likely would've been created there & land on you 2000km away & destroy your boat.
@brantleyfoster021 That’s not a rogue wave then. Rogue waves aren’t generated by wind. They’re generated by fluid dynamics and transfer of energy. It’s spontaneous and depends on the sea state around you. A hurricane doesn’t generate one and send it 1000km away
He also played Pauline Collins husband In the movie Shirley Valentine.....and the doctor in the movie about the man eating lions of Tsavo. He's one of my favorite actors!!
I am a retired US Navy Sailor. 5 Round trips across the Atlantic and 1 in the North Sea, crossed the Arctic Circle. These monster waves are definitely out there!!
My friend (a charter captain - I was a 1st Mate) set out in a S/SE direction from Marathon, Florida, to fish. It was a gorgeous day,the seas maybe 2'-4' - which is pretty typical for the Keys. We were about 30 miles offshore when I noticed a wall of water maybe 30' high that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. We put on life jackets and safety harnesses, which were attached to a cable on the boat. There was no out-running this wave, so the captain decided to try and just get through it... As we approached the wave the bow dipped into a deep trough, and the wave crashed over us. The entire boat was completely underwater - I opened my eyes to see only green... We came out the other side, and the captain said,"what the hell was that"? We couldn't put it down to a large wake from a fully-loaded cargo vessel, as there were none around at all. Anyway, a lot of our stuff was washed overboard, and the boat suffered a lot of damage, but the engines still worked and we were still alive. On deck there was about 4' of water, and the bilge pumps were just screaming! We started bailing ferociously, and the captain said to me, "the most hard-working person in the world is a scared one on a sinking ship with a bucket". Anyway, still have no explanation for that wave - it certainly was not the weather; the wind wasn't that bad, and the Gulf Stream Current did not have seas any higher than usual...
@@assrammington7961 You outed yourself perfectly as people hearing mariners tales when rogue waves weren't understood. Just flat out wouldn't believe them. If you've never been to sea, shut the fuck up. Shit like that really does happen.
the very people' who do say themselves that science has limits, still will say that something can not happen ... And what if that phenomenon is beyond their scientific models?
So true. Why is it that humanity - in particular, so called scientists - has such a desperate need to believe in "order", "stability" and "laws"? Nature doesn't give a fig for all that. It is random and undirected. Virtually anything is possible.
Indeed, they have been some huge storms With storms there where we go and sit in a corner crying, they laugh their asses of because "it's not that bad" when they are scared, it's serious.
As another commentator said, that we should listen more to the people who have actually been there and done that seems to be one of the more common scientific discoveries these days.
Hi. I'm an old seaman/Trawlerman from the early 50s. in the North sea. and mates doing the Atlantic fishing. We KNOW about walls of water. And normally put it down to the big waves in open water losing continuation with each other IE One set from this series of storm conflicting with the waves from the prev series of wind waves from a different storm in a different direction. They occasionally combine some waves and you get the "Wall" with a hole in front. AND the thing that hurts most. a "hollow back" where the 100ft+ plus trawler falls off the back into a deep hole which feels like concrete when you land. You climb the face and when you crest it. there's NOTHING at the back. Just a big hole of air. This is in the North Sea. Ocean are/will be, dimensionally deeper and larger. I've sailed the Atlantic and the Indian from Cape Town to Aust in early '70's by myself. There are a lot of holes in the water. and for our sizes. 35 to 50 ft yachts. Walls of water.. These scientists are too nose deep in paper and numbers. Ask any old Seaman. They'll tell you about the real water and it's holes and bumps. LENGTH is the biggest enemy of modern shipping. It's impossible to build strong enuff to totally protect ship hulls over a certain size. They'll all be built like Ice Breakers C1 with NO windows and completely welded into complete sealed sections separate from each other. like Life boats. The "flexing" of the length of modern shipping kills them as they straddle the crests and belly sags breaking their backbone. when sets deep enuff and hulls long enough. Back in the day. pre '50's.One or more North sea trawlers were lost each season along the North East coast of UK/Scotland. With crews Usually around 11 men per boat. Another thing was Icing. "Black Ice" at sea.= Top Heavy boat. she rolls and trawl drags her down. We were saved one season "56. a very bad yr. We were on a Steam Trawler. and by using all the steam lines. blew enough ice of upper works rig etc. Got us through the patch of "black Ice". Bloody land livers have no idea. NOTHING is safe at sea. She is bigger and stronger than ANYTHING man made could ever be. We just said a prayer at beginning of every trip. that the bad ones would miss us. Cause you KNOW you won't come back if it does. I was one of the lucky ones. there are a lot of gone to god trawlermen out there.
Even without being a sailor or a sea vessel captain, it always made sense to me, since I was a kid. You just need to have some basic knowledge, even not to study it, but to have a feeling for the physics. If in bad storm, the current is blown in one direction, waves are huge, but linear, not to steep slopes to climb. Then if storm,, or a change of strong wind direction appears from the other side, basically the two moving water masses will collide into 1, raising it almost twice higher, and much thinner, like a wall, easy to start braking. In my opinion this happens more frequent than we think, but due to the height of the wave, they break down rather quick, and dissolve in to the similar 12 meters waves around it. This is my personal belief, and I think huge waves may be more often than we think, but it is a very rare occasion, where the waves meet, raise to a 25-30 meter, and face a ship before they breaks into a smaller 12m wave again. I mean that the 30mtr wave does not stay that tall and narrow for miles to go, like the regular waves, and you must be unlucky, to have it form before you, and break into your ship. I don't have an estimate how long do they travel with height 25mtr+, but I doubt it is more than a few miles. When you put the whole it left under, from combining both wave masses into one huge wave, you can go under regular sea level a little, right before you meet the huge wave, so even if it is not 30m from sea level 0m, it sure can be against your ship at the given moment. It just like sliding continents against each other collide, and Everest happens.
Ernest Shackleton knew of the monstrous waves of the South Atlantic. Incredibly he and a handful of crew navigated their way to South Georgia from the Antarctic in an open boat It's almost impossible to imagine just how terrifying that must have been. I strongly recommend reading the book Endurance, Shackleton and his crew were men made of stern stuff indeed.
If you watch the wave patterns its clear there is a major wavefield, but also other wavefields at the same time. That makes me immediately think of wave interference. At the researchers image from sat at 34.03 in the video, you can see the main wave frequency, by vertical lines, but there is also a secundary horizontal pattern which seems to be about 1/3 of the frequency of the other wave pattern. And there seems to be a very small third pattern, also vertical. This causes interference, with regular sinus tops, stacking and sinus troughs stacking negatively (stacking amplitudes). That will lead to emergence of 'rogue waves', where already extra high segments stack to create it. She had no trouble finding a number of them, in a short period of time. Thus indicating it is not rare, but actually quite common, which is also what interference patterns indicate. I read on theory of this at present that it is now a commonly accepted phenomenon and known to be an interference pattern of 2 or more wavefields. The current known record is from feb 4 2013, measured by a buoy in the atlantic ocean in between scotland and iceland. The significant wave tops were measured to be 19 m. Which means the top waves had to be 38 m and those not being rogue or freak waves.... Those would be even much higher. Since those are typically more than 2 times the highest waves (the 38m ones) in a wave field, those would rise to be 80+ m. Thats 260+ feet high... The devastation is not the height of the wave, bc ships float after all, but the fact these still follow main wavefield frequency, leading to very steep incline and decline at both ends. A ship would have to go through the wave, but that water will come crashing down on the ship with huge force. Smaller ships have more chance of surviving probably than big ships, bc of the high angle. It will lift the ship, but since the sinus is small in width, the front and back of the ship will not be supported by water, which means it will break the ship in half. And still means the top part of the wave will crash on the ship. It would just disappear all of a sudden.
Any surfer can tell you, you spend time in the line-up and every once in awhile a wave will come thru that is bigger by at least half of all the previous waves. and if you are out there for 4-5 hours, there is always one monster that comes in that is more than twice the size of the biggest wave all day.
After watching this video today, I was going to comment something similar to you Paul Beebe but I thought I'd find another surfers comment on here... and I'm a 70 year old ex surfer from California and Australia...
Surfer here and I can confirm. Very fascinating subject and as someone posted satellites have shown there are many more roque waves than previously understood and we know very little at best. We also are boaters are you have to have respect for the water and be very aware as conditions can change quickly.
@@maxjudge020 Rogue waves don't have to be enormous, though. We know what they are now, and it's, as others have said, where multiple waves run into each other because you have faster waves catching up with slower ones, and if they match up just right, you end up with one wave that is several times bigger than the surrounding waves. Of course, if the surrounding waves are only a foot tall, then your rogue wave might only be 3 or 4 feet tall... but in comparison to all the other waves, that is relatively big. That's what a rogue wave is, so I have no doubt these happen way more often than people think they do - they just only think of the BIG ones. There's even a video on here now of a wave machine that shows exactly how rogue waves are generated.
The scariest time of my Life was aboard the QE2 Nov 1986. We hit a huge Storm and "depression" in the Sea causing 40-50 ft waves. The rolling of the Ship was severe and most Venues had to be closed. The Ship received a lot of damage & Passengers were sequestered in their State Rooms for a few days - doing this after a Visit to the Infirmary for Seasickness Shots. The QE2 is a MASSIVE Ship but that Storm made us feel like a Toy Boat of little significance. The rolling pitch was extreme and if you wanted to just stand in place, you had to do so with a very wide stance or you would be on the floor. The Ship was creaking and moaning for Days, interrupted by crashes of Dishes from the kitchen areas and the many Bars around the Ship. When a box of Kleenex Tissue flew off my Vanity, traveled past 2 Queen Size Beds, through the Foyer and into the Bath on the other side of my Room, well, I knew it was pretty bad. Every night I would look out my window, a sort of evening ritual as the Moon always looked beautiful across the expanse of water. My StateRoom was about 5 or 6 stories about the water line. One night when I looked out expecting to see an infinite field of water, I saw instead what seemed like a dark curtain obstructing my view. ?! I was visually confused a moment or two trying to make out what my eyes were seeing. Looking harder, I finally realized that what I was viewing was not a Wall or dark Curtain but a massive WAVE and our Ship, at that moment, was deep down in a trough between two gigantic waves on either side of us. As I stood there looking, the wave or curtain started getting shorter and shorter and when I looked down for the water line, it was now about 15 stories or more below as the Ship rose and was riding another wave up the other side! It was a stunning moment and sight and even though I'm not one prone to panic or fright, I did and was! The Captain did an amazing Job navigating through those waters and we arrived safely in NY,, a bit behind schedule due to being rerouted, but we were all in one piece. Only objects and the Ship suffered. I am beyond happy that I never viewed this video/Doc before taking that ride or I would have gone far beyond fright should I have thought about a Rogue Wave! 40-50 ft waves in the Middle of the Atlantic were enough for me!
Dates are off: From October 1986 to May 1987, QE2 underwent a major refit at the Lloyd Werft yard at Bremerhaven in Germany transforming her from an ageing steamship to a state of the art diesel-electric motorship.
As a child, my parents travelled around the globe on Merchant Marine ships with us kids. On a voyage from Fremantle (Perth) to Capetown, we encountered a monstrous gale that was so tall the ship's company spanned nets across the entire superstructure to ensure no one fell overboard. As a child (9), I was somewhat oblivious to the real danger involved and still went out on deck, only to be amazed by what appeared to be troughs into which we sank so deep that the oncoming waves appeared to be greater than our ship, and when we rose out above them, the crashing back into the trough was like the hammering of a farrier. Even at that age I was impressed and quickly returned to the safety of the insides of the ship, but on multiple occasions, we were hit with waves that washed over the superstructure and arrived in Capetown with damage to the ship. I ended up in a career in the Navy where I didn't go to sea, despite wanting to do so, but I never forgot the voyages I took across the North and South Pacific, the Indian, and South and North Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean. They instilled fear, respect, and a love for the sea that abides to this day.
I have been on a ferry in the English Chanel in winter & one crossing I remember as it was really rough! The ferry was been hit by big waves & it was rather frightening I can tell you!
I've noticed that the time someone spends at sea seems to be directly proportional to their prowess as story teller. Sailors never seem to run short of stories or anecdotes.
That's because sailors aren't in the sitting room watching the telly all day long. 🙂 I could truly fill a book with the crazy stories of my life, and my son is always on me about doing so... perhaps... one day... @@Apoc2K
I like the fact that he says if these waves a frequent they pose a serious danger to shipping. mariners will be rolling in their graves saying no shit sherlock we have been talking about them for centuries
Yes, but most of them haven't seen them either and many that have, have not survived. So there really wasn't much knowledge about them, especially none that could have helped to protect against them. But it does show that you should never been so sure that you understand something. Water waves are very complicated things and you should never claim you understand the dynamics of such complicated phenomena if you do not have a complete microscopic physical model, but only models for certain macroscopic cases.
Daniel Daniel It's funny but there is that non-linear model that describes liquids perfectly but it is a pain in the butt to use in boat simulations because you have to deal with multiple order differentials and exponentiations and there in that linearised model that approximates liquids almost ok BUT it is far easier to be used in simulations because the key feature is that it is linear. GUESS WHICH MODEL THE ENGINEERS USED. The scientists were already aware that freak waves can happen, it was already predicted by their non-linear models but the engineers were like "well yes they might happen but actually no because I don't feel like it should be the case".
@@cezarcatalin1406 If you look back, this linear model was apparently developed to estimate wave heights based on wind measurements for landing of soldiers on shores in WW2. It had to work for a very limited setting, in a storm you would not try anyways. And they just kept using it because it was the best they had and it worked most of the time. With regard to the scientists: yes, they knew that better mathematical models predicted freak waves, as they said in the documentary. But they weren't sure if it was a real thing. Just because an equation predicts something, it does not mean that it is there, you have to do experiments and observe it. That is, why we are measuring gravitational waves today. And apparently they talked to maritime experts but of course they had never observed such waves scientifically.
They don't really care to make any changes because they have all these losses pencil out with the law of averages and raise the rates accordingly. The big ones just say Oh well, and collect on the insurance. They don't care about the sailors. They make so much money on the whole it's only a pittance for them. Lots of Love
When I was five, I went out a day or two before a hurricane with my dad to pick up our lobster pots. We were barely out onto the water when we were hit by a rogue wave. I wouldn't go on the ocean for years after. Our boat was 25 feet long yet we went straight up into the air with the water coming through the windows. Then the engine screamed out of the water on the way down as we nose dived. I just remember by dad trying to pretend everything was ok even though I know we almost died. I was like a baby possum hanging into the back of my chair for dear life. Then it happened AGAIN. Now I understand the air pressure from the hurricane, even though we couldn't sense it, meant that the relatively small ~8-12 foot storm waves (big but manageable rollers) became giant.
So was Bigfoot, Unicorns, Kraken, etc. Before a time where information is freely available and cross-verification became standard, mis-information was widespread. We know now that freak waves tales were true because we have real data. So if you ask me to believe in Bigfoot and Unicorns today, i'd still laugh at you regardless if u actually found 1. Because i cannot go by merely hearsay, i need hard proofs.
@@TheGunz0001 To get evidence, you have to look for it. Hardly anyone was, least not the scientific community, in the case of rogue waves. When lots of people make claims, they should at least be investigated, rather than just dismissing based on the theoretical linear model that clearly was never proven in the first place. I can understand not identifying this phenomenon perhaps way back in the 1800's before the scientific community was as established, but not until 1995? That's embarrassing.
These scientists violated the basic tenet of science: if your model contradicts the observed reality, you need to change the model. Dismissing stories of experienced captains as "fisherman's tall tales" was just arrogant. Also: 100 ton per m2? That's... bad.
Did they dismiss it or did they lack any robust or measurable data? I agree that scientists are loathe to make predictions without good data- and in general I agree with them. However dismissing first-hand accounts as " impossible" because it exceeds historical knowledge or doesn't fit current understanding is, indeed... Arrogant. Your model is only as good as your input. GIGO
The problem is, while a model should not trump observed results, eye witness accounts are also notoriously unreliable without hard data to back them up. There probably should have been more people looking to see if there was any truth to it with hindsight, but I can at least understand why it took a freak wave actually hitting an oil rig with measuring equipment for people to notice.
You're way off. Scientific research needs data. Fisherman's testimony isn't data. Once they were able to get real-world data, then they were able to create new models, and a clearer sight was visible. Is nothing to do with being "arrogant".
@@MaterLacrymarum Fishermen's observations are data. That is the first step in the scientific method. Make observations (fishermen have reported numerous accounts of rogue waves). Here's how science works: Hypothesis 1: Rogue waves are more common than the linear model permits. (Null Hypothesis 1: Fishermen's reports do not represent actual phenomena.) Prediction 1: If carefully, systematically, and empirically monitored, rogue waves will be observed significantly more often than predicted by the linear model. Experiment 1: Comprehensive survey of ocean waves via satellite. Result 1: Rogue waves occur much more frequently than linear model suggests. Conclusion 1: The linear model must be a) modified to accommodate this evidence or b) rejected. Prediction 2: A random sample of seamen will attest to having seen rogue waves far more often than models predict. Experiment 2: RANDOMLY select experienced seamen (perhaps with criteria that they have sailed through x-number of force-8 gales or something similar, and through deep water) and survey them for accounts of rogue waves. Correct for years of experience for each subject surveyed. Result 2: ? (I don't know if this has been done.) Conclusion 2: ? If the number of seamen per year experience report rogue waves far in excess of those predicted by the linear model, that is evidence that weakens the linear model and supports the need for an alternate model. (Note: Self-report data are valid for statistical analysis, though weaker as evidence than empirical evidence as in Experiment 1. But if you go to them for a random, representative sample instead of only taking data from those who come to you, that gives this kind of evidence real validity.) Hypothesis 3: Based on results of Experiment 1, a new, non-linear model of rogue waves can be calculated. Prediction 3: A new model will be derived from existing data. Experiment 3: Calculate the new model based on existing data. Result 3: ? (I don't buy that "model" at 39:00, but I think one could be calculated.) Conclusion 3? The model is expected to be predictive of future rogue waves. Hypothesis 4: The new model will surpass the linear model in predictive accuracy. Prediction 4: The model created under Experiment 3 will predict probabilities concerning conditions, frequencies, severity, and regions of future rogue waves. Etc... And so on. This is how the scientific method works. This would make a tidy little thesis if continued through a new, validated wave model. :) Since this video is so old, I expect all this work has been done by now though.
That was my thought. Scientist can be arrogant and will go to great lengths to protect their theories etc. Like you said if the evidence contradicts it enough, you should take another look. The greatest od this arrogance is with pharmaceuticals. 😞
Published: 14 March 2019 "Rogue wave occurrence displays a mostly decreasing trend, but the relative height - or severity - of the waves is increasing. " www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41099-z
Rogue waves are caused when faster waves catch up with slower waves. If they all manage to line up at the right time, you end up with a wave several times higher than the ones around it. But rogue waves don't HAVE to be huge, like these... if you have waves that are, on average, only a foot tall, then your rogue wave will maybe only be 3 or 4 feet tall. There's plenty of info out there about the cause and there's even a video on here of a wave machine that shows how rogue waves form. It's simple physics.
@@librautumn21 And if my previous comment got caught in the spam filter, then replace the end of this URL with AjaioEX1OBU - or just Google Rogue Wave Generator. Or go to the channel named "HD1080ide" and it's from about 3 years ago.
I grew up on an island in west Norway (the country that recorded a freak wave for the first time.) I lived on a very small island, it didn't even have a hospital, only a doctors office, with two doctors. In order to get off the island, you had to take a boat, either a ferry, or the smaller high speed katamaran boats. I preffered the katamaran, as it was faster, so it was more fun to go on deck and be nearly blown away by the wind. One time, my sister, mother and I was going to the big city (Bergen), which was an almost three hour boat ride in said boat. Now, western Norway is directly exposed to the north sea, plus the fact that the island i lived on had very few islands in front, to stop waves and wind. Generally; cold, wet, windy. In order to get to the city as quickly as possible, the boat would have to go outside of the other islands that mostly block the big waves from the north sea. This meant that for a good 30 minutes, we had no coverage from the wind and waves from the north sea. As we were approching this area, the crew on the boat instructed me and my sister to go inside. Apperently, this was an abnormally windy day. (That takes a lot, as the wind is generally very high). The boat was hitting the waves straight on, an bouncing on them. I liked that very much. Out of the blue, we could feel the boat drop down, then turn as vertical as i have ever witnessed a boat be, before we saw the windows completely washed over with water, and the boat dropped again, only to keep bouncing on the waves that now seemed tiny. I was in shock. I think we were lucky to be on such a small, sturdy boat, I doubt the large ferries would have handled that. After that, we were much more catious with checking the weather before going on that boat.
So let me get this straight- Mariners for centuries have told scientists about freak waves; rogue waves. And for centuries scientists have told them to their faces they’re lying? Boy I hope you scientists ate that humble pie in front of these mariners.
Observation always trumps theory, but this isn't about science. It's more to do with the personalities of the individuals working in said field. They had their minds made up without even bothering to gather evidence and data, yet again. Regardless of the observations. So very scientific of them.
As Einstein said, a single experiment could prove him wrong. Except so many things proved the linear model wrong over the years I completely understand why you hint those scientists who worked on that are not, strictly speaking, scientists.
A few years ago, I read 3 books by Erik Hiscock, a world-famous sailor. He states that there is a fundamental rule of the sea, that any time the barometric pressure falls at a certain rate,YOU ARE SAILING INTO A HURRICANE. I survived 'Halsey's typhoons' during WW2, when great damage was done to the fleet, and 3 destroyers sunk. (My ship,DD540 lost a man overboard,unobserved}. So, there was no excuse for Halsey sailing into those typhoons(Hurricanes at sea). There were hundreds of ships in those typhoons, and every Annapolis grad knew that formula, yet we plowed ahead into devastation.No excuse for this gross error. The fleet had refueled the evening before. It got too rough,so it was called off. Three destroyers had not been refueled. These were the three destroyers that SANK! They were riding too high on the water, and thus more top-heavy. Those ships had been ordered NOT TO TAKE ON SALT WATER BALLAST, because the higher ups thought they could be refueled faster, the next morning. Every Captain is responsible for his ship; in fact, they have to sign a receipt for it when they are given command. If the three Captains of the ships that sank had ignored the big brass, and taken on salt water ballast,they probably would have survived. I do not consider them to be qualified Captains. Surely each of them knew the Golden Rule of Hurricanes. They were all Annapolis grads; they just did not have brass balls enough to ignore their orders not to take on ballast. The next morning, the big brass ordered that no ships were to stop to pick up any survivors, for fear of submarines. However one young Captain of a destroyer disobeyed the order, and rescued 55 survivors He was awarded the Legion of Merit . He was immediately promoted a full rank. That ship was USS Tabberer, A DE, even smaller than a destroyer. Google it to read a great story of a courageous rescue.
At 11:00 in, a man explains the odds of a 30 meter wave in a storm where the average wave is 12 meters. He describes the odds as 0.00001 and goes on to explain this would be once in every 10,000 years. I'm not sure why he referenced years, as I would understand this to be 1 in 10,000 iterations. If I am correct and it is 1 in 10,000 waves, the odds are nowhere near as remote as this man claims.
Almost no drammatization, no shit reenactments, no 5 second interviews from celebrities who fell of some boat, authentic footage (and plenty of it) - this is how quality documentaries should be made
ruclips.net/video/KId4iI7NgQ0/видео.html The video above was shot on board the protector. I was on board the courageous which was the nearest vessel to her. At the time of this wave we were less than 15 miles apart. The North Sea is notorious because it is relatively shallow and when the strong winds pick up seas can build very quickly. We were also hit by a very similar wave luckily not sustaining any damage. That particular day the wind was force 12 S. West and as the low passed over it maintained Gail force nine Southeast. The sea state had fallen slightly but as the wind was now coming from 90° you were experiencing the odd wave 50% larger than others. The other phenomena from the wind changing direction was the huge holes that would appear between the two different waves from the two different directions. The biggest problem we had keeping the boat central to the waves meant a course of roughly due south. This meant that you were getting waves on the port and starboard quarter. This in itself wasn't an issue it just made the boat uncomfortably Rowley. It's when you came across the considerably larger wave with the considerably larger whole before and after it. This made walking an alleyway extremely precarious especially when you were ascending or descending a stair well. We were all very glad to get back to Aberdeen at the end of our stint at sea. My grandfather was at sea all is life. He was in the Merchant Navy and sailed the seven seas several times over. He then took a job with Caledonian MacBrayne's working the west coast of Scotland until he retired. He was adamant that every seventh wave that roles in to the beach is slightly larger than the six previous. And out at sea every seventh wave is fractionally larger also. He was adamant that rogue waves were when the seventh wave merged with the seventh wave which merged with several other seventh waves creating the one-off so-called hundred-year wave. I spent time watching the sea in shallow water as well as deep and I'm convinced my grandfather was right. Interestingly on a freshwater loch the seventh wave rule to me does not seem to apply. Perhaps in the great Lakes in Canada with the water covering a far greater expanse might prove the seventh wave theory also.
All of these so-called "linear models" of freak waves were designed by ship builders so they could insure these ships from liability. But ship captains and crews know better. Freak waves are incredibly common. How else do you account for so many huge ships going down without a mayday or single survivor? "Once in ten thousand years," my ass.
The linear model was made by physicists, not by a conspiracy of insurers. It is how almost all waves behave, and exceptions seemed to be perfectly explainable with wind-against-current phenomena. Quantum physics are understood only by a small field of specialists, and between them and mariners, there was not enough shared evidence that would have justified applying these particular equations to the ocean. It took a specially equipped oil rig in just the right place and time, and then a bunch of radar satellites to produce that evidence.
+steve1978ger You miss my point entirely. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO CREATED THE 'LINEAR MODEL' THAT SHIP INSURERS FOLLOW. It was simply USED by them to keep their freighters sailing, with minimal cost-to-accident ratios. The US government, for example, continually crunches and manipulates numbers every election cycle to "prove" that unemployment levels are low, when in fact, the current unemployment in the US is around 20%, NOT 4.5. My argument is sound and true. Sailors knew about rogue waves DECADES before, "a bunch of radar satellites produced that evidence." High sounding scientific theories have never kept up with simple human experience, sailors knew that the earth was round long before Columbus left Spain.
tiffsaver u seems to be practical like me....that if humans have seen these freaks waves....& it's getting dangerous & people dying...why not listening to the practical experience of mariners..-!
And you would think that seamen are a surerstitious lot... I'm generally not superstitious but I would never ever call a ship "unsikable" ever again...ever! Stop calling ships unsinkable if you don't want to sink in them!
Chi Jiguan the word unsinkable is wrong. I am a Muslim and such words are deamed blasphemy as everything is in God's hand. Whatever we can think of God is capable of doing and even more. If God is able to create and destroy the entire universe then he sure is able to sink two or two billion shipsbat a blinkbof an eye. So in short, we don't have such words as "unsinkable" / "unbreakble"
I took a cruise to Mexico as a graduation gift back in 1985 we were hit by a “small” wave around 20 feet high it knocked out all the power and we were in the dark for the next 8 hours I’ve never been back in the ocean not even the beach that wave is in my nightmares some days and it was a “small” wave
10:00 The Aussie speaker explains simply why such waves shouldn't exist. He just uses a bell-curve to say they are unlikely. He uses the analogy of a class of children. Their heights will group around the average. Sure, there's only a tiny chance that one child will be twice as tall as average. But what if you are hit by ONE CHILD ON THE SHOULDERS OF ANOTHER CHILD? That's the correct analogy for these waves. Also his 'one in ten thousand years' is nonsense. That would assume that the sea produces only one wave per year. He means 'one in ten thousand waves', presumably.
Use an incorrect equation to guess the frequency of big waves as apposed o actually measuring the waves. Then ignore sailors who actually see the the waves. Sounds like modern science.
Ancient Bear Comments like yours scare me. I wish everyone were able to get a real, university science education (any field), because ignorance of what science is and how it operates is dangerous.
No, he does mean “one in ten thousand years.” The linear wave model predicts that if a series of waves with a significant wave height (average height of the highest 1/3 of the waves) of 12m were to keep going for ten thousand years in a certain area, there would be only one wave with a height of 30 meters in that area during that ten thousand years. Obviously, conditions in the actual ocean vary over time, so it’s not like the significant wave height in a given area is actually going to stay exactly the same all of the time for ten thousand years, but given that significant wave height in the ocean is not usually larger than 12m (that is a typical significant wave height in a rough storm), 12m a good benchmark to use to predict how many 30m waves will happen in the actual ocean in thousand years. Obviously, the linear model is not sufficient, but the way the scientist described its results is correct.
I accidentally clicked on this while trying to do something while watching a different video. Then before I could click back this documentary caught my attention and hasn't let go. Between the narrator, music, interesting scientists and so on it's just fascinating. Thanks so much for posting this. Also it's the ocean. Anyone who studies the ocean needs to accept that just about anything can and will happen. Listen to those who have spent generations on the waves. Just listen because in every legend, myth, tale there is generally a grain of truth somewhere. Scientists didn't believe in mountain gorillas for a long time even though the locals kept telling them about them. Recently it happened again with a rare and 'newly discovered' species of bonobo chimps. You don't have to believe the locals on things but you do need to listen. Then you can try to find proof. I believe in trust but verify. So I'll trust the locals know what they are saying but will look for proof too. Also never ever call a ship or anything unsinkable. That's just daring something to take you down.
One of my favorite documentaries, along with Killer Lakes and the one on supermassive black holes. I wish I hadn't taken those three off my DVR to free up space.
I have photographs of one of the Royal navy ships my dad served on in the Irish Sea encountering that "confused non linear sea state". The waves were over the fantail and coming from different directions, you can see some of the officers on the open bridge and they look worried, the photographer was my dad, and the ship was HMS Loch Fyne.
Freak waves. Late March 1965, North Atlanltic, Vicinity, Between northern Scotland and Iceland. On the 750 tone Icelandic trawler Ardbarker out of Akereery Iceland. We had moterd from Grimsby U.K, We were heading to Reykjavik Iceland, On Monday 1800-30 hours I was put on helm watch, The bearing compass was set to 261 degrees, So 270 degrees is Dew west, The bearing compass was left at 261 throughout my watch. To 2100. Hour's. We had a comfortable warm following wind from the east, 10 to 15 knots. The fish hold was empty, I think ?, The trawler was responsive to the the wheel. Every thing was going well, We were making our way over medium size occasion rollers, That were following our coarse, 261 degrees, After a couple of hours we had climbed to the top of a roller, And the next roller was very large, The top looked to be a mile away, Every thing was going well, It's going to take some extra time to get up there, Another 20 minuets I was having trouble in holding the coars at 261 and had moved to 251, After an other 10 minutes I had to move to 241 to hold a straight coarse, After another ten minutes it was getting very difficult to hold on 241. The skipper was standing back he could see the bearing compass, I had been running off coars for 30 minutes and he had not said any thing, So I decided to try and go back to coars 261, But the boat took off to starboard, We were swinging past 280 then I called out , She's getting away on me, The skipper leaned over me and took one of the wheels finuyles and gave the wheel two hard bumps to port, Then steped back an left me with the wheel, To read the bearing compass from the wheel, I would have to lean over to the left, I stayed leaning over the compass, It was mooviing back to coars slowly, I would stay till we were back on coarse, Then see if I could hold the the coarse. When I looked up the see had changed, There was a deep trough on our starboard side 30' 40' feet deep, And on the other side of the trough at the top, Where was was a standing wave, + 10' feet high, On our port side, We were on the side of a massive wave, Our 750 tone boat was looking very small, But we were still on coarse, I turned to the skipper a big man + 6' 4" , His mouth was wide open, his complection was gray, My imeadet thought was he was having a fit, Or stroke, Now there was another standing wave up ahead, This wave took all my attention. A sick skipper, 4 men, 4 boys and a woman below, The boat was racing, I hope they are holding on, The run in to the wave was looking good, I wanted to take at 60 degrees, It was a noisy crash, The noise rebounded for 4 or 5 seconds, The boat just hung there on the wave, We were now at 45 degrees to the wave, We were standing on that vertical wave, Bow up 25 degrees, I shouted, UP, And the boat slowly began to climbe on to the wave, My shouting must have aroused the skipper, He was standing there looking at me, He looked a bit dazed, Now we were both in the middle of this lumpy wave that was doing it's own thing, What ever that was. We were on a large circle of up welling water that was the same size as the boat, And more water was being pushed up, Untill the boat began to slide off the up welling of water, We slid off starboard side first, In to a trough, The engine was still runing at 3/4 speed, The boat seemed to be in dead water, We were not moving, The skipper started talking to me, He was thanking me for something, We started to move slowly forward, We were still on coarse, The boat began to pick up speed, All the way through this, The skipper or me had not touched the engine telegraph, It was set at 3/4 speed. We were going faster, It looked as if we were going down a shoot, Then the engine revved up as if the prop was out of the water, The skipper was talking very loud and not to me, I assumed he was talking to his Icelandic deities, Othin and all the rest. He sounded very confident, I was not familiar with surfing, But that 750 ton trawler was surfing a long, We were coming off that wave in a hurry. The wave dissipated, We seemed to be in dead water we were not moving, The engine was still singing away as though the prop was out of water, After a minute the engine side down, And we started to mòove and we were still on coarse, We seemed to be in the wake of a very large ship, The wake was some 200 yards wide, And on our heading 261 degrees, Things settled down and we motors along for 15 minutes or so. Then one of the two deck hands came up to the bridge, He looked calm and composed, He was there to take his helm watch I assumed that he had slept through the incident, 5 minutes layer the 1st mate came up to take up the bridge watch , Now he was agitated and frayed around the edges, He must of had a rough time through the bumping and banging, If he had tryed to look out the galley adore during any one of those incidents he would had a scar. What was happening on that wave was a bit more than strange, I think the skipper had seen some thing, What I don't know, in 1965 most people thought a big submarine would be 1,200 tones and may be 140' feet long, But the u,s, had + 3,000 tones subs and the Russians had 38,000 tone subs, And they both had some type of weponized supper sonar, I wonder what the old man put in the ships log book. It was a bumpy ride on that big lumpy wave, And was some one trying to make things difficult for trawlers on the high seas, With weponized souper sonar, Over.
On that ocean trip in the north Atlantic in 1965, I was on the 750 ton fishing Trawler Ardbacker, Out of Akereery Iceland, We were with a sister ship the Sletbacker, After two days the Sletbacker was chased away, I was told she had taken the eastern route to Reykjavik, The Sletbacker arrived in Reykjavik a day after the Ardbacker, She was covered in Ice as we had been, It was Easter week-end 1965. Our 1st mate and my self were left to look after the ship, He could not get in to the dock area where the Sletbacker was moored, It was moored in a restricted dock area, He brought back a lokel newspaper with a picture of the Sletbacker covered in Ice, There was long article in Icelandic which the mate read to me, There was no mention of the Ardbacker, But there was another article that concerned the Mate, A volcano was beginning to erupt in Vestminair, We had passed by there two days prior. When the crew came back to the ship there was a drunken brawl, As in mutiny, And I was in the middle of it, They we're all very young, And very drunk. The Mate and myself put them in there bunks in protest. I watch over them through the nighte. I was reading an Ian Fleming novel, I fell asleep about 6 am and woke up a few hours later out at sea, The drunks and my self did not want to be out there, Shanghed again, The Skipper wanted to go to the Volcano, The net was damaged, And the running gear. The skipper said, I will feed you, If you work I will pay you, Every one settled down, I took to repairing the net, The skipper was pleased with that, He said, I give you lead-Hand money, Then the 1st Mate told me I was 2nd Mate. But I had been through 5 storms that year, And I was fraying at the edges, And the young one's, They had good sea legs, But they were not comfortable with the fish, As in terrified. I would have liked to have seen the ships log of that trip, But I doubt that records are kept.
JasonJason210, Thank you Jason for your kind words, I'll make a few more comments Under the heading of. OUT OF HARMS WAY. I was hoping that some one could access the Trawler Ardbacker's log book, Any how, Easter, 54 years ago, We had arrived in Reykjavik Iceland on Friday morning 9,30 AM. Most of the crew were preparing to leave the ship to spend the 4 day holiday ashore, This included the cook & his Lady friend the Valcury, Who I found out was second cook, And a British trained Registered Nurs. So I referd to hear as Dare friken Valcury, The skipper had spoken to me and asked that I stay with the 1st Mate to watch the ship, In those 4 days no body came near the ship, What did they know that I did not, I found out, The press gang's operait in England and Iceland, You have A little drinky, Next day you wake up at sea, This has happend to me on two seperet occasions, So the 1 st mate and me, And the 4 teenaged boys who had not been introduced to the fish, That was to be my job, And keeping the Nets in repair, The mate borrowed some money off of me to buy groceries, This that and the other, Which turned out to eaquil the price of 5 bottles of, Brenavin, Icelandic Snake-bite. Then on Saturday the teen aged boy's disappeared, The Mate said the boys had gone to a rayve or some thing. An other coincidence, The two deck hands, The cook & the Valcury, The 1st Mate, And my self, 6 of us were all the same age. Well the same year. On Saturday morning our sister ship Sletbacker turned up covered in Ice, We could see her from our morings, The mate tryed to go to the Sletbacker,s mornings, But was unable to access their dock, It must have been a bonded area, In the early eavening the mate turned up all frayed up and began talking about a volcano eruption on Vestminair, Some 90 miles due west of Reykjavik. 1. A, OUT OF HARMS WAY.
1965 April, Active volcanic eruption on Soutsare, Very close to, Vestminar. 90 miles west of Reykjavik. I will give an account of the incident in a few days. Jack Duffy, 2nd Mate, Rigger, Net-lacer. Submarine Chasser, And we the crew were the bait. Two men from White hall were passengers. On the trawler Ancaster out of Hull, With stark stairing made CPT Jack Ahab. And the ships runner, Commander Beal, Who stayed ashore with his Goon Frank Orm. And I just hung on to life in storm after storm, And that was the fun part of the trip. They said it was a fun place to be, The Vicinity of Bear-Island, It was just a he'll hole to me.
This is an excellent documentary. Very well presented, very well based in fact. Nowadays there still is no clear way on how these things form, and with ships continuing to encounter rogue waves and be lost to them, a theory known as 'modulational instability' looks very promising
Hundreds of years of mariners losing their lives, their stories about monster waves were many times thought as something crazy they made up...maybe they were not that crazy at that time.
Its less about belief and more about the fact that the scientific models couldn't explain them. But with quantum physics and the like we're starting to understand more.
Fascinating documentary. I live in South Africa, our entire coastline is littered with wrecks. Only the east coast was mentioned here. No mention made of the West Coast, nicknamed "Skeleton Coast" with good reason!
the only thing predictable about mother nature is that she will be un.... It might not be tomorrow the next day or even next year, but it will come and it will erase everything that came before it. Whatever it may be, a wave,asteroid,volcano, or a species of "intelligent' animal. It wont fit any chart, graph or equation. The time line may be shorter, it may happen more frequently but in a remote area, a well kept secret if you will, Mother doesnt have to tell everything, just what she is in the mood to tell us, and only when she happens to be in the mood to talk.
Absolutely. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in nature is linear or digital. Nature is 100% analogue. There is in fact no such thing as a perfect straight line nor a perfect circle in nature ... only in theoretical equations or by rough observations. The closer you look the more quantum everything is. Linear, digital is a human's left brain, rational attempt to create "sensible order" out of a cosmos which is in fact 100% chaos until "ordered" by our own minds. And ultimately that's all God is, a human invention to explain the unexplainable.
@@thedolphin5428 i argue that same point all the time so bravo, our minds like order, but disorder/chaos is the natural order. The heisenberg uncertainty principle, everything is probabilistic, their model is obviously incorrect. Then again models havent really gotten to the quantum level. When the quantum computer is "complete", then perhaps our models will be capable of approaching the infinate possibility of the natural world. ...oops i should have completed documentary before replying they did use shroedingers equation but discarded it lol. My bad.
Idk why but the sound of SOS in Morse Code gives me the chills. It's such a rudimentary technology you just know something must have gone horribly horribly wrong. And my God look at the pins at 6:20!! Those were straight vertical pins, can you imagine the force it must have took to literally rip them out of the block like that?? Christ, I just hope no one suffered for a long while.
This is so well done. And. The music fits it perfectly. The truth is ominous. No matter what size your ship is. There is a wave out there that can knock it over, sink it, and quite possibly kill you. This program is why I'll never go on an ocean cruise anywhere.
Just take 6 people and have them start jumping on a trampoline in order. Either at the same time or one after the other. Wait until they get out of sync and one goes shooting into the air. I could have saved these scientists a lot of money.
Not with that logic! NO trampoline can duplicate Mother Nature in the ocean when she is angry -- NO one! Because frequently it's what happens on the sea floor with erupting volcanoes and currents that can rapidly change things, not to speak of the weather above the sea!
@@tonimorris7893 The fact that everyone (selling water beds) said sex was great on a waterbed were just trying to sell waterbeds! It was a novelty and basic kinetics would tell an educated person that it wasn't true, it was more work! That fad died, it also wasn't good for bad backs, hips, necks, etc.! The only good thing about it was IF you kept the water temp high enough, in a very cold place, it was nice to get into a warm bed. But it has been proven that cooler temps help you sleep better -- so out! The recommended temp was about 92 degrees, but a lot of people had it set closer to body temp (98) which is just below the normal 98.6 of humans, and they'd wake up perspiring in the morning, if they had any covers on them, since normal body temp often reduces to 96 degrees when we sleep for most people.
@@@MJLeger-yj1ww Electric blankets are great on a cold night when you first get into bed.. but if you fall asleep with one on...you wake up gasping for water and unpleasantly hot. Bedrooms when I was young were always unheated, unless one was ill, and thick frost used to form on the inside of the windows with beautiful ''frost flowers'' and fern like formations....not seen that for years..we are much more spoiled these days re warm rooms.
@@Oakleaf700 I agree with that! I now live where we have 4 real seasons, but, of course we have central heating, fireplaces, etc. but I prefer layering to electric blankets though I keep it 65 degrees in the bedroom. I remember my mother telling me that when she was a girl, they had a potty under the bed and every morning, it was frozen! I couldn't believe it that! But I have to go out since winter came, and change the water in my outside cat's bowl a couple of times a day because it will freeze over in a few short hours. She was a stray and adopted my back porch but in the winter, I make a place for her in my garage. My inside animals, of course, are privileged.
sailors called the kraken, science dismissed them, sailors were vindicated. sailors called rogue waves, science dismissed them, sailors were vindicated. if a sailor tells me they saw a 10 meter long fish, i'm going to believe them lmao.
In the Navy, October 1999, South of Hawai'i, USS Carl Vinson. In a big storm, I happened to be on Buzzards Roost, we went over a wave so high the bow of this aircraft carrier hit a wave so high it send a wall of water so high over the flight deck it snapped two aircraft chains like twigs sending an S-3 Viking over the side like a Styrofoam cup. I saw this with my own two eyes.
Scientist: "A 30 meter wave is impossible!" Sailor: Shows a picture and says, "So how do you explain this?" Scientist: "Well... Uhm... That must be caused by Godzilla swimming nearby"
problem is the linear model is for a specific place and doesn't account for quantum physics theory. Where a wavelength can feed of multiple wavelengths. Look at south Africa in storm season and why they avoid it.
The North Sea can be wicked...as a family member found out. On a ship out in the sea..a massive wave turned their boat flat on its side...it did right it self ,but many got injured,from broken legs,to bad cuts,and carpet burns...hence to say ,they havnt been on a boat cruise since
Choice of the North Sea abd the North Atlantic. 95% of the time I'll pick the Atlantic. Bigger sets and usually higher. but usually farther apart. But their nasty ones are consequently BIGGER in volume and weight I was on a skinny '30's Steam trawler back in the mid '50's.100/110 ton They were open decked. not enclosed like nowadys. You. Bulwarks. Sea We bounced around a lot but she always stood up again. (round bilge hull not chined.) Just accept. Water IS the most powerful sustance on this planet. Over and above any explosive matter man can mfg. Just ride her gently. Stay away from seasonal bad spots.and hope she never shows you a hiccup. No matter what you in. It's NOT man enuff to come out the other side. Just say a prayer and hang on. I'm lucky. After the fishing boats mainly a single hander sailor. Lots of bumpy water but she never been really angry with me. Just a few brown jocks and lots of dry mouth circumstances. NO man is secure from her. Just say a little prayers every time you step back ashore again.
Even with the investigation into the SS Waratah's disappearance in 1906. The investigation revealed that waves over 20 metres in height did occur in the area it went missing in South Africa on the current where freak waves were most often reported on the Ocean convergence zone. They knew back then & still didn't consider them dangerous when Ship's could only handle 15 metre waves that are not breaking.
Steve Garai Scientists using the non-linear model that perfectly describes all liquids, from the liquid helium that has zero viscosity to water, liquid mercury or honey had already knew about the possibility of those unusual waves. But the engineers were like: "you know what, I'll just use a linear model to approximate this wet shit cause I hate multiple order differentials and exponentiations".
@@cezarcatalin1406 So you are saying that the scientific community knew all long the truth about rogue waves and it was the "engineers" who were responsible for science not taking this seriously?
When the SS El Faro entered a hurricane in late 2015 and sank, bad weather, poor judgement by the captain and a subsequent engine failure were attributed as the cause. However, when they found the wreckage, the ENTIRETY of the bridge and upper two decks had been completely severed from the ship and lay as a single piece a half mile from the hull. They were baffled as to how a hurricane could possibly sever such a large section. Perhaps that part of the disaster can be explained by a Rogue wave.
It was a shame that so many people labeled the captain at fault.. Then when the wreckage was found it was staggering the amount of force they must have endured to tear the bridge off the ship.
Frank Heuvelman Weld issues could be a contributor. But the Titanic broke in two for entirely different reasons. Witnesses said that before it sank, a large portion of the hull was lifted out of the water. This can snap the hull. It's much harder to envision how one can shear off the top two floors.
@@97VobraOwner The captain of that vessel was most definitely at fault. He knowingly sailed his vessel into a hurricane despite having plenty of warning. In addition to him knowing for fact that his vessel was in very poor mechanical and structural condition.
I was on a reefer in the tasman sea in 1981, and we encountered the biggest waves I've ever seen in my 22 years at sea something g truly unbelievable where the southern ocean currents meet the Pacific ocean currents, had to be seen to be believed even old hands on board looked worried. Fetch length of waves are a big factor.
A perfect example of a true rouge wave is the Aleutian Ballard. She got nailed by a rouge wave out of no where and the incident was filmed during an episode of the Deadliest Catch. The swells were bad at the time but not dire. Too dangerous to pull in pots. Then, from the right side a massive wave slammed the ship and put it on it's side. Blind luck saved it.
A rouge wave is what the United States faces in China. Or perhaps it's what "Blue states" in the USA faced with Post Truth Era, Fox News-educated, "alternative fact"-spewing "rogue" demagogues, like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. In comparison, the rogue waves in this documentary are trivial, sinking but one piddling ship a week.
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin' Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya. At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said Fellas, it's been good t'know ya!
@Anon Anon Well done, great song, very haunting and particularly prescient to this documentary. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" for those who aren't familiar. Give it a listen. ruclips.net/video/9vST6hVRj2A/видео.html
Agent Smith The captain wired in he had water coming in, and the big ship and crew was in peril. Abs later that night, when his lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
I love the way scientists come to conclusion that it's impossible for something to happen, but when it does somehow they can have answers. There is so much we can't explain and might never know.
I were serving 14 years on board ocean-going salvage tugs from the german 'Bugsier' Company around this planet. And we knew since the early 70s that freakwaves are existing everywhere. In December 1978 we were heading towards the position of the 'München' with salvage-tug "Wotan" (12.500 hp) from our station in Las Palmas without any success, but we were 'riding' these waves.
Go out on any body of water (Lake Erie) in 8' waves and and you will get an occasional rogue 13 footer. You dont have to focus on 50's and hope for an 80'. ?
Whitecap madness I agree. Late summer 1975, my friend and I left Put in Bay for Cedar Point Marina in heavy seas aboard a 30’ Sea Ray. We were young and stupid and did not heed the small craft warnings. It was quite an experience. Waves 4-6’ they said? Ha! When we were in the wave trough all you could see was water all around the boat. That was the last time we were that stupid.
As a child, in So. Calif., we used to drive to the beach and "jump the waves" -- I didn't know then what I know now, and once, a big wave caught me, pushed me to the bottom and rolled me along the sand all the way to shore! That kind of cured me. But as an adult, I dived all the time and fished out between San Francisco and the Farallon Islands all the time, but only when we knew it was safe and not when the whales were migrating. I SCUBA dived in Monterey Bay often but I never went much past the kelp fields because there is a giant drop-off down into a trench out there and it scared me! Today, sharks are coming in closer to shore all the time chasing bait fish that come in closer to shore due to a slight raise in ocean temps, and since they're opportunistic feeders, and since a person on a surfboard with their legs or arms hanging off the board looks like their prey, a sea lion, they sometimes get bit and a shark bite is always very dangerous, even if it's a test bite like they do to see if the prey has enough blubber (is fat enough), which they need to survive.
Exactly. Pretty arrogant to assume any ship is unsinkable. This is the 4th video in a row I've watched where a ship deemed "unsinkable" sank. As if they have the upper hand on mother nature. Lol
I have often fished at anchor on small charter boats in the Irish sea. These little 30 or 40 foot boats don't usually go out in more than 20 or 30 mph winds, or if they do they stay close to the lee-side of the coast. Sitting at anchor in a 36 foot boat in 4 or 5 foot swell is quite scary, all you can do is watch oncoming waves approach the little boat. If you are out there long enough it's only a matter of time before you either encounter a much larger wave hitting the boat or see one tearing through in the distance. In 8 hours fishing I have often seen 3 or 4 of these while anchored in one spot. I have also often been fishing off the rocks on the shore in bad weather. When the sea is rough it's best to look for higher rock ledges to fish from as the raised platform will keep you above the oncoming waves. One time I was fishing about 4 feet above the water which is lower down and closer to the water's edge than you ought to be fishing in bad conditions, but I felt confident having fished the same location many times and in worse weather. I was sitting on my tackle box back a good ten feet from the water's edge when a much larger breaking wave washed across the rocks, knocked over my tripod with my rods in it and nearly swept me and my tackle box away. This "larger" wave, although relatively small compared to the 100 foot waves encountered by mariners, looked identical to what they describe: a solid, vertical, breaking wall of water significantly higher than the rest of the waves with a massive trough in front of it. These "larger" waves may be only 6-8 feet high but in a 36 foot boat or on an exposed rocky outcrop such a body of water can really throw you around. The waves in the Irish sea are also much closer together than they are in bigger seas like the Atlantic. This makes the waves steeper. 6 foot waves off the coast of Holyhead feel more severe than rolling 30 foot Atlantic waves.
No ship is meters thick. That’s ridiculous and would be so heavy it would sink like a rock. You need to actually get a tape measure and look at how much 6.5 feet (2 meters) is. Submarines hulls for example are anywhere from 4-10 inches thick.
Wait, I've heard, and it's mentioned at least once in the video, that rogue waves (usually? often? sometimes?) travel at an angle, perhaps 30 degrees, from the regular wave pattern. That would imply that rogues are a result of two wave patterns interacting and probably due to interference between them.
That 30/40 deg's is the average "intersection of two sets of "surface disturbances" IE Storms. On a small scale IE spreaders or near masthead height. it/can be quite "interesting" in you well designed, build yacht. I lived in the S38 to S45 deg's in South Australia, Tasmania. for 35+ yrs. That was GOOD sailing. In a 32 then 42ft Steel Yachts. designed for Ocean work.
Every surfer knows that when there are two or more sets of waves running from different directions, where these intersect, you get a larger peak wave at the intersection. I dont understand how this effect was not analysed in this documentary.
We used to Bodysurf the Wedge in Newport Beach and I became a firm believer in the power of water. The dude on the jetty wth the cowbell as a pre-warning alarm went running as fast as you can run on a rock jetty out towards the outside edge of the breakwater. We started paddling as hard as we could to the outside. I scraped over the first wave of probably 10 and I almost crapped my trunks. 20' face steamrolling in our direction and getting taller as it pitched up on the shallow beach. Felt like a wash machine on crack. I've never seen or felt anything that powerful before or since. The oldtimers were freaking out. That's when you know it was real
Roger Surf that’s not what they are talking about. You are on the coast line thinking you know the whole ocean. How ignorant of you. Btw any child in a bathtub knows what you know. So thanks captain obvious
You see the wave, and you don't believe it. Then you begin to fall into the hole before the wave, the "trough." Now you look up at this wall of water that reaches to the sun. And you've got to remember, it's only water. If anyone is to do their part in driving the boat, you've got to remember, it's only water. That doesn't mean a thing to the wave or to the boat. But it will help with your task at hand, which is for the boat to survive the next 60 seconds, if only 3 seconds at a time.
Why do ships usually report rouge waves as coming from a different direction, at an angle from the waves they are moving through, when this video shows pics from space where the rouge waves are perfectly in line with the rest of the swells? There must be more than one way to create these huge one in a million waves besides swells moving in the counter direction to the current. I'll bet that a disordered sea with swells coming from different angles in addition to a counter current is the best way to make a true rouge wave.
When you meet steep waves around headlands they are called 'overfalls' and the effect has been known about and marked on charts for generations they are created by tidal stream!
Part 1 go to reply for Part 2 and Part 3 MV Joyita was a merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared in the South Pacific in October 1955. She was found adrift with no one aboard. The ship was in very poor condition, with corroded pipes and a radio which, while functional, had a range of only about 2 miles (3.2 km) because of faulty wiring. However, the extreme buoyancy of the ship made sinking nearly impossible. Investigators were puzzled as to why the crew had not remained on board and waited for help. Maritime inquiry A subsequent inquiry found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry." An especially perplexing point was that the three liferafts Joyita carried were missing, but it would not make sense for the crew and passengers to voluntarily abandon the vessel. Fitted out for carrying refrigerated cargo, Joyita had 640 cubic feet (18 m3) of cork lining her holds, making her virtually unsinkable. In addition, further buoyancy was provided by a cargo of empty fuel drums. Construction The 69-foot (21.0 m) wooden ship was built in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for movie director Roland West, who named the ship for his wife, actress Jewel Carmen - joyita in Spanish meaning "little jewel".[1] In 1936 the ship was sold and registered to Milton E. Beacon.[2] During this period, she made numerous trips south to Mexico and to the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. During part of this time, Chester Mills was the skipper of the vessel. The ship's hull was constructed of 2-inch (51 mm)-thick cedar on oak frames. She was 69 feet 0 inches (21.0 m) long, with beam of 17 feet 0 inches (5.2 m) and a draft of 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m); her net tonnage was 47 tons and her gross tonnage approximately 70 tons. She had tanks for 2,500 U.S. gallons (9,500 L) of water and 3,000 U.S. gallons (11,400 L) of diesel fuel.[5] U.S. Navy service in World War II Ship's wheelhouse in 1942 In October 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joyita was acquired by the United States Navy and taken to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she was outfitted as Yard patrol boat YP-108. The Navy used her to patrol the Big Island of Hawaii until the end of World War II. In 1943 she ran aground and was heavily damaged, but the Navy was in need of ships so she was repaired. At this point, new pipework was made from galvanized iron instead of copper or brass. In 1946, the ship was surplus to Navy requirements and most of her equipment was removed.[2] Private purchase In 1948 Joyita was sold to the firm of Louis Brothers. At this point, cork lining was added to the ship's hull along with refrigeration equipment.[2] The ship had two Gray Marine diesel engines providing 225 horsepower (168 kW), and two extra diesel engines for generators.[3] In 1950 William Tavares became the owner; however, he had little use for the vessel, and sold it in 1952 to Dr Katharine Luomala, a professor at the University of Hawaii.[3] She chartered the boat to her friend, Captain Thomas H. "Dusty" Miller, a British-born sailor living in Samoa. Miller used the ship as a trading and fishing charter boat. Disappearance Planned route (red line) and where Joyita was found (purple circle) About 5:00 AM on 3 October 1955, Joyita left Samoa's Apia harbour bound for the Tokelau Islands, about 270 miles (430 km) away. The boat had been scheduled to leave on the noon tide the previous day but her departure was delayed because her port engine clutch failed. Joyita eventually left Samoa on one engine. She was carrying sixteen crew members and nine passengers, including a government official, a doctor (Alfred "Andy" Denis Parsons, a World War II surgeon on his way to perform an amputation), a copra buyer, and two children. Her cargo consisted of medical supplies, timber, 80 empty 45 gallon (200 L) oil drums and various foodstuffs.[6] The voyage was expected to take between 41 and 48 hours. She was scheduled to return with a cargo of copra. Joyita was scheduled to arrive in the Tokelau Islands on 5 October. On 6 October, a message from Fakaofo port reported that the ship was overdue. No ship or land-based operator reported receiving a distress signal from the crew. A search and rescue mission was launched and, from 6 to 12 October, Sunderlands of the Royal New Zealand Air Force covered a probability area of nearly 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) of ocean, but no sign of Joyita or any of her passengers or crew was found. Five weeks later, on 10 November, Gerald Douglas, captain of the merchant ship Tuvalu, en route from Suva to Funafuti, sighted Joyita more than 600 miles (970 km) west from her scheduled route, drifting north of Vanua Levu.[7] The ship was partially submerged and listing heavily (her port deck rail was awash) and there was no trace of any of the passengers or crew; four tons of cargo were also missing. The recovery party noted that the radio was discovered tuned to 2182 kHz, the international marine radiotelephone distress channel.
Part 2 Wreck seen from port side Barnacle growth high above the usual waterline on the port side showed that Joyita had been listing heavily for some time. There was some damage to the superstructure. Her flying bridge had been smashed away and the deckhouse had light damage and broken windows. A canvas awning had been rigged on top of the deckhouse behind the bridge. Joyita carried a dinghy and three Carley liferafts,[3] but all were missing. She did not carry enough lifejackets for everyone on board.[7] The starboard engine was found to be covered by mattresses, while the port engine's clutch was still partially disassembled, showing that the vessel was still running on only one engine. An auxiliary pump had been rigged in the engine room, mounted on a plank of wood slung between the main engines. However, it had not been connected. The radio on board was tuned to the international distress channel, but when the equipment was inspected, a break was found in the cable between the set and the aerial. The cable had been painted over, obscuring the break. This would have limited the range of the radio to about 2 miles (3.2 km). The electric clocks on board (wired into the vessel's generator) had stopped at 10:25 and the switches for the cabin lighting and navigation lights were on, implying that whatever had occurred happened at night. The ships' logbook, sextant, mechanical chronometer and other navigational equipment, as well as the firearms Miller kept in the boat,[7] were missing. A doctor's bag was found on deck, containing a stethoscope, a scalpel, and four lengths of blood-stained bandages. There was still fuel in Joyita's tanks; from the amount used, it was calculated she made some 243 miles (391 km) before the vessel was abandoned, probably within 50 miles (80 km) of Tokelau. The leak had probably started after 9 p.m. on the second night of the voyage, with nine hours of darkness ahead.[7] Although Joyita was found with her bilges and lower decks flooded, her hull was sound. When she was moored back in harbour at Suva, investigators heard the sound of water entering the vessel. It was found that a pipe in the raw-water circuit of the engine's cooling system had failed due to galvanic corrosion, allowing water into the bilges. The first the crew would have known about the leak was when the water rose above the engine room floorboards, by which time it would have been nearly impossible to locate the leak. Also, the bilge pumps were not fitted with strainers, and had become clogged with debris, meaning that it would have been very difficult to pump the water out. Maritime inquiry A subsequent inquiry found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry." An especially perplexing point was that the three liferafts Joyita carried were missing, but it would not make sense for the crew and passengers to voluntarily abandon the vessel. Fitted out for carrying refrigerated cargo, Joyita had 640 cubic feet (18 m3) of cork lining her holds, making her virtually unsinkable. In addition, further buoyancy was provided by a cargo of empty fuel drums. The inquiry was able to establish only the reasons for the vessel becoming flooded. It found that the vessel would have begun to flood due to the fractured cooling pipe. The bilge pumps were unserviceable due to becoming blocked. Joyita lacked watertight bulkheads or subdivisions in the bilges. The water would have gradually flooded the lower decks. As the boat began to sink lower into the water, the one remaining engine would not have been able to maintain enough speed to steer. Joyita then fell beam-on to a heavy swell and took on the heavy list it was found with. While flooded to an extent which would sink a conventional vessel, Joyita stayed afloat due to her cork-lined hull and cargo of fuel drums. The inquiry also placed much of the responsibility for the events on Captain Miller. They found him reckless for setting out on an ocean-going voyage with only one engine and numerous minor faults, and negligent for failing to provide a working radio or properly equipped lifeboat. He was also in breach of maritime law, since he had allowed Joyita's license to carry fare-paying passengers to lapse. The inquiry made no mention of the used medical equipment found on board.[8] Hypotheses Joyita is sometimes referred to as the "Mary Celeste of the South Pacific" and has been the subject of several books and documentaries offering explanations that range from rational and conventional to supernatural and paranormal. Numerous hypotheses for the disappearance of Joyita's crew and passengers have been advanced. Many were circulated at the time of the event, and several others have been put forward since. Given the fact that the hull of Joyita was sound and her design made her almost unsinkable, a main concern of investigators was determining why the passengers and crew did not stay on board if the events were simply triggered by the flooding in the engine room. Injured captain hypothesis Captain Miller should have been well aware of the vessel's ability to stay afloat, leading some to speculate that Miller had died or become incapacitated for some reason (someone on board was injured-hence the bloodstained bandages). Without him to reassure the other people on board, they may have panicked when Joyita began to flood and taken to the liferafts. However, this in itself would not account for the missing cargo and equipment, unless the vessel had been found abandoned and had her cargo removed.
Part 3 A friend of Miller, Captain S. B. Brown, was convinced that Miller would never have left Joyita alive, given his knowledge of her construction. He was aware of tension between Miller and his American first mate, Chuck Simpson. Brown felt that Miller and Simpson's dislike of each other came to blows and both men fell overboard or were severely injured in a struggle. This left the vessel without an experienced seaman and would explain why those remaining on board would panic when the ship began to flood. Japanese involvement and other hypotheses Newspaper headline accusing Japan The Fiji Times and Herald quoted at the time from an "impeccable source" to the effect that Joyita had passed through a fleet of Japanese fishing boats during its trip and "had observed something the Japanese did not want them to see."[citation needed] The Daily Telegraph in London hypothesized that some still-active Japanese forces from World War II were to blame for the disappearances, operating from an isolated island base.[citation needed] There was still strong anti-Japanese feeling in parts of the Pacific, and in Fiji there was specific resentment of Japan being allowed to operate fishing fleets in local waters. Such theories suddenly gained credence when men clearing Joyita found knives stamped 'Made in Japan'. However, tests on the knives proved negative and it turned out the knives were old and broken - quite possibly left on board from when Joyita was used for fishing in the late 1940s. Also there was a proposition that "the vessel's occupants were kidnapped by a Soviet submarine, with the world at the time in the midst of the growing Cold War."[7] Others[who?] hypothesize that modern sea pirates attacked the vessel, killed the 25 passengers and crew (and cast their bodies into the ocean), and stole the missing four tons of cargo.[citation needed] Insurance fraud hypothesis It was also revealed that Miller had amassed large debts after a series of unsuccessful fishing trips on Joyita.[citation needed] However, it would have been difficult to see the events surrounding Joyita as insurance fraud, given that no seacocks were found open and the ship would be almost impossible to scuttle. Also, Miller was relying on Joyita being chartered for regular runs between Samoa and Tokelau-these government charters would have quickly cleared his debts. Mutiny hypothesis A subsequent owner of Joyita, British author Robin Maugham, spent many years investigating the vessel's past, and published his findings as The Joyita Mystery in 1962. Maugham agreed that events were started by the flooding from the broken cooling pipe and the failure of the pumps. The mattresses found covering the starboard engine were used either in an attempt to stem the leak or to protect the electrical switchboard from spray kicked up by the engine's flywheel as the water level rose. At the same time, Joyita encountered increasingly heavy swells and squally weather. Captain Miller, knowing Joyita to be unsinkable and desperate to reach his destination to clear his debt, pressed on. However, Chuck Simpson, and possibly other crew members, demanded that he turn back. This effectively led to mutiny and Miller and the crew struggled, during which Miller sustained a serious injury. By now the ship was entering heavier weather, with winds around 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), and with one engine and a flooded bilge, was beginning to labor. The flooding in the engine room would have eventually caused the starboard engine to fail, also cutting all the vessel's electrical power. Chuck Simpson was now in control and made the decision to abandon ship, taking the navigational equipment, logbook and supplies, as well as the injured Miller, with them. It still seems unlikely that Chuck Simpson would choose to abandon a flooded but floating ship to take to small open rafts in the Pacific Ocean. Maugham proposed that they sighted a nearby island or reef and tried to reach it, but in the strong winds and seas the rafts were carried out to sea, leaving Joyita drifting and empty. The damage to the lightly built superstructure was caused by wave damage while the vessel was drifting in heavy seas. Joyita after 1955 In July 1956, Joyita was auctioned off by her owners for £2,425 to a Fiji Islander, David Simpson. He refitted and overhauled her and she went to sea again that year. However, she was surrounded by legal disputes over the transfer of her registry from the United States to Britain without permission. In January 1957 she ran aground while carrying 13 passengers in the Koro Sea. She was repaired and in October 1958 began a regular trade between Levuka and Suva. She again ran aground on a reef in November 1959 at Vatuvalu near Levuka.[4] She floated off the reef assisted by high tide, but while heading for port began to take in water through a split seam. The pumps were started, but it became clear that the valves for the pump had been installed the wrong way round, meaning that water was pumped into the hull, not out. Now with a reputation as an 'unlucky ship' and with a damaged hull, she was abandoned by her owners and beached. She was stripped of useful equipment and was practically a hulk when she was bought by Robin Maugham, who wrote the book The Joyita Mystery (1962). He sold the hulk in 1966 to Major J. Casling-Cottle who ran a tourist and publicity bureau at Levuka. The Major planned to turn it into a museum and tearoom, but the plan never saw daylight. The hulk disappeared piece by piece and the process of disintegration appears to have been complete by the late 1970s.[4] On 14 March 1975, the Western Samoa Post Office released a set of five stamps dealing with the mystery of Joyita.[9] In 2009, a walkway was named after Dr Alfred Dennis Parsons near his former Torbay home in Auckland, New Zealand.[10][11] In 2012, two memory stones in honor of the event were erected in Apia, Samoa and in Fakaofo Village, Tokelau.[6][12][13] Crew and passengers As of 2012, all aboard were still declared as "missing".[6]
I have to laugh at the statement: "According to all scientific laws of the (insert any noun here) ...are impossible." How many times have scientists had to eat those words? They must like the taste because they keep repeating it. And I'll take the word of the captain of the Q.E. II over some egghead professor's anyday.
At least science evolves when new evidence is introduced, new theories tested, new ideas floated. That is how things get better with science, and scientists are not fixed in their views, they will change them when they see evidence, theories tested and proven and adjust accordingly. Religion on the other hand says God did it all, end of story. The captain of the QEII and others are one of the reasons scientists looked at this phenomenon again and changed their approach and thinking on the frequency of these larger than normal waves and how to design ways to improve safety on ships, adjust sailing orders to avoid high risk areas and keep shipping affordable and alive as a means of transport. I would give my left nut to be 18 again and join the merchant marine or navy, anything to do with ships and the sea is fascinating.
@@Dave-id6sj Oh Gawwd! Are you all really that reactionary?! My point was this: Anyone who says that X cannot exist when X= a natural phenomenon, while someone who is entrusted with the command of a ship like the QE2 and has spent most of his life in the environment where X occurs is saying "I have seen it." I will take the word of that person over someone sitting in a lab anyday. Yes science progresses, yes science, good science will change it's views. I am just baffled by the certainty with which these people have said such a thing is impossible in the face of credible evidence to the contrary. What a bunch of knee-jerk morons you guys are. Assuming I am anti-science from that remark? Please refrain from your leaps of illogic.
@@jonericus reactionary, moron? You assume too much, it is you calling professors eggheads, and they do not say things are impossible in the face of credible evidence, you have already agreed with me on that. Leaps of illogic, that isn't even a word you fucktard.
I'd be interested to know how many of these so called scientists started their careers as naval seamen, merchant mariners, fishermen, racing or cruising yachtsmen etc and have actually made some passages at sea, let alone a winter passage in the roaring forties off the south American or South African coasts, or a north Atlantic winter passage, or perhaps the southern ocean, the bass straight between Southern Australia and Tasmania, all the above-mentioned mariners have encountered rogue waves, as a yachtsman, and as a former fabricator/welder at A&P's dry docks and ship yard in Falmouth, (formerly Appledore) I've seen the damage first hand to large vessels,d displacing 40 000 tonnes and more. Rogue waves are real and cannot be explained away by men with no sea time in laboratory coats reading data off computer models. These lab coat sailors are a joke, after you've crossed an ocean you can speak from practical and physical experience, and not before
I live in the middle of the North American continent... but I have been to the ocean and was in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain..I walked out into the ocean probably 300’ and the sand under my ft was like concrete.. and the water only was up to my chest that far out... but those waves were coming and I was quite surprised by how much power those waves had
A rogue wave ended my maritime career in October 1997. I promised myself that if I made it through I would never cast off again, and I kept my word. These waves are very real and the damage they inflict is staggering. We lost over half our containers, sherd the pins in half, all the lifeboats and probably two-thirds of the lifebuoys were swept away. We never lost propulsion, but lost three of the five generators, all the food spoiled and we were unable to make fresh water and had to turn the showers off and use the remaining fresh water for drinking and it had to be manually pumped from the tanks. Lost all eight of the antennas and both satellite servers were down for eight days. We had no way to warn or contact the outside world for the better part of fourteen days, it really was hell on the water.
Andrew Armstrong where were you?
Can you tell us more. Sounds very intense
I agree with the others.
Did you actually see the wave???
The Laviathon
They just don't make documentaries like this anymore, no constant flashbacks for people who cannot remember a damn thing happening 5 minutes ago, a godly narrator, interesting content... I miss the good times of documentaries.
I agree I think TV documentaries are just about gone. I watch Sky F1 a lot and every so often the adverts go through a phase constantly pushing documentaries about things I couldn't give 2 twats about.
But there's a guy on RUclips (you've probably heard of him) called Lemmino and he is amazing. Production quality to put Nat geo, history channel and many others to shame, amazing narration that's really compelling, an unbiased and objective look at the evidence and facts. He doesn't sensationalise things unless it's absolutely necessary. pretty much everything in his documentaries are perfect. Of course there's a good chance you've already heard of him though.
@@joeogle7729 I think I ran into him, will definitely sub.
When people start calling a ship "unsinkable" that's generally about the time I disembark.
Yeah, by now, we all know what will happen to unsinkable ships.
i agree! (lol-find a life vest/parachute or reasonable facsimile there of and make plans to travel by land!)
Yeah, thats about the time nature goes "eh? Right, hold my beer!"
I respect little in life as much as I do nature, in any form, be that animals or weather.
Call it the blessing of the Titanic
@@813lem A parachute?
I love the way more somber, callous, and relaxed pace of the older documentaries. Now it's too fast, too forced-optimistic, too reality-tv.
This can occur on any scale. It’s all about perspective. Many years ago I was south of Mobile Bay in the Gulf of Mexico in my 20’ Glastron when a storm came up. I pointed the compass north and was riding 6 to 8 foot waves in with little concern, when into my view came a wall twice that height. I don’t recall seeing any breaking at the top, but the steap drop into it was for real. The bow plunged in windshield deep, and the water funneled through and over the split windshield. That was the last time I took that boat outside site of land. No, I didn’t face a 30 meter monster that day, but my vessel wasn’t 3 football fields long either. It’s all relative.
long ago i read this on a naval engineering paper from the tech university of southampton: any vessel caught beam-on at waves 60%+ higher than its LOA will capsize. for your vessel any wave around 5m and up is just too risky.
These waves can occur in warm sunny condition's without a breath of wind too.
They can travel very long distances unfortunately.
A Hurricane can be 1000km away that you wouldn't know anything about & the wave most likely would've been created there & land on you 2000km away & destroy your boat.
@brantleyfoster021
That’s not a rogue wave then. Rogue waves aren’t generated by wind. They’re generated by fluid dynamics and transfer of energy. It’s spontaneous and depends on the sea state around you. A hurricane doesn’t generate one and send it 1000km away
This has long been one of my favorite documentaries. It has it all - thrills, mystery and science.
And narrated by Theoden. The King of Rohan.
@@percival23 Incredible.
and an epic cgi crescendo
@@percival23what can men do against such reckless waves?
@@Cinerary
Lol, Brilliant!
Don't know if anyone else noticed: Bernard Hill, who's voice narrated this documentary played Captain Smith in James Cameron's film TITANIC.
He also played Pauline Collins husband In the movie Shirley Valentine.....and the doctor in the movie about the man eating lions of Tsavo. He's one of my favorite actors!!
@@georgiaconti2691 Also King Theoden in Lord of the Rings.
RIP Bernard Hill.
RIP Theoden King!
I am a retired US Navy Sailor. 5 Round trips across the Atlantic and 1 in the North Sea, crossed the Arctic Circle. These monster waves are definitely out there!!
No you’re not
I am a boat. Its true. @@Keysandmilk
My friend (a charter captain - I was a 1st Mate) set out in a S/SE direction from Marathon, Florida, to fish. It was a gorgeous day,the seas maybe 2'-4' - which is pretty typical for the Keys. We were about 30 miles offshore when I noticed a wall of water maybe 30' high that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. We put on life jackets and safety harnesses, which were attached to a cable on the boat. There was no out-running this wave, so the captain decided to try and just get through it... As we approached the wave the bow dipped into a deep trough, and the wave crashed over us. The entire boat was completely underwater - I opened my eyes to see only green... We came out the other side, and the captain said,"what the hell was that"? We couldn't put it down to a large wake from a fully-loaded cargo vessel, as there were none around at all. Anyway, a lot of our stuff was washed overboard, and the boat suffered a lot of damage, but the engines still worked and we were still alive. On deck there was about 4' of water, and the bilge pumps were just screaming! We started bailing ferociously, and the captain said to me, "the most hard-working person in the world is a scared one on a sinking ship with a bucket". Anyway, still have no explanation for that wave - it certainly was not the weather; the wind wasn't that bad, and the Gulf Stream Current did not have seas any higher than usual...
Nice story that never happened
Amazing story. In my opinion water is far more mysterious than people think. Thanks again.
That sounds pretty terrifying. I don't see how someone could do a solo trip on a sailboat around the world. I would be afraid to sleep.
@@assrammington7961 You outed yourself perfectly as people hearing mariners tales when rogue waves weren't understood. Just flat out wouldn't believe them. If you've never been to sea, shut the fuck up. Shit like that really does happen.
Scientists: It is theoretically impossible
Mother Nature: Hold my beer
LOL LOL LOL
Shoegum j
Ba ha ha!! So true!
the very people' who do say themselves that science has limits, still will say that something can not happen ... And what if that phenomenon is beyond their scientific models?
So true. Why is it that humanity - in particular, so called scientists - has such a desperate need to believe in "order", "stability" and "laws"? Nature doesn't give a fig for all that. It is random and undirected. Virtually anything is possible.
When I hear experienced seamen describe something as "horrific and monstrous" I believe them! They truly know what those words mean.
Indeed, they have been some huge storms
With storms there where we go and sit in a corner crying, they laugh their asses of because "it's not that bad" when they are scared, it's serious.
@@wesleylarsen6597 Absolutely!!
Donald Rump?
Bob Marshall do you political radicals ever think of anything else
As another commentator said, that we should listen more to the people who have actually been there and done that seems to be one of the more common scientific discoveries these days.
Hi.
I'm an old seaman/Trawlerman from the early 50s.
in the North sea. and mates doing the Atlantic fishing.
We KNOW about walls of water.
And normally put it down to the big waves in open water losing continuation with each other IE One set from this series of storm conflicting with the waves from the prev series of wind waves from a different storm in a different direction. They occasionally combine some waves and you get the "Wall" with a hole in front. AND the thing that hurts most.
a "hollow back" where the 100ft+ plus trawler falls off the back into a deep hole which feels like concrete when you land.
You climb the face and when you crest it. there's NOTHING at the back. Just a big hole of air.
This is in the North Sea. Ocean are/will be, dimensionally deeper and larger.
I've sailed the Atlantic and the Indian from Cape Town to Aust in early '70's by myself.
There are a lot of holes in the water. and for our sizes. 35 to 50 ft yachts. Walls of water..
These scientists are too nose deep in paper and numbers.
Ask any old Seaman.
They'll tell you about the real water and it's holes and bumps.
LENGTH is the biggest enemy of modern shipping.
It's impossible to build strong enuff to totally protect ship hulls over a certain size.
They'll all be built like Ice Breakers C1 with NO windows and completely welded into complete sealed sections separate from each other. like Life boats.
The "flexing" of the length of modern shipping kills them as they straddle the crests and belly sags breaking their backbone.
when sets deep enuff and hulls long enough.
Back in the day. pre '50's.One or more North sea trawlers were lost each season along the North East coast of UK/Scotland. With crews
Usually around 11 men per boat.
Another thing was Icing. "Black Ice" at sea.= Top Heavy boat.
she rolls and trawl drags her down.
We were saved one season "56. a very bad yr. We were on a Steam Trawler. and by using all the steam lines. blew enough ice of upper works rig etc. Got us through the patch of "black Ice".
Bloody land livers have no idea.
NOTHING is safe at sea. She is bigger and stronger than ANYTHING man made could ever be.
We just said a prayer at beginning of every trip. that the bad ones would miss us.
Cause you KNOW you won't come back if it does.
I was one of the lucky ones. there are a lot of gone to god trawlermen out there.
Do you have old Seaman YUK!
@@seanthompson258
Yep Sean. OLD and sticky.77yrs old.
Still works well though.(the pump)
@@mackcarson6729 Good for you Old Salt.
Even without being a sailor or a sea vessel captain, it always made sense to me, since I was a kid. You just need to have some basic knowledge, even not to study it, but to have a feeling for the physics. If in bad storm, the current is blown in one direction, waves are huge, but linear, not to steep slopes to climb. Then if storm,, or a change of strong wind direction appears from the other side, basically the two moving water masses will collide into 1, raising it almost twice higher, and much thinner, like a wall, easy to start braking. In my opinion this happens more frequent than we think, but due to the height of the wave, they break down rather quick, and dissolve in to the similar 12 meters waves around it. This is my personal belief, and I think huge waves may be more often than we think, but it is a very rare occasion, where the waves meet, raise to a 25-30 meter, and face a ship before they breaks into a smaller 12m wave again. I mean that the 30mtr wave does not stay that tall and narrow for miles to go, like the regular waves, and you must be unlucky, to have it form before you, and break into your ship. I don't have an estimate how long do they travel with height 25mtr+, but I doubt it is more than a few miles. When you put the whole it left under, from combining both wave masses into one huge wave, you can go under regular sea level a little, right before you meet the huge wave, so even if it is not 30m from sea level 0m, it sure can be against your ship at the given moment. It just like sliding continents against each other collide, and Everest happens.
well said , those in the know , know ... mother nature cant be predicted so why scientists try is beyond me
The moment anyone says a ship is Unsinkable should be your first warning sign
1mezion yup. They said the same thing about the Titanic too.
Think that went out of fashion from April 1912, there nothing but toys out in the ocean as we now know
Waratah- Unsinkable. Sank in a rogue wave event
Munchen- Unsinkable. Sank in a rogue wave event
If I've learned one thing about the sea... the fastest way to sink a ship is to call it "unsinkable"
Ernest Shackleton knew of the monstrous waves of the South Atlantic. Incredibly he and a handful of crew navigated their way to South Georgia from the Antarctic in an open boat It's almost impossible to imagine just how terrifying that must have been. I strongly recommend reading the book Endurance, Shackleton and his crew were men made of stern stuff indeed.
Shackleton experienced freak wave himself which nearly wrecked their boat.
If you watch the wave patterns its clear there is a major wavefield, but also other wavefields at the same time.
That makes me immediately think of wave interference.
At the researchers image from sat at 34.03 in the video, you can see the main wave frequency, by vertical lines, but there is also a secundary horizontal pattern which seems to be about 1/3 of the frequency of the other wave pattern.
And there seems to be a very small third pattern, also vertical.
This causes interference, with regular sinus tops, stacking and sinus troughs stacking negatively (stacking amplitudes). That will lead to emergence of 'rogue waves', where already extra high segments stack to create it.
She had no trouble finding a number of them, in a short period of time. Thus indicating it is not rare, but actually quite common, which is also what interference patterns indicate.
I read on theory of this at present that it is now a commonly accepted phenomenon and known to be an interference pattern of 2 or more wavefields.
The current known record is from feb 4 2013, measured by a buoy in the atlantic ocean in between scotland and iceland. The significant wave tops were measured to be 19 m. Which means the top waves had to be 38 m and those not being rogue or freak waves....
Those would be even much higher. Since those are typically more than 2 times the highest waves (the 38m ones) in a wave field, those would rise to be 80+ m. Thats 260+ feet high...
The devastation is not the height of the wave, bc ships float after all, but the fact these still follow main wavefield frequency, leading to very steep incline and decline at both ends. A ship would have to go through the wave, but that water will come crashing down on the ship with huge force. Smaller ships have more chance of surviving probably than big ships, bc of the high angle. It will lift the ship, but since the sinus is small in width, the front and back of the ship will not be supported by water, which means it will break the ship in half. And still means the top part of the wave will crash on the ship. It would just disappear all of a sudden.
Any surfer can tell you, you spend time in the line-up and every once in awhile a wave will come thru that is bigger by at least half of all the previous waves. and if you are out there for 4-5 hours, there is always one monster that comes in that is more than twice the size of the biggest wave all day.
After watching this video today, I was going to comment something similar to you Paul Beebe but I thought I'd find another surfers comment on here... and I'm a 70 year old ex surfer from California and Australia...
Surfer here and I can confirm. Very fascinating subject and as someone posted satellites have shown there are many more roque waves than previously understood and we know very little at best. We also are boaters are you have to have respect for the water and be very aware as conditions can change quickly.
hmm
Not a rogue wave though obviously, no one is surviving that lol
@@maxjudge020 Rogue waves don't have to be enormous, though. We know what they are now, and it's, as others have said, where multiple waves run into each other because you have faster waves catching up with slower ones, and if they match up just right, you end up with one wave that is several times bigger than the surrounding waves. Of course, if the surrounding waves are only a foot tall, then your rogue wave might only be 3 or 4 feet tall... but in comparison to all the other waves, that is relatively big. That's what a rogue wave is, so I have no doubt these happen way more often than people think they do - they just only think of the BIG ones. There's even a video on here now of a wave machine that shows exactly how rogue waves are generated.
"We found that the abnormal waves were not normal."
Thats deep...
The scariest time of my Life was aboard the QE2 Nov 1986. We hit a huge Storm and "depression" in the Sea causing 40-50
ft waves. The rolling of the Ship was severe and most Venues had to be closed. The Ship received a lot of damage & Passengers were sequestered in their State Rooms for a few days - doing this after a Visit to the Infirmary for Seasickness Shots. The QE2 is a MASSIVE Ship but that Storm made us feel like a Toy Boat of little significance. The rolling pitch was extreme and if you wanted to just stand in place, you had to do so with a very wide stance or you would be on the floor. The Ship was creaking and moaning for Days, interrupted by crashes of Dishes from the kitchen areas and the many Bars around the Ship. When a box of Kleenex Tissue flew off my Vanity, traveled past 2 Queen Size Beds, through the Foyer and into the Bath on the other side of my Room, well, I knew it was pretty bad. Every night I would look out my window, a sort of evening ritual as the Moon always looked beautiful across the expanse of water. My StateRoom was about 5 or 6 stories about the water line. One night when I looked out expecting to see an infinite field of water, I saw instead what seemed like a dark curtain obstructing my view. ?! I was visually confused a moment or two trying to make out what my eyes were seeing. Looking harder, I finally realized that what I was viewing was not a Wall or dark Curtain but a massive WAVE and our Ship, at that moment, was deep down in a trough between two gigantic waves on either side of us. As I stood there looking, the wave or curtain started getting shorter and shorter and when I looked down for the water line, it was now about 15 stories or more below as the Ship rose and was riding another wave up the other side! It was a stunning moment and sight and even though I'm not one prone to panic or fright, I did and was! The Captain did an amazing Job navigating through those waters and we arrived safely in NY,, a bit behind schedule due to being rerouted, but we were all in one piece. Only objects and the Ship suffered. I am beyond happy that I never viewed this video/Doc before taking that ride or I would have gone far beyond fright should I have thought about a Rogue Wave! 40-50 ft waves in the Middle of the Atlantic were enough for me!
Wow It sounds very freighting indeed, great story thnx, 👍
Dates are off: From October 1986 to May 1987, QE2 underwent a major refit at the Lloyd Werft yard at Bremerhaven in Germany transforming her from an ageing steamship to a state of the art diesel-electric motorship.
As a child, my parents travelled around the globe on Merchant Marine ships with us kids. On a voyage from Fremantle (Perth) to Capetown, we encountered a monstrous gale that was so tall the ship's company spanned nets across the entire superstructure to ensure no one fell overboard. As a child (9), I was somewhat oblivious to the real danger involved and still went out on deck, only to be amazed by what appeared to be troughs into which we sank so deep that the oncoming waves appeared to be greater than our ship, and when we rose out above them, the crashing back into the trough was like the hammering of a farrier. Even at that age I was impressed and quickly returned to the safety of the insides of the ship, but on multiple occasions, we were hit with waves that washed over the superstructure and arrived in Capetown with damage to the ship.
I ended up in a career in the Navy where I didn't go to sea, despite wanting to do so, but I never forgot the voyages I took across the North and South Pacific, the Indian, and South and North Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean. They instilled fear, respect, and a love for the sea that abides to this day.
Another person that could have written a book or two on the life guy ou led...Wow!!
I have been on a ferry in the English Chanel in winter & one crossing I remember as it was really rough! The ferry was been hit by big waves & it was rather frightening I can tell you!
I've noticed that the time someone spends at sea seems to be directly proportional to their prowess as story teller. Sailors never seem to run short of stories or anecdotes.
That's because sailors aren't in the sitting room watching the telly all day long. 🙂 I could truly fill a book with the crazy stories of my life, and my son is always on me about doing so... perhaps... one day... @@Apoc2K
Capetown is a interesting area to travel.
I like the fact that he says if these waves a frequent they pose a serious danger to shipping. mariners will be rolling in their graves saying no shit sherlock we have been talking about them for centuries
yeh right
Yes, but most of them haven't seen them either and many that have, have not survived. So there really wasn't much knowledge about them, especially none that could have helped to protect against them.
But it does show that you should never been so sure that you understand something. Water waves are very complicated things and you should never claim you understand the dynamics of such complicated phenomena if you do not have a complete microscopic physical model, but only models for certain macroscopic cases.
Daniel Daniel
It's funny but there is that non-linear model that describes liquids perfectly but it is a pain in the butt to use in boat simulations because you have to deal with multiple order differentials and exponentiations and there in that linearised model that approximates liquids almost ok BUT it is far easier to be used in simulations because the key feature is that it is linear.
GUESS WHICH MODEL THE ENGINEERS USED.
The scientists were already aware that freak waves can happen, it was already predicted by their non-linear models but the engineers were like "well yes they might happen but actually no because I don't feel like it should be the case".
@@cezarcatalin1406 If you look back, this linear model was apparently developed to estimate wave heights based on wind measurements for landing of soldiers on shores in WW2. It had to work for a very limited setting, in a storm you would not try anyways. And they just kept using it because it was the best they had and it worked most of the time.
With regard to the scientists: yes, they knew that better mathematical models predicted freak waves, as they said in the documentary. But they weren't sure if it was a real thing. Just because an equation predicts something, it does not mean that it is there, you have to do experiments and observe it. That is, why we are measuring gravitational waves today.
And apparently they talked to maritime experts but of course they had never observed such waves scientifically.
They don't really care to make any changes because they have all these losses pencil out with the law of averages and raise the rates accordingly. The big ones just say Oh well, and collect on the insurance. They don't care about the sailors. They make so much money on the whole it's only a pittance for them. Lots of Love
Freak waves have been reported for centuries, most captains being stripped of ship and humiliated. Only until fairly recently we know now.
When I was five, I went out a day or two before a hurricane with my dad to pick up our lobster pots. We were barely out onto the water when we were hit by a rogue wave. I wouldn't go on the ocean for years after. Our boat was 25 feet long yet we went straight up into the air with the water coming through the windows. Then the engine screamed out of the water on the way down as we nose dived. I just remember by dad trying to pretend everything was ok even though I know we almost died. I was like a baby possum hanging into the back of my chair for dear life.
Then it happened AGAIN.
Now I understand the air pressure from the hurricane, even though we couldn't sense it, meant that the relatively small ~8-12 foot storm waves (big but manageable rollers) became giant.
So was Bigfoot, Unicorns, Kraken, etc.
Before a time where information is freely available and cross-verification became standard, mis-information was widespread. We know now that freak waves tales were true because we have real data.
So if you ask me to believe in Bigfoot and Unicorns today, i'd still laugh at you regardless if u actually found 1. Because i cannot go by merely hearsay, i need hard proofs.
@@TheGunz0001 To get evidence, you have to look for it. Hardly anyone was, least not the scientific community, in the case of rogue waves. When lots of people make claims, they should at least be investigated, rather than just dismissing based on the theoretical linear model that clearly was never proven in the first place. I can understand not identifying this phenomenon perhaps way back in the 1800's before the scientific community was as established, but not until 1995? That's embarrassing.
humans: **call ship unsinkable**
the ocean: *how dare you oppose me mortal.*
These scientists violated the basic tenet of science: if your model contradicts the observed reality, you need to change the model. Dismissing stories of experienced captains as "fisherman's tall tales" was just arrogant.
Also: 100 ton per m2? That's... bad.
Did they dismiss it or did they lack any robust or measurable data?
I agree that scientists are loathe to make predictions without good data- and in general I agree with them. However dismissing first-hand accounts as " impossible" because it exceeds historical knowledge or doesn't fit current understanding is, indeed...
Arrogant.
Your model is only as good as your input.
GIGO
The problem is, while a model should not trump observed results, eye witness accounts are also notoriously unreliable without hard data to back them up. There probably should have been more people looking to see if there was any truth to it with hindsight, but I can at least understand why it took a freak wave actually hitting an oil rig with measuring equipment for people to notice.
You're way off. Scientific research needs data. Fisherman's testimony isn't data. Once they were able to get real-world data, then they were able to create new models, and a clearer sight was visible.
Is nothing to do with being "arrogant".
@@MaterLacrymarum Fishermen's observations are data. That is the first step in the scientific method. Make observations (fishermen have reported numerous accounts of rogue waves). Here's how science works:
Hypothesis 1: Rogue waves are more common than the linear model permits. (Null Hypothesis 1: Fishermen's reports do not represent actual phenomena.) Prediction 1: If carefully, systematically, and empirically monitored, rogue waves will be observed significantly more often than predicted by the linear model. Experiment 1: Comprehensive survey of ocean waves via satellite. Result 1: Rogue waves occur much more frequently than linear model suggests. Conclusion 1: The linear model must be a) modified to accommodate this evidence or b) rejected.
Prediction 2: A random sample of seamen will attest to having seen rogue waves far more often than models predict. Experiment 2: RANDOMLY select experienced seamen (perhaps with criteria that they have sailed through x-number of force-8 gales or something similar, and through deep water) and survey them for accounts of rogue waves. Correct for years of experience for each subject surveyed. Result 2: ? (I don't know if this has been done.) Conclusion 2: ? If the number of seamen per year experience report rogue waves far in excess of those predicted by the linear model, that is evidence that weakens the linear model and supports the need for an alternate model. (Note: Self-report data are valid for statistical analysis, though weaker as evidence than empirical evidence as in Experiment 1. But if you go to them for a random, representative sample instead of only taking data from those who come to you, that gives this kind of evidence real validity.)
Hypothesis 3: Based on results of Experiment 1, a new, non-linear model of rogue waves can be calculated. Prediction 3: A new model will be derived from existing data. Experiment 3: Calculate the new model based on existing data. Result 3: ? (I don't buy that "model" at 39:00, but I think one could be calculated.) Conclusion 3? The model is expected to be predictive of future rogue waves.
Hypothesis 4: The new model will surpass the linear model in predictive accuracy. Prediction 4: The model created under Experiment 3 will predict probabilities concerning conditions, frequencies, severity, and regions of future rogue waves. Etc...
And so on. This is how the scientific method works. This would make a tidy little thesis if continued through a new, validated wave model. :)
Since this video is so old, I expect all this work has been done by now though.
That was my thought. Scientist can be arrogant and will go to great lengths to protect their theories etc. Like you said if the evidence contradicts it enough, you should take another look. The greatest od this arrogance is with pharmaceuticals. 😞
Very interesting. I wish they had a more update one about this to see what else they have learned in the last 17 years. Great video though.
Published: 14 March 2019
"Rogue wave occurrence displays a mostly decreasing trend, but the relative height - or severity - of the waves is increasing. "
www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41099-z
Rogue waves are caused when faster waves catch up with slower waves. If they all manage to line up at the right time, you end up with a wave several times higher than the ones around it. But rogue waves don't HAVE to be huge, like these... if you have waves that are, on average, only a foot tall, then your rogue wave will maybe only be 3 or 4 feet tall. There's plenty of info out there about the cause and there's even a video on here of a wave machine that shows how rogue waves form. It's simple physics.
@@JustAnotherBuckyLover can you comment the link
@@librautumn21 ruclips.net/video/AjaioEX1OBU/видео.html
@@librautumn21 And if my previous comment got caught in the spam filter, then replace the end of this URL with AjaioEX1OBU - or just Google Rogue Wave Generator. Or go to the channel named "HD1080ide" and it's from about 3 years ago.
Humans: This ship is unsinkable
Mother Nature : HOld my beer
Titanic: Well. you're screwed. Trust me, I speak from experience. Humans said that about me, now look at me.
Tell all those dead men who have met their deaths by these waves...that they were mistaken....
well how would you do that they're dead
@Da Sheat but it is real. It's just you can't use dead people as evidence there are a lot of ways to die at sea
I grew up on an island in west Norway (the country that recorded a freak wave for the first time.)
I lived on a very small island, it didn't even have a hospital, only a doctors office, with two doctors. In order to get off the island, you had to take a boat, either a ferry, or the smaller high speed katamaran boats. I preffered the katamaran, as it was faster, so it was more fun to go on deck and be nearly blown away by the wind. One time, my sister, mother and I was going to the big city (Bergen), which was an almost three hour boat ride in said boat. Now, western Norway is directly exposed to the north sea, plus the fact that the island i lived on had very few islands in front, to stop waves and wind. Generally; cold, wet, windy. In order to get to the city as quickly as possible, the boat would have to go outside of the other islands that mostly block the big waves from the north sea. This meant that for a good 30 minutes, we had no coverage from the wind and waves from the north sea. As we were approching this area, the crew on the boat instructed me and my sister to go inside. Apperently, this was an abnormally windy day. (That takes a lot, as the wind is generally very high). The boat was hitting the waves straight on, an bouncing on them. I liked that very much. Out of the blue, we could feel the boat drop down, then turn as vertical as i have ever witnessed a boat be, before we saw the windows completely washed over with water, and the boat dropped again, only to keep bouncing on the waves that now seemed tiny. I was in shock. I think we were lucky to be on such a small, sturdy boat, I doubt the large ferries would have handled that. After that, we were much more catious with checking the weather before going on that boat.
So let me get this straight-
Mariners for centuries have told scientists about freak waves; rogue waves. And for centuries scientists have told them to their faces they’re lying?
Boy I hope you scientists ate that humble pie in front of these mariners.
some scientists are funded to lie..........in this case prob by the passenger cruise lines
Proving once again, that "scientists" MUST ALWAYS take experience far more seriously than math.
Observation always trumps theory, but this isn't about science. It's more to do with the personalities of the individuals working in said field. They had their minds made up without even bothering to gather evidence and data, yet again. Regardless of the observations. So very scientific of them.
You put scientists in quotes. Are you saying scientists arent real or do you just not understand what quotes are for?
As Einstein said, a single experiment could prove him wrong. Except so many things proved the linear model wrong over the years I completely understand why you hint those scientists who worked on that are not, strictly speaking, scientists.
Here is my equation...... ocean + me = Hell to the naw
You get it
Best thing about this documentary is that King Theoden is the narrator.
Bernard Hill. Great actor.
I knew I recognized that voice. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was King Theoden!
He has a beautiful voice.
Or more fittingly, - the captain of the Titanic
Summon the Rohrhiram.,..they could take this wave.
Older documentary but really good information. Well worth watching.
My dad was a shrimper 20 years ago and he has seen these waves in the gulf and the Caribbean. They scared him enough to get the hell off a boat.
How'd he survive?
@@maxjudge020 he saw them on tv
@@maxjudge020he lied
A few years ago, I read 3 books by Erik Hiscock, a world-famous sailor. He states that there is a fundamental rule of the sea, that any time the barometric pressure falls at a certain rate,YOU ARE SAILING INTO A HURRICANE. I survived 'Halsey's typhoons' during WW2, when great damage was done to the fleet, and 3 destroyers sunk. (My ship,DD540 lost a man overboard,unobserved}. So, there was no excuse for Halsey sailing into those typhoons(Hurricanes at sea). There were hundreds of ships in those typhoons, and every Annapolis grad knew that formula, yet we plowed ahead into devastation.No excuse for this gross error. The fleet had refueled the evening before. It got too rough,so it was called off. Three destroyers had not been refueled. These were the three destroyers that SANK! They were riding too high on the water, and thus more top-heavy. Those ships had been ordered NOT TO TAKE ON SALT WATER BALLAST, because the higher ups thought they could be refueled faster, the next morning. Every Captain is responsible for his ship; in fact, they have to sign a receipt for it when they are given command. If the three Captains of the ships that sank had ignored the big brass, and taken on salt water ballast,they probably would have survived. I do not consider them to be qualified Captains. Surely each of them knew the Golden Rule of Hurricanes. They were all Annapolis grads; they just did not have brass balls enough to ignore their orders not to take on ballast.
The next morning, the big brass ordered that no ships were to stop to pick up any survivors, for fear of submarines. However one young Captain of a destroyer disobeyed the order, and rescued 55 survivors He was awarded the Legion of Merit . He was immediately promoted a full rank. That ship was USS Tabberer, A DE, even smaller than a destroyer. Google it to read a great story of a courageous rescue.
My thoughts are with all those lost at sea.
Robert -- i bet it’s in the tens of millions in just the last several hundred years
@@thomaspayne6866 get off the drugs
The music in these old documentaries is always so awesome!
Scientists: that is not possible. Also scientists: let me explain how that happened
At 11:00 in, a man explains the odds of a 30 meter wave in a storm where the average wave is 12 meters.
He describes the odds as 0.00001 and goes on to explain this would be once in every 10,000 years. I'm not sure why he referenced years, as I would understand this to be 1 in 10,000 iterations. If I am correct and it is 1 in 10,000 waves, the odds are nowhere near as remote as this man claims.
average of about one wave every 15 to 20 seconds between waves in swells that size
about 3 or 4 days if the swell sticks around that long
Khaled Adams He said 10 to the-5, which would be once in 100,000 years; not once in 10,000 years.
Why years though, why not once in 100,000 waves (not years)?
Baruch - waves and storms dont travel in years. the guy has no idea what he is talking about. Read the perfect storm and it is explained very well.
Almost no drammatization, no shit reenactments, no 5 second interviews from celebrities who fell of some boat, authentic footage (and plenty of it) - this is how quality documentaries should be made
ruclips.net/video/KId4iI7NgQ0/видео.html
The video above was shot on board the protector. I was on board the courageous which was the nearest vessel to her. At the time of this wave we were less than 15 miles apart. The North Sea is notorious because it is relatively shallow and when the strong winds pick up seas can build very quickly. We were also hit by a very similar wave luckily not sustaining any damage. That particular day the wind was force 12 S. West and as the low passed over it maintained Gail force nine Southeast. The sea state had fallen slightly but as the wind was now coming from 90° you were experiencing the odd wave 50% larger than others. The other phenomena from the wind changing direction was the huge holes that would appear between the two different waves from the two different directions. The biggest problem we had keeping the boat central to the waves meant a course of roughly due south. This meant that you were getting waves on the port and starboard quarter. This in itself wasn't an issue it just made the boat uncomfortably Rowley. It's when you came across the considerably larger wave with the considerably larger whole before and after it. This made walking an alleyway extremely precarious especially when you were ascending or descending a stair well. We were all very glad to get back to Aberdeen at the end of our stint at sea.
My grandfather was at sea all is life. He was in the Merchant Navy and sailed the seven seas several times over. He then took a job with Caledonian MacBrayne's working the west coast of Scotland until he retired. He was adamant that every seventh wave that roles in to the beach is slightly larger than the six previous. And out at sea every seventh wave is fractionally larger also. He was adamant that rogue waves were when the seventh wave merged with the seventh wave which merged with several other seventh waves creating the one-off so-called hundred-year wave. I spent time watching the sea in shallow water as well as deep and I'm convinced my grandfather was right. Interestingly on a freshwater loch the seventh wave rule to me does not seem to apply. Perhaps in the great Lakes in Canada with the water covering a far greater expanse might prove the seventh wave theory also.
Wow!! How tall was that wave?
All of these so-called "linear models" of freak waves were designed by ship builders so they could insure these ships from liability. But ship captains and crews know better. Freak waves are incredibly common. How else do you account for so many huge ships going down without a mayday or single survivor? "Once in ten thousand years," my ass.
The linear model was made by physicists, not by a conspiracy of insurers. It is how almost all waves behave, and exceptions seemed to be perfectly explainable with wind-against-current phenomena. Quantum physics are understood only by a small field of specialists, and between them and mariners, there was not enough shared evidence that would have justified applying these particular equations to the ocean. It took a specially equipped oil rig in just the right place and time, and then a bunch of radar satellites to produce that evidence.
+steve1978ger
You miss my point entirely. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO CREATED THE 'LINEAR MODEL' THAT SHIP INSURERS FOLLOW. It was simply USED by them to keep their freighters sailing, with minimal cost-to-accident ratios. The US government, for example, continually crunches and manipulates numbers every election cycle to "prove" that unemployment levels are low, when in fact,
the current unemployment in the US is around 20%, NOT 4.5. My argument is sound and true. Sailors knew about rogue waves DECADES before, "a bunch of radar satellites produced that evidence." High sounding scientific theories have never kept up with simple human experience, sailors knew that the earth was round long before Columbus left Spain.
Stop being so STUPID.
tiffsaver --exactly I agree
tiffsaver u seems to be practical like me....that if humans have seen these freaks waves....& it's getting dangerous & people dying...why not listening to the practical experience of mariners..-!
And you would think that seamen are a surerstitious lot... I'm generally not superstitious but I would never ever call a ship "unsikable" ever again...ever!
Stop calling ships unsinkable if you don't want to sink in them!
Chi Jiguan the word unsinkable is wrong. I am a Muslim and such words are deamed blasphemy as everything is in God's hand. Whatever we can think of God is capable of doing and even more. If God is able to create and destroy the entire universe then he sure is able to sink two or two billion shipsbat a blinkbof an eye. So in short, we don't have such words as "unsinkable" / "unbreakble"
I thought exactly the same thing! As soon as he used that word...😱
Titanic is absolutely unsinkable now. I would insure it. :D
Hey.
The ONLY ship that's "UNsinkable"
Is the one already lying on the bottom.
Mack Carson Davy Jones approves
I took a cruise to Mexico as a graduation gift back in 1985 we were hit by a “small” wave around 20 feet high it knocked out all the power and we were in the dark for the next 8 hours I’ve never been back in the ocean not even the beach that wave is in my nightmares some days and it was a “small” wave
Rogue Waves cause damage no matter how big they are.
They are completely different to the linear variety.
They tear Ship's apart.
10:00 The Aussie speaker explains simply why such waves shouldn't exist. He just uses a bell-curve to say they are unlikely. He uses the analogy of a class of children. Their heights will group around the average. Sure, there's only a tiny chance that one child will be twice as tall as average. But what if you are hit by ONE CHILD ON THE SHOULDERS OF ANOTHER CHILD? That's the correct analogy for these waves.
Also his 'one in ten thousand years' is nonsense. That would assume that the sea produces only one wave per year. He means 'one in ten thousand waves', presumably.
Use an incorrect equation to guess the frequency of big waves as apposed o actually measuring the waves. Then ignore sailors who actually see the the waves. Sounds like modern science.
Ancient Bear Comments like yours scare me. I wish everyone were able to get a real, university science education (any field), because ignorance of what science is and how it operates is dangerous.
No, he does mean “one in ten thousand years.” The linear wave model predicts that if a series of waves with a significant wave height (average height of the highest 1/3 of the waves) of 12m were to keep going for ten thousand years in a certain area, there would be only one wave with a height of 30 meters in that area during that ten thousand years. Obviously, conditions in the actual ocean vary over time, so it’s not like the significant wave height in a given area is actually going to stay exactly the same all of the time for ten thousand years, but given that significant wave height in the ocean is not usually larger than 12m (that is a typical significant wave height in a rough storm), 12m a good benchmark to use to predict how many 30m waves will happen in the actual ocean in thousand years.
Obviously, the linear model is not sufficient, but the way the scientist described its results is correct.
@@LukasWeber64 existence of rogue waves had been confirmed in norway i. 2005. If you don't believe me check wikipedia article on rogue waves.
@Da Sheat yes
I accidentally clicked on this while trying to do something while watching a different video. Then before I could click back this documentary caught my attention and hasn't let go.
Between the narrator, music, interesting scientists and so on it's just fascinating.
Thanks so much for posting this.
Also it's the ocean. Anyone who studies the ocean needs to accept that just about anything can and will happen.
Listen to those who have spent generations on the waves. Just listen because in every legend, myth, tale there is generally a grain of truth somewhere.
Scientists didn't believe in mountain gorillas for a long time even though the locals kept telling them about them. Recently it happened again with a rare and 'newly discovered' species of bonobo chimps.
You don't have to believe the locals on things but you do need to listen. Then you can try to find proof.
I believe in trust but verify. So I'll trust the locals know what they are saying but will look for proof too.
Also never ever call a ship or anything unsinkable. That's just daring something to take you down.
One of my favorite documentaries, along with Killer Lakes and the one on supermassive black holes. I wish I hadn't taken those three off my DVR to free up space.
I have photographs of one of the Royal navy ships my dad served on in the Irish Sea encountering that "confused non linear sea state". The waves were over the fantail and coming from different directions, you can see some of the officers on the open bridge and they look worried, the photographer was my dad, and the ship was HMS Loch Fyne.
Love to see the pictures sir. Thank you for sharing this story
Freak waves. Late March 1965, North Atlanltic, Vicinity, Between northern Scotland and Iceland. On the 750 tone Icelandic trawler Ardbarker out of Akereery Iceland. We had moterd from Grimsby U.K, We were heading to Reykjavik Iceland, On Monday 1800-30 hours I was put on helm watch, The bearing compass was set to 261 degrees, So 270 degrees is Dew west, The bearing compass was left at 261 throughout my watch. To 2100. Hour's. We had a comfortable warm following wind from the east, 10 to 15 knots. The fish hold was empty, I think ?, The trawler was responsive to the the wheel. Every thing was going well, We were making our way over medium size occasion rollers, That were following our coarse, 261 degrees, After a couple of hours we had climbed to the top of a roller, And the next roller was very large, The top looked to be a mile away, Every thing was going well, It's going to take some extra time to get up there, Another 20 minuets I was having trouble in holding the coars at 261 and had moved to 251, After an other 10 minutes I had to move to 241 to hold a straight coarse, After another ten minutes it was getting very difficult to hold on 241. The skipper was standing back he could see the bearing compass, I had been running off coars for 30 minutes and he had not said any thing, So I decided to try and go back to coars 261, But the boat took off to starboard, We were swinging past 280 then I called out , She's getting away on me, The skipper leaned over me and took one of the wheels finuyles and gave the wheel two hard bumps to port, Then steped back an left me with the wheel, To read the bearing compass from the wheel, I would have to lean over to the left, I stayed leaning over the compass, It was mooviing back to coars slowly, I would stay till we were back on coarse, Then see if I could hold the the coarse. When I looked up the see had changed, There was a deep trough on our starboard side 30' 40' feet deep, And on the other side of the trough at the top, Where was was a standing wave, + 10' feet high, On our port side, We were on the side of a massive wave, Our 750 tone boat was looking very small, But we were still on coarse, I turned to the skipper a big man + 6' 4" , His mouth was wide open, his complection was gray, My imeadet thought was he was having a fit, Or stroke, Now there was another standing wave up ahead, This wave took all my attention. A sick skipper, 4 men, 4 boys and a woman below, The boat was racing, I hope they are holding on, The run in to the wave was looking good, I wanted to take at 60 degrees, It was a noisy crash, The noise rebounded for 4 or 5 seconds, The boat just hung there on the wave, We were now at 45 degrees to the wave, We were standing on that vertical wave, Bow up 25 degrees, I shouted, UP, And the boat slowly began to climbe on to the wave, My shouting must have aroused the skipper, He was standing there looking at me, He looked a bit dazed, Now we were both in the middle of this lumpy wave that was doing it's own thing, What ever that was. We were on a large circle of up welling water that was the same size as the boat, And more water was being pushed up, Untill the boat began to slide off the up welling of water, We slid off starboard side first, In to a trough, The engine was still runing at 3/4 speed, The boat seemed to be in dead water, We were not moving, The skipper started talking to me, He was thanking me for something, We started to move slowly forward, We were still on coarse, The boat began to pick up speed, All the way through this, The skipper or me had not touched the engine telegraph, It was set at 3/4 speed. We were going faster, It looked as if we were going down a shoot, Then the engine revved up as if the prop was out of the water, The skipper was talking very loud and not to me, I assumed he was talking to his Icelandic deities, Othin and all the rest. He sounded very confident, I was not familiar with surfing, But that 750 ton trawler was surfing a long, We were coming off that wave in a hurry. The wave dissipated, We seemed to be in dead water we were not moving, The engine was still singing away as though the prop was out of water, After a minute the engine side down, And we started to mòove and we were still on coarse, We seemed to be in the wake of a very large ship, The wake was some 200 yards wide, And on our heading 261 degrees, Things settled down and we motors along for 15 minutes or so. Then one of the two deck hands came up to the bridge, He looked calm and composed, He was there to take his helm watch I assumed that he had slept through the incident, 5 minutes layer the 1st mate came up to take up the bridge watch , Now he was agitated and frayed around the edges, He must of had a rough time through the bumping and banging, If he had tryed to look out the galley adore during any one of those incidents he would had a scar.
What was happening on that wave was a bit more than strange, I think the skipper had seen some thing, What I don't know, in 1965 most people thought a big submarine would be 1,200 tones and may be 140' feet long, But the u,s, had + 3,000 tones subs and the Russians had 38,000 tone subs, And they both had some type of weponized supper sonar, I wonder what the old man put in the ships log book. It was a bumpy ride on that big lumpy wave, And was some one trying to make things difficult for trawlers on the high seas, With weponized souper sonar, Over.
On that ocean trip in the north Atlantic in 1965, I was on the 750 ton fishing Trawler Ardbacker, Out of Akereery Iceland, We were with a sister ship the Sletbacker, After two days the Sletbacker was chased away, I was told she had taken the eastern route to Reykjavik, The Sletbacker arrived in Reykjavik a day after the Ardbacker, She was covered in Ice as we had been, It was Easter week-end 1965. Our 1st mate and my self were left to look after the ship, He could not get in to the dock area where the Sletbacker was moored, It was moored in a restricted dock area, He brought back a lokel newspaper with a picture of the Sletbacker covered in Ice, There was long article in Icelandic which the mate read to me, There was no mention of the Ardbacker, But there was another article that concerned the Mate, A volcano was beginning to erupt in Vestminair, We had passed by there two days prior. When the crew came back to the ship there was a drunken brawl, As in mutiny, And I was in the middle of it, They we're all very young, And very drunk. The Mate and myself put them in there bunks in protest. I watch over them through the nighte. I was reading an Ian Fleming novel, I fell asleep about 6 am and woke up a few hours later out at sea, The drunks and my self did not want to be out there, Shanghed again, The Skipper wanted to go to the Volcano, The net was damaged, And the running gear. The skipper said, I will feed you, If you work I will pay you, Every one settled down, I took to repairing the net, The skipper was pleased with that, He said, I give you lead-Hand money, Then the 1st Mate told me I was 2nd Mate. But I had been through 5 storms that year, And I was fraying at the edges, And the young one's, They had good sea legs, But they were not comfortable with the fish, As in terrified. I would have liked to have seen the ships log of that trip, But I doubt that records are kept.
@@jackduffy1817 I love reading these. I wish you had more to share.
@@jackduffy1817 should of written a book with these tales lol
JasonJason210, Thank you Jason for your kind words, I'll make a few more comments Under the heading of.
OUT OF HARMS WAY.
I was hoping that some one could access the Trawler Ardbacker's log book,
Any how, Easter, 54 years ago, We had arrived in Reykjavik Iceland on Friday morning 9,30 AM. Most of the crew were preparing to leave the ship to spend the 4 day holiday ashore, This included the cook & his Lady friend the Valcury, Who I found out was second cook, And a British trained Registered Nurs. So I referd to hear as Dare friken Valcury, The skipper had spoken to me and asked that I stay with the 1st Mate to watch the ship, In those 4 days no body came near the ship, What did they know that I did not, I found out, The press gang's operait in England and Iceland, You have A little drinky, Next day you wake up at sea, This has happend to me on two seperet occasions, So the 1 st mate and me, And the 4 teenaged boys who had not been introduced to the fish, That was to be my job, And keeping the Nets in repair, The mate borrowed some money off of me to buy groceries, This that and the other, Which turned out to eaquil the price of 5 bottles of, Brenavin, Icelandic Snake-bite. Then on Saturday the teen aged boy's disappeared, The Mate said the boys had gone to a rayve or some thing. An other coincidence, The two deck hands, The cook & the Valcury, The 1st Mate, And my self, 6 of us were all the same age. Well the same year. On Saturday morning our sister ship Sletbacker turned up covered in Ice, We could see her from our morings, The mate tryed to go to the Sletbacker,s mornings, But was unable to access their dock, It must have been a bonded area, In the early eavening the mate turned up all frayed up and began talking about a volcano eruption on Vestminair, Some 90 miles due west of Reykjavik.
1. A, OUT OF HARMS WAY.
1965 April, Active volcanic eruption on Soutsare, Very close to, Vestminar. 90 miles west of Reykjavik. I will give an account of the incident in a few days. Jack Duffy, 2nd Mate, Rigger, Net-lacer. Submarine Chasser, And we the crew were the bait. Two men from White hall were passengers. On the trawler Ancaster out of Hull, With stark stairing made CPT Jack Ahab. And the ships runner, Commander Beal, Who stayed ashore with his Goon Frank Orm. And I just hung on to life in storm after storm, And that was the fun part of the trip. They said it was a fun place to be, The Vicinity of Bear-Island, It was just a he'll hole to me.
This is an excellent documentary. Very well presented, very well based in fact. Nowadays there still is no clear way on how these things form, and with ships continuing to encounter rogue waves and be lost to them, a theory known as 'modulational instability' looks very promising
Hundreds of years of mariners losing their lives, their stories about monster waves were many times thought as something crazy they made up...maybe they were not that crazy at that time.
true
Hundreds of years? You mean thousands of years!
Its less about belief and more about the fact that the scientific models couldn't explain them. But with quantum physics and the like we're starting to understand more.
Fascinating documentary. I live in South Africa, our entire coastline is littered with wrecks. Only the east coast was mentioned here. No mention made of the West Coast, nicknamed "Skeleton Coast" with good reason!
The narrators amazing. He was actually in the titanic film.
Tank you, Barry. Great documentary. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Merry Christmas 2018. God bless you and your loved ones.
as soon as someone says they have a linear, predictable model about a natural phenomenon...............you know they are lying
the only thing predictable about mother nature is that she will be un....
It might not be tomorrow the next day or even next year, but it will come and it will erase everything that came before it. Whatever it may be, a wave,asteroid,volcano, or a species of "intelligent' animal. It wont fit any chart, graph or equation. The time line may be shorter, it may happen more frequently but in a remote area, a well kept secret if you will, Mother doesnt have to tell everything, just what she is in the mood to tell us, and only when she happens to be in the mood to talk.
#HUBRIS
Absolutely.
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in nature is linear or digital. Nature is 100% analogue. There is in fact no such thing as a perfect straight line nor a perfect circle in nature ... only in theoretical equations or by rough observations. The closer you look the more quantum everything is. Linear, digital is a human's left brain, rational attempt to create "sensible order" out of a cosmos which is in fact 100% chaos until "ordered" by our own minds. And ultimately that's all God is, a human invention to explain the unexplainable.
Well, maybe not lying, but certainly not correct.
@@thedolphin5428 i argue that same point all the time so bravo, our minds like order, but disorder/chaos is the natural order. The heisenberg uncertainty principle, everything is probabilistic, their model is obviously incorrect. Then again models havent really gotten to the quantum level. When the quantum computer is "complete", then perhaps our models will be capable of approaching the infinate possibility of the natural world. ...oops i should have completed documentary before replying they did use shroedingers equation but discarded it lol. My bad.
Idk why but the sound of SOS in Morse Code gives me the chills. It's such a rudimentary technology you just know something must have gone horribly horribly wrong.
And my God look at the pins at 6:20!! Those were straight vertical pins, can you imagine the force it must have took to literally rip them out of the block like that?? Christ, I just hope no one suffered for a long while.
I sailed on the Bilderdyk as a 2nd Mate. She was sister ship of Munchen
This is so well done. And. The music fits it perfectly. The truth is ominous. No matter what size your ship is. There is a wave out there that can knock it over, sink it, and quite possibly kill you. This program is why I'll never go on an ocean cruise anywhere.
Just take 6 people and have them start jumping on a trampoline in order. Either at the same time or one after the other. Wait until they get out of sync and one goes shooting into the air. I could have saved these scientists a lot of money.
Not with that logic! NO trampoline can duplicate Mother Nature in the ocean when she is angry -- NO one! Because frequently it's what happens on the sea floor with erupting volcanoes and currents that can rapidly change things, not to speak of the weather above the sea!
or trying to have sex on a waterbed. HATED those things.....
@@tonimorris7893 The fact that everyone (selling water beds) said sex was great on a waterbed were just trying to sell waterbeds! It was a novelty and basic kinetics would tell an educated person that it wasn't true, it was more work! That fad died, it also wasn't good for bad backs, hips, necks, etc.! The only good thing about it was IF you kept the water temp high enough, in a very cold place, it was nice to get into a warm bed. But it has been proven that cooler temps help you sleep better -- so out! The recommended temp was about 92 degrees, but a lot of people had it set closer to body temp (98) which is just below the normal 98.6 of humans, and they'd wake up perspiring in the morning, if they had any covers on them, since normal body temp often reduces to 96 degrees when we sleep for most people.
@@@MJLeger-yj1ww Electric blankets are great on a cold night when you first get into bed.. but if you fall asleep with one on...you wake up gasping for water and unpleasantly hot. Bedrooms when I was young were always unheated, unless one was ill, and thick frost used to form on the inside of the windows with beautiful ''frost flowers'' and fern like formations....not seen that for years..we are much more spoiled these days re warm rooms.
@@Oakleaf700 I agree with that! I now live where we have 4 real seasons, but, of course we have central heating, fireplaces, etc. but I prefer layering to electric blankets though I keep it 65 degrees in the bedroom. I remember my mother telling me that when she was a girl, they had a potty under the bed and every morning, it was frozen! I couldn't believe it that! But I have to go out since winter came, and change the water in my outside cat's bowl a couple of times a day because it will freeze over in a few short hours. She was a stray and adopted my back porch but in the winter, I make a place for her in my garage. My inside animals, of course, are privileged.
All of the thumbs down are from the promoters of "linear waves."
shills for Big Wave.
sailors called the kraken, science dismissed them, sailors were vindicated.
sailors called rogue waves, science dismissed them, sailors were vindicated.
if a sailor tells me they saw a 10 meter long fish, i'm going to believe them lmao.
But the kraken isnt real lol the closest thing to it is the giant squid
Oarfish get close to 10m long. And they’re said to foretell earthquakes
In the Navy, October 1999, South of Hawai'i, USS Carl Vinson. In a big storm, I happened to be on Buzzards Roost, we went over a wave so high the bow of this aircraft carrier hit a wave so high it send a wall of water so high over the flight deck it snapped two aircraft chains like twigs sending an S-3 Viking over the side like a Styrofoam cup. I saw this with my own two eyes.
Scientist: "A 30 meter wave is impossible!"
Sailor: Shows a picture and says, "So how do you explain this?"
Scientist: "Well... Uhm... That must be caused by Godzilla swimming nearby"
problem is the linear model is for a specific place and doesn't account for quantum physics theory. Where a wavelength can feed of multiple wavelengths. Look at south Africa in storm season and why they avoid it.
The North Sea can be wicked...as a family member found out.
On a ship out in the sea..a massive wave turned their boat flat on its side...it did right it self ,but many got injured,from broken legs,to bad cuts,and carpet burns...hence to say ,they havnt been on a boat cruise since
Choice of the North Sea abd the North Atlantic. 95% of the time I'll pick the Atlantic.
Bigger sets and usually higher. but usually farther apart.
But their nasty ones are consequently BIGGER in volume and weight
I was on a skinny '30's Steam trawler back in the mid '50's.100/110 ton They were open decked. not enclosed like nowadys. You. Bulwarks. Sea
We bounced around a lot but she always stood up again. (round bilge hull not chined.)
Just accept. Water IS the most powerful sustance on this planet. Over and above any explosive matter man can mfg.
Just ride her gently. Stay away from seasonal bad spots.and hope she never shows you a hiccup. No matter what you in. It's NOT man enuff to come out the other side.
Just say a prayer and hang on.
I'm lucky. After the fishing boats mainly a single hander sailor.
Lots of bumpy water but she never been really angry with me. Just a few brown jocks and lots of dry mouth circumstances. NO man is secure from her.
Just say a little prayers every time you step back ashore again.
When are people gonna realize that you just jinx the hell out of a ship by calling it unsinkable?
Even with the investigation into the SS Waratah's disappearance in 1906.
The investigation revealed that waves over 20 metres in height did occur in the area it went missing in South Africa on the current where freak waves were most often reported on the Ocean convergence zone.
They knew back then & still didn't consider them dangerous when Ship's could only handle 15 metre waves that are not breaking.
The days of VHS 😔
Yes, the science is "settled", "consensus achieved, debate is over" . Sound familiar?
Steve Garai
Scientists using the non-linear model that perfectly describes all liquids, from the liquid helium that has zero viscosity to water, liquid mercury or honey had already knew about the possibility of those unusual waves. But the engineers were like: "you know what, I'll just use a linear model to approximate this wet shit cause I hate multiple order differentials and exponentiations".
No, do tell
@@cezarcatalin1406 So you are saying that the scientific community knew all long the truth about rogue waves and it was the "engineers" who were responsible for science not taking this seriously?
When the SS El Faro entered a hurricane in late 2015 and sank, bad weather, poor judgement by the captain and a subsequent engine failure were attributed as the cause. However, when they found the wreckage, the ENTIRETY of the bridge and upper two decks had been completely severed from the ship and lay as a single piece a half mile from the hull. They were baffled as to how a hurricane could possibly sever such a large section. Perhaps that part of the disaster can be explained by a Rogue wave.
It was a shame that so many people labeled the captain at fault.. Then when the wreckage was found it was staggering the amount of force they must have endured to tear the bridge off the ship.
Well it did go down in 15,000 feet of water. There would have been tremendous pressure from it corkscrewing though almost 3 miles of water.
Frank Heuvelman Weld issues could be a contributor. But the Titanic broke in two for entirely different reasons. Witnesses said that before it sank, a large portion of the hull was lifted out of the water. This can snap the hull. It's much harder to envision how one can shear off the top two floors.
@@97VobraOwner The captain of that vessel was most definitely at fault. He knowingly sailed his vessel into a hurricane despite having plenty of warning. In addition to him knowing for fact that his vessel was in very poor mechanical and structural condition.
@@jeffreyskoritowski4114 Hindsight is always 20/20 - Always
I was on a reefer in the tasman sea in 1981, and we encountered the biggest waves I've ever seen in my 22 years at sea something g truly unbelievable where the southern ocean currents meet the Pacific ocean currents, had to be seen to be believed even old hands on board looked worried. Fetch length of waves are a big factor.
A perfect example of a true rouge wave is the Aleutian Ballard. She got nailed by a rouge wave out of no where and the incident was filmed during an episode of the Deadliest Catch. The swells were bad at the time but not dire. Too dangerous to pull in pots. Then, from the right side a massive wave slammed the ship and put it on it's side. Blind luck saved it.
Rogue.
A rouge wave is what the United States faces in China. Or perhaps it's what "Blue states" in the USA faced with Post Truth Era, Fox News-educated, "alternative fact"-spewing "rogue" demagogues, like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump.
In comparison, the rogue waves in this documentary are trivial, sinking but one piddling ship a week.
FYI : Rogue, rogue wave. Rouge is applied to facial cheeks to imitate blush response.
What does this have to do with the behavoir of bodies of water?
Zoomer30 Aleutian Ballad.
She sits in front of my house every summer as a tourist attraction.
Great documentary, thanks for sharing
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin' Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said Fellas, it's been good t'know ya!
Love Gordon!
@Anon Anon
Well done, great song, very haunting and particularly prescient to this documentary. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" for those who aren't familiar. Give it a listen. ruclips.net/video/9vST6hVRj2A/видео.html
Agent Smith
The captain wired in he had water coming in, and the big ship and crew was in peril. Abs later that night, when his lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
I love the way scientists come to conclusion that it's impossible for something to happen, but when it does somehow they can have answers. There is so much we can't explain and might never know.
We (humanity) are young, give us a few thousand years and get back to us.
Scientists can even decide if light is photon particles or waves.
99% of all scientists that ever existed are alive today. Lost if progress to be made
I were serving 14 years on board ocean-going salvage tugs from the german 'Bugsier' Company around this planet. And we knew since the early 70s that freakwaves are existing everywhere. In December 1978 we were heading towards the position of the 'München' with salvage-tug "Wotan" (12.500 hp) from our station in Las Palmas without any success, but we were 'riding' these waves.
Go out on any body of water (Lake Erie) in 8' waves and and you will get an occasional rogue 13 footer.
You dont have to focus on 50's and hope for an 80'.
?
Whitecap madness I agree. Late summer 1975, my friend and I left Put in Bay for Cedar Point Marina in heavy seas aboard a 30’ Sea Ray. We were young and stupid and did not heed the small craft warnings. It was quite an experience. Waves 4-6’ they said? Ha! When we were in the wave trough all you could see was water all around the boat. That was the last time we were that stupid.
As a child, in So. Calif., we used to drive to the beach and "jump the waves" -- I didn't know then what I know now, and once, a big wave caught me, pushed me to the bottom and rolled me along the sand all the way to shore! That kind of cured me. But as an adult, I dived all the time and fished out between San Francisco and the Farallon Islands all the time, but only when we knew it was safe and not when the whales were migrating. I SCUBA dived in Monterey Bay often but I never went much past the kelp fields because there is a giant drop-off down into a trench out there and it scared me! Today, sharks are coming in closer to shore all the time chasing bait fish that come in closer to shore due to a slight raise in ocean temps, and since they're opportunistic feeders, and since a person on a surfboard with their legs or arms hanging off the board looks like their prey, a sea lion, they sometimes get bit and a shark bite is always very dangerous, even if it's a test bite like they do to see if the prey has enough blubber (is fat enough), which they need to survive.
Scientist: This ship is unsinkable.
Mother Nature: Ha! I don't f**king think so!
Exactly. Pretty arrogant to assume any ship is unsinkable. This is the 4th video in a row I've watched where a ship deemed "unsinkable" sank. As if they have the upper hand on mother nature. Lol
I remember seeing this some time ago, back when Horizon was a programme that actually did science. Waves like this are out there.......
The quantum physicist really likes to explain this as dramatic as he can xD, should start a 2nd career as a narrator
I survived Halsey's Typhoon, in WW2, aboard a Destroyer, DD540. We had 65' waves and 100+ MPH winds. Four destroyers sank in the storm.
GOOD JOB , immense power display ,i also pleaded with the oceaan ..
This is why I take showers and not baths.
I have often fished at anchor on small charter boats in the Irish sea. These little 30 or 40 foot boats don't usually go out in more than 20 or 30 mph winds, or if they do they stay close to the lee-side of the coast. Sitting at anchor in a 36 foot boat in 4 or 5 foot swell is quite scary, all you can do is watch oncoming waves approach the little boat. If you are out there long enough it's only a matter of time before you either encounter a much larger wave hitting the boat or see one tearing through in the distance. In 8 hours fishing I have often seen 3 or 4 of these while anchored in one spot.
I have also often been fishing off the rocks on the shore in bad weather. When the sea is rough it's best to look for higher rock ledges to fish from as the raised platform will keep you above the oncoming waves. One time I was fishing about 4 feet above the water which is lower down and closer to the water's edge than you ought to be fishing in bad conditions, but I felt confident having fished the same location many times and in worse weather. I was sitting on my tackle box back a good ten feet from the water's edge when a much larger breaking wave washed across the rocks, knocked over my tripod with my rods in it and nearly swept me and my tackle box away. This "larger" wave, although relatively small compared to the 100 foot waves encountered by mariners, looked identical to what they describe: a solid, vertical, breaking wall of water significantly higher than the rest of the waves with a massive trough in front of it.
These "larger" waves may be only 6-8 feet high but in a 36 foot boat or on an exposed rocky outcrop such a body of water can really throw you around. The waves in the Irish sea are also much closer together than they are in bigger seas like the Atlantic. This makes the waves steeper. 6 foot waves off the coast of Holyhead feel more severe than rolling 30 foot Atlantic waves.
When you see a ship limping back to port, with a huge hole in its side from a rogue wave, literally cutting thought meters of reinforced steel.
No ship is meters thick. That’s ridiculous and would be so heavy it would sink like a rock. You need to actually get a tape measure and look at how much 6.5 feet (2 meters) is.
Submarines hulls for example are anywhere from 4-10 inches thick.
Hold on now, that narrator sounds like King Théoden.
"Youuu have no power here, Gandalv Greyham!"
Summon the Rohrhiram....
a rogue wave is a simple mathematical equation and you might be so unlucky as to have to endure one
Wait, I've heard, and it's mentioned at least once in the video, that rogue waves (usually? often? sometimes?) travel at an angle, perhaps 30 degrees, from the regular wave pattern. That would imply that rogues are a result of two wave patterns interacting and probably due to interference between them.
That 30/40 deg's is the average "intersection of two sets of "surface disturbances" IE Storms.
On a small scale IE spreaders or near masthead height.
it/can be quite "interesting" in you well designed, build yacht.
I lived in the S38 to S45 deg's in South Australia, Tasmania. for 35+ yrs. That was GOOD sailing. In a 32 then 42ft Steel Yachts. designed for Ocean work.
Every surfer knows that when there are two or more sets of waves running from different directions, where these intersect, you get a larger peak wave at the intersection. I dont understand how this effect was not analysed in this documentary.
We used to Bodysurf the Wedge in Newport Beach and I became a firm believer in the power of water. The dude on the jetty wth the cowbell as a pre-warning alarm went running as fast as you can run on a rock jetty out towards the outside edge of the breakwater. We started paddling as hard as we could to the outside. I scraped over the first wave of probably 10 and I almost crapped my trunks. 20' face steamrolling in our direction and getting taller as it pitched up on the shallow beach. Felt like a wash machine on crack. I've never seen or felt anything that powerful before or since. The oldtimers were freaking out. That's when you know it was real
Roger Surf that’s not what they are talking about. You are on the coast line thinking you know the whole ocean. How ignorant of you. Btw any child in a bathtub knows what you know. So thanks captain obvious
Scott Evers you’re going to compare Rhode Island waves to this....LOLOLOLOL
@@katiekat4457 Newport Beach CALIFORNIA...Get out of your parents basement and live a little..Keyboard Imbecile...lolololollolololo.
@@katiekat4457 it's douche' bags like you that keep the internet
interesting...and by interesting I mean disappointing. Presumptuious Turd.
Soon as someone tells me it's unsinkable I don't go on that voyage of the sea.
You see the wave, and you don't believe it. Then you begin to fall into the hole before the wave, the "trough." Now you look up at this wall of water that reaches to the sun. And you've got to remember, it's only water. If anyone is to do their part in driving the boat, you've got to remember, it's only water.
That doesn't mean a thing to the wave or to the boat. But it will help with your task at hand, which is for the boat to survive the next 60 seconds, if only 3 seconds at a time.
Very interesting!
Very few people know of any of this.
Thank you for the great video!
Why do ships usually report rouge waves as coming from a different direction, at an angle from the waves they are moving through, when this video shows pics from space where the rouge waves are perfectly in line with the rest of the swells? There must be more than one way to create these huge one in a million waves besides swells moving in the counter direction to the current. I'll bet that a disordered sea with swells coming from different angles in addition to a counter current is the best way to make a true rouge wave.
When you meet steep waves around headlands they are called 'overfalls' and the effect has been known about and marked on charts for generations they are created by tidal stream!
Part 1 go to reply for Part 2 and Part 3 MV Joyita was a merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared in the South Pacific in October 1955. She was found adrift with no one aboard.
The ship was in very poor condition, with corroded pipes and a radio which, while functional, had a range of only about 2 miles (3.2 km) because of faulty wiring. However, the extreme buoyancy of the ship made sinking nearly impossible. Investigators were puzzled as to why the crew had not remained on board and waited for help.
Maritime inquiry
A subsequent inquiry found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry." An especially perplexing point was that the three liferafts Joyita carried were missing, but it would not make sense for the crew and passengers to voluntarily abandon the vessel. Fitted out for carrying refrigerated cargo, Joyita had 640 cubic feet (18 m3) of cork lining her holds, making her virtually unsinkable. In addition, further buoyancy was provided by a cargo of empty fuel drums.
Construction
The 69-foot (21.0 m) wooden ship was built in 1931 as a luxury yacht by the Wilmington Boat Works in Los Angeles for movie director Roland West, who named the ship for his wife, actress Jewel Carmen - joyita in Spanish meaning "little jewel".[1] In 1936 the ship was sold and registered to Milton E. Beacon.[2] During this period, she made numerous trips south to Mexico and to the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. During part of this time, Chester Mills was the skipper of the vessel.
The ship's hull was constructed of 2-inch (51 mm)-thick cedar on oak frames. She was 69 feet 0 inches (21.0 m) long, with beam of 17 feet 0 inches (5.2 m) and a draft of 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m); her net tonnage was 47 tons and her gross tonnage approximately 70 tons. She had tanks for 2,500 U.S. gallons (9,500 L) of water and 3,000 U.S. gallons (11,400 L) of diesel fuel.[5]
U.S. Navy service in World War II
Ship's wheelhouse in 1942
In October 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joyita was acquired by the United States Navy and taken to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she was outfitted as Yard patrol boat YP-108. The Navy used her to patrol the Big Island of Hawaii until the end of World War II.
In 1943 she ran aground and was heavily damaged, but the Navy was in need of ships so she was repaired. At this point, new pipework was made from galvanized iron instead of copper or brass. In 1946, the ship was surplus to Navy requirements and most of her equipment was removed.[2]
Private purchase
In 1948 Joyita was sold to the firm of Louis Brothers. At this point, cork lining was added to the ship's hull along with refrigeration equipment.[2] The ship had two Gray Marine diesel engines providing 225 horsepower (168 kW), and two extra diesel engines for generators.[3] In 1950 William Tavares became the owner; however, he had little use for the vessel, and sold it in 1952 to Dr Katharine Luomala, a professor at the University of Hawaii.[3] She chartered the boat to her friend, Captain Thomas H. "Dusty" Miller, a British-born sailor living in Samoa. Miller used the ship as a trading and fishing charter boat.
Disappearance
Planned route (red line) and where Joyita was found (purple circle)
About 5:00 AM on 3 October 1955, Joyita left Samoa's Apia harbour bound for the Tokelau Islands, about 270 miles (430 km) away. The boat had been scheduled to leave on the noon tide the previous day but her departure was delayed because her port engine clutch failed. Joyita eventually left Samoa on one engine. She was carrying sixteen crew members and nine passengers, including a government official, a doctor (Alfred "Andy" Denis Parsons, a World War II surgeon on his way to perform an amputation), a copra buyer, and two children. Her cargo consisted of medical supplies, timber, 80 empty 45 gallon (200 L) oil drums and various foodstuffs.[6]
The voyage was expected to take between 41 and 48 hours. She was scheduled to return with a cargo of copra. Joyita was scheduled to arrive in the Tokelau Islands on 5 October. On 6 October, a message from Fakaofo port reported that the ship was overdue. No ship or land-based operator reported receiving a distress signal from the crew. A search and rescue mission was launched and, from 6 to 12 October, Sunderlands of the Royal New Zealand Air Force covered a probability area of nearly 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) of ocean, but no sign of Joyita or any of her passengers or crew was found.
Five weeks later, on 10 November, Gerald Douglas, captain of the merchant ship Tuvalu, en route from Suva to Funafuti, sighted Joyita more than 600 miles (970 km) west from her scheduled route, drifting north of Vanua Levu.[7] The ship was partially submerged and listing heavily (her port deck rail was awash) and there was no trace of any of the passengers or crew; four tons of cargo were also missing. The recovery party noted that the radio was discovered tuned to 2182 kHz, the international marine radiotelephone distress channel.
Part 2 Wreck seen from port side
Barnacle growth high above the usual waterline on the port side showed that Joyita had been listing heavily for some time.
There was some damage to the superstructure. Her flying bridge had been smashed away and the deckhouse had light damage and broken windows. A canvas awning had been rigged on top of the deckhouse behind the bridge.
Joyita carried a dinghy and three Carley liferafts,[3] but all were missing. She did not carry enough lifejackets for everyone on board.[7]
The starboard engine was found to be covered by mattresses, while the port engine's clutch was still partially disassembled, showing that the vessel was still running on only one engine.
An auxiliary pump had been rigged in the engine room, mounted on a plank of wood slung between the main engines. However, it had not been connected.
The radio on board was tuned to the international distress channel, but when the equipment was inspected, a break was found in the cable between the set and the aerial. The cable had been painted over, obscuring the break. This would have limited the range of the radio to about 2 miles (3.2 km).
The electric clocks on board (wired into the vessel's generator) had stopped at 10:25 and the switches for the cabin lighting and navigation lights were on, implying that whatever had occurred happened at night. The ships' logbook, sextant, mechanical chronometer and other navigational equipment, as well as the firearms Miller kept in the boat,[7] were missing.
A doctor's bag was found on deck, containing a stethoscope, a scalpel, and four lengths of blood-stained bandages.
There was still fuel in Joyita's tanks; from the amount used, it was calculated she made some 243 miles (391 km) before the vessel was abandoned, probably within 50 miles (80 km) of Tokelau. The leak had probably started after 9 p.m. on the second night of the voyage, with nine hours of darkness ahead.[7]
Although Joyita was found with her bilges and lower decks flooded, her hull was sound. When she was moored back in harbour at Suva, investigators heard the sound of water entering the vessel. It was found that a pipe in the raw-water circuit of the engine's cooling system had failed due to galvanic corrosion, allowing water into the bilges. The first the crew would have known about the leak was when the water rose above the engine room floorboards, by which time it would have been nearly impossible to locate the leak. Also, the bilge pumps were not fitted with strainers, and had become clogged with debris, meaning that it would have been very difficult to pump the water out.
Maritime inquiry
A subsequent inquiry found that the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined that the fate of the passengers and crew was "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry." An especially perplexing point was that the three liferafts Joyita carried were missing, but it would not make sense for the crew and passengers to voluntarily abandon the vessel. Fitted out for carrying refrigerated cargo, Joyita had 640 cubic feet (18 m3) of cork lining her holds, making her virtually unsinkable. In addition, further buoyancy was provided by a cargo of empty fuel drums.
The inquiry was able to establish only the reasons for the vessel becoming flooded. It found that the vessel would have begun to flood due to the fractured cooling pipe. The bilge pumps were unserviceable due to becoming blocked. Joyita lacked watertight bulkheads or subdivisions in the bilges. The water would have gradually flooded the lower decks. As the boat began to sink lower into the water, the one remaining engine would not have been able to maintain enough speed to steer. Joyita then fell beam-on to a heavy swell and took on the heavy list it was found with. While flooded to an extent which would sink a conventional vessel, Joyita stayed afloat due to her cork-lined hull and cargo of fuel drums.
The inquiry also placed much of the responsibility for the events on Captain Miller. They found him reckless for setting out on an ocean-going voyage with only one engine and numerous minor faults, and negligent for failing to provide a working radio or properly equipped lifeboat. He was also in breach of maritime law, since he had allowed Joyita's license to carry fare-paying passengers to lapse.
The inquiry made no mention of the used medical equipment found on board.[8]
Hypotheses
Joyita is sometimes referred to as the "Mary Celeste of the South Pacific" and has been the subject of several books and documentaries offering explanations that range from rational and conventional to supernatural and paranormal. Numerous hypotheses for the disappearance of Joyita's crew and passengers have been advanced. Many were circulated at the time of the event, and several others have been put forward since. Given the fact that the hull of Joyita was sound and her design made her almost unsinkable, a main concern of investigators was determining why the passengers and crew did not stay on board if the events were simply triggered by the flooding in the engine room.
Injured captain hypothesis
Captain Miller should have been well aware of the vessel's ability to stay afloat, leading some to speculate that Miller had died or become incapacitated for some reason (someone on board was injured-hence the bloodstained bandages). Without him to reassure the other people on board, they may have panicked when Joyita began to flood and taken to the liferafts. However, this in itself would not account for the missing cargo and equipment, unless the vessel had been found abandoned and had her cargo removed.
Part 3 A friend of Miller, Captain S. B. Brown, was convinced that Miller would never have left Joyita alive, given his knowledge of her construction. He was aware of tension between Miller and his American first mate, Chuck Simpson. Brown felt that Miller and Simpson's dislike of each other came to blows and both men fell overboard or were severely injured in a struggle. This left the vessel without an experienced seaman and would explain why those remaining on board would panic when the ship began to flood.
Japanese involvement and other hypotheses
Newspaper headline accusing Japan
The Fiji Times and Herald quoted at the time from an "impeccable source" to the effect that Joyita had passed through a fleet of Japanese fishing boats during its trip and "had observed something the Japanese did not want them to see."[citation needed]
The Daily Telegraph in London hypothesized that some still-active Japanese forces from World War II were to blame for the disappearances, operating from an isolated island base.[citation needed] There was still strong anti-Japanese feeling in parts of the Pacific, and in Fiji there was specific resentment of Japan being allowed to operate fishing fleets in local waters.
Such theories suddenly gained credence when men clearing Joyita found knives stamped 'Made in Japan'. However, tests on the knives proved negative and it turned out the knives were old and broken - quite possibly left on board from when Joyita was used for fishing in the late 1940s.
Also there was a proposition that "the vessel's occupants were kidnapped by a Soviet submarine, with the world at the time in the midst of the growing Cold War."[7]
Others[who?] hypothesize that modern sea pirates attacked the vessel, killed the 25 passengers and crew (and cast their bodies into the ocean), and stole the missing four tons of cargo.[citation needed]
Insurance fraud hypothesis
It was also revealed that Miller had amassed large debts after a series of unsuccessful fishing trips on Joyita.[citation needed] However, it would have been difficult to see the events surrounding Joyita as insurance fraud, given that no seacocks were found open and the ship would be almost impossible to scuttle. Also, Miller was relying on Joyita being chartered for regular runs between Samoa and Tokelau-these government charters would have quickly cleared his debts.
Mutiny hypothesis
A subsequent owner of Joyita, British author Robin Maugham, spent many years investigating the vessel's past, and published his findings as The Joyita Mystery in 1962. Maugham agreed that events were started by the flooding from the broken cooling pipe and the failure of the pumps. The mattresses found covering the starboard engine were used either in an attempt to stem the leak or to protect the electrical switchboard from spray kicked up by the engine's flywheel as the water level rose. At the same time, Joyita encountered increasingly heavy swells and squally weather.
Captain Miller, knowing Joyita to be unsinkable and desperate to reach his destination to clear his debt, pressed on. However, Chuck Simpson, and possibly other crew members, demanded that he turn back. This effectively led to mutiny and Miller and the crew struggled, during which Miller sustained a serious injury. By now the ship was entering heavier weather, with winds around 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), and with one engine and a flooded bilge, was beginning to labor. The flooding in the engine room would have eventually caused the starboard engine to fail, also cutting all the vessel's electrical power. Chuck Simpson was now in control and made the decision to abandon ship, taking the navigational equipment, logbook and supplies, as well as the injured Miller, with them.
It still seems unlikely that Chuck Simpson would choose to abandon a flooded but floating ship to take to small open rafts in the Pacific Ocean. Maugham proposed that they sighted a nearby island or reef and tried to reach it, but in the strong winds and seas the rafts were carried out to sea, leaving Joyita drifting and empty. The damage to the lightly built superstructure was caused by wave damage while the vessel was drifting in heavy seas.
Joyita after 1955
In July 1956, Joyita was auctioned off by her owners for £2,425 to a Fiji Islander, David Simpson. He refitted and overhauled her and she went to sea again that year. However, she was surrounded by legal disputes over the transfer of her registry from the United States to Britain without permission. In January 1957 she ran aground while carrying 13 passengers in the Koro Sea. She was repaired and in October 1958 began a regular trade between Levuka and Suva.
She again ran aground on a reef in November 1959 at Vatuvalu near Levuka.[4] She floated off the reef assisted by high tide, but while heading for port began to take in water through a split seam. The pumps were started, but it became clear that the valves for the pump had been installed the wrong way round, meaning that water was pumped into the hull, not out. Now with a reputation as an 'unlucky ship' and with a damaged hull, she was abandoned by her owners and beached.
She was stripped of useful equipment and was practically a hulk when she was bought by Robin Maugham, who wrote the book The Joyita Mystery (1962). He sold the hulk in 1966 to Major J. Casling-Cottle who ran a tourist and publicity bureau at Levuka. The Major planned to turn it into a museum and tearoom, but the plan never saw daylight. The hulk disappeared piece by piece and the process of disintegration appears to have been complete by the late 1970s.[4]
On 14 March 1975, the Western Samoa Post Office released a set of five stamps dealing with the mystery of Joyita.[9]
In 2009, a walkway was named after Dr Alfred Dennis Parsons near his former Torbay home in Auckland, New Zealand.[10][11]
In 2012, two memory stones in honor of the event were erected in Apia, Samoa and in Fakaofo Village, Tokelau.[6][12][13]
Crew and passengers
As of 2012, all aboard were still declared as "missing".[6]
Doesn't the gravitational pull of the moon effect the tides? If so body can match the day of the freak wave with the full moon phase?
A ship a week lost at sea is crazy considering the kind of money involved.
The treasures that lay silent on the Ocean floor must be vast
I have to laugh at the statement: "According to all scientific laws of the (insert any noun here) ...are impossible." How many times have scientists had to eat those words? They must like the taste because they keep repeating it. And I'll take the word of the captain of the Q.E. II over some egghead professor's anyday.
Scipio_Africanus
At least they do eat them. That's the difference between science and religion. Science progresses and evolves.
Hmm.....I think it was one of those "egghead professors' that eventually arrived at an explanation for these so-called freak waves, wasn't it?
At least science evolves when new evidence is introduced, new theories tested, new ideas floated. That is how things get better with science, and scientists are not fixed in their views, they will change them when they see evidence, theories tested and proven and adjust accordingly. Religion on the other hand says God did it all, end of story. The captain of the QEII and others are one of the reasons scientists looked at this phenomenon again and changed their approach and thinking on the frequency of these larger than normal waves and how to design ways to improve safety on ships, adjust sailing orders to avoid high risk areas and keep shipping affordable and alive as a means of transport. I would give my left nut to be 18 again and join the merchant marine or navy, anything to do with ships and the sea is fascinating.
@@Dave-id6sj Oh Gawwd! Are you all really that reactionary?! My point was this: Anyone who says that X cannot exist when X= a natural phenomenon, while someone who is entrusted with the command of a ship like the QE2 and has spent most of his life in the environment where X occurs is saying "I have seen it." I will take the word of that person over someone sitting in a lab anyday. Yes science progresses, yes science, good science will change it's views. I am just baffled by the certainty with which these people have said such a thing is impossible in the face of credible evidence to the contrary. What a bunch of knee-jerk morons you guys are. Assuming I am anti-science from that remark? Please refrain from your leaps of illogic.
@@jonericus reactionary, moron? You assume too much, it is you calling professors eggheads, and they do not say things are impossible in the face of credible evidence, you have already agreed with me on that. Leaps of illogic, that isn't even a word you fucktard.
I don’t need high winds and water to shoot seamen great heights
Oh cum on, a seamen joke?!
I'd be interested to know how many of these so called scientists started their careers as naval seamen, merchant mariners, fishermen, racing or cruising yachtsmen etc and have actually made some passages at sea, let alone a winter passage in the roaring forties off the south American or South African coasts, or a north Atlantic winter passage, or perhaps the southern ocean, the bass straight between Southern Australia and Tasmania, all the above-mentioned mariners have encountered rogue waves, as a yachtsman, and as a former fabricator/welder at A&P's dry docks and ship yard in Falmouth, (formerly Appledore) I've seen the damage first hand to large vessels,d displacing 40 000 tonnes and more. Rogue waves are real and cannot be explained away by men with no sea time in laboratory coats reading data off computer models. These lab coat sailors are a joke, after you've crossed an ocean you can speak from practical and physical experience, and not before
I live in the middle of the North American continent... but I have been to the ocean and was in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain..I walked out into the ocean probably 300’ and the sand under my ft was like concrete.. and the water only was up to my chest that far out... but those waves were coming and I was quite surprised by how much power those waves had