Off Topic: Rogue Wave!
No, it's not a musical genre that fuses Punk and New Wave (although it is a band name). It IS, however, a natural phenomenon that has been witnessed by countless mariners over the centuries. Yet the very existence of this phenomenon had until very recently been disputed by scientists, because the laws of physics would seem to limit such an occurrence to once every 10,000 years.
It is the phenomenon known as the rogue wave, and its existence finally has been confirmed by science, in a big way. Not only was I surprised to learn this, I was surprised to find out that it's relatively old news.
As I said, rogue waves have been reported by countless mariners, and have also been suspected in sending countless more ships to the bottom, without trace. Even some famous ships, like the Queen Elizabeth 2, have encountered rogue waves and were lucky enough to survive.
So what, exactly, is a rogue wave? In my layman's definition, rogue waves (also known as "freak waves") are open-ocean waves that are substantially bigger than the surrounding sea state. For example, you could be sailing along cheerfully in five-foot swells, and the next thing you know, you get broadsided by a thirty-foot wave that came out of nowhere. This could very well result in the loss of your boat, and, by extension, your life. Likewise, you could be struggling through insane 50-foot seas, and suddenly get obliterated by a 100-foot rogue wave; it's the same principle at work.
(I'm obligated to add that the scientific definition of rogue wave -- now that science recognizes them -- is, "waves that are more than double the significant wave height (SWH), which is itself defined as the mean of the largest third of waves in a wave record". A tsunami is not a rogue wave, nor vice-versa.)
As if the sheer size weren't dangerous enough, what makes rogue waves particularly dangerous is their form: Rogue waves can be near-vertical (as opposed to a rolling swell), and they are usually preceded by a trough. Thus, instead of riding the crest of the wave, a ship will fall or roll into the trough, and then the wave will break on top of it. The other confounding factor is that rogue waves frequently travel at an angle to the swells, which means that they will hit many boats from the side -- and that is exactly where a boat does not want to get hit.
The ship in the above photo was lucky: She had been sailing in a steady 15-foot swell, when she encountered this approximately 60-foot rogue wave. According to the detailed caption, the ship was sliding down into the trough and towards the wave when this photo was snapped. There was significant damage to some of the deck fittings, but fortunately nobody was injured.
As an avid reader of true-life seafaring stories like "The Perfect Storm", I had always read about rogue waves, and so recently I did a web search on the subject, just to see if there had been any interesting developments (because that's just the kind of scintillating guy I am). It turns out there's been a lot -- and I may have been the last interested party to know. The first article I found was a 2004 report from the European Space Agency (ESA), which contained a staggering statistic:
"Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such cases."
In other words, two hundred of the world's largest ships have gone down in the past twenty years. Imagine if two hundred 747 jumbo jets had gone down in the same period: How would that make you feel about air travel? In fact, only 24 Boeing 747's have been involved in passenger fatalities in the entire 37-year history of the aircraft type. While it's true that those 24 incidents probably resulted in greater loss of life than the ship incidents (the ships lost were largely bulk cargo vessels), I think that even the loss of 200 empty 747's would make you sit up and take notice.
That same report goes on to say, "Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'."
The upshot, folks, is that even with today's cutting-edge technology, seafaring is still as dangerous as sailors and their insurance companies have always told us it is. In fact, as a result of the ESA study, we now know that rogue waves not only exist, but are common. Which brings forth the chilling realization that every ship currently afloat is basically vulnerable to death-by-rogue-wave, becase design standards call for ships to be able to withstand "normal"-sized big waves that are half the size of potential rogue waves.
I've long had an interest in ocean travel, but in light of this new research, I think I'll just remain a passive observer, as I've always been. Not that it would've mattered anyway; as it turns out, I'm prone to violent seasickness.
Even the venerable "QE2" has encountered a
rogue wave.
It is the phenomenon known as the rogue wave, and its existence finally has been confirmed by science, in a big way. Not only was I surprised to learn this, I was surprised to find out that it's relatively old news.As I said, rogue waves have been reported by countless mariners, and have also been suspected in sending countless more ships to the bottom, without trace. Even some famous ships, like the Queen Elizabeth 2, have encountered rogue waves and were lucky enough to survive.
So what, exactly, is a rogue wave? In my layman's definition, rogue waves (also known as "freak waves") are open-ocean waves that are substantially bigger than the surrounding sea state. For example, you could be sailing along cheerfully in five-foot swells, and the next thing you know, you get broadsided by a thirty-foot wave that came out of nowhere. This could very well result in the loss of your boat, and, by extension, your life. Likewise, you could be struggling through insane 50-foot seas, and suddenly get obliterated by a 100-foot rogue wave; it's the same principle at work.
(I'm obligated to add that the scientific definition of rogue wave -- now that science recognizes them -- is, "waves that are more than double the significant wave height (SWH), which is itself defined as the mean of the largest third of waves in a wave record". A tsunami is not a rogue wave, nor vice-versa.)
As if the sheer size weren't dangerous enough, what makes rogue waves particularly dangerous is their form: Rogue waves can be near-vertical (as opposed to a rolling swell), and they are usually preceded by a trough. Thus, instead of riding the crest of the wave, a ship will fall or roll into the trough, and then the wave will break on top of it. The other confounding factor is that rogue waves frequently travel at an angle to the swells, which means that they will hit many boats from the side -- and that is exactly where a boat does not want to get hit.The ship in the above photo was lucky: She had been sailing in a steady 15-foot swell, when she encountered this approximately 60-foot rogue wave. According to the detailed caption, the ship was sliding down into the trough and towards the wave when this photo was snapped. There was significant damage to some of the deck fittings, but fortunately nobody was injured.
As an avid reader of true-life seafaring stories like "The Perfect Storm", I had always read about rogue waves, and so recently I did a web search on the subject, just to see if there had been any interesting developments (because that's just the kind of scintillating guy I am). It turns out there's been a lot -- and I may have been the last interested party to know. The first article I found was a 2004 report from the European Space Agency (ESA), which contained a staggering statistic:
"Severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. Rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such cases."
In other words, two hundred of the world's largest ships have gone down in the past twenty years. Imagine if two hundred 747 jumbo jets had gone down in the same period: How would that make you feel about air travel? In fact, only 24 Boeing 747's have been involved in passenger fatalities in the entire 37-year history of the aircraft type. While it's true that those 24 incidents probably resulted in greater loss of life than the ship incidents (the ships lost were largely bulk cargo vessels), I think that even the loss of 200 empty 747's would make you sit up and take notice.
That same report goes on to say, "Two large ships sink every week on average, but the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'."
The upshot, folks, is that even with today's cutting-edge technology, seafaring is still as dangerous as sailors and their insurance companies have always told us it is. In fact, as a result of the ESA study, we now know that rogue waves not only exist, but are common. Which brings forth the chilling realization that every ship currently afloat is basically vulnerable to death-by-rogue-wave, becase design standards call for ships to be able to withstand "normal"-sized big waves that are half the size of potential rogue waves.
I've long had an interest in ocean travel, but in light of this new research, I think I'll just remain a passive observer, as I've always been. Not that it would've mattered anyway; as it turns out, I'm prone to violent seasickness.
Even the venerable "QE2" has encountered a
rogue wave.
Note: Due to the popularity of this topic (and my own continued interest), I posted a follow-up on April 26. And don't even get me started on the movie "Poseidon"...
posted by Arhythmius at
3:52 PM
1 Comments:
I wanted to share my experience with a rogue wave. It has been a while and my memory may be a little fuzzy but back in the winter of 1987 or 1988 I was working as a Joint Venture fisheries observer on the Korean stern trawler named Cheog Yang Ho. This was my second time aboard the ship. We had been in a storm for about 24-30 hours. I was asleep in my cabin when I was rolled against the bunks wall with force. In my experiences at sea this was the most scariest. The Cheog Yang Ho was about 270 feet long and we were hit by a rouge wave coming from starboard to port. I can't tell you the horror of being awaken at night and slammed against the wall with the sounds of breaking objects thru out thte ship. The ship seemed to stay on its' port side for several seconds before it decided to right itself back to starboard and everything that had been tossed to the port now when slamming back to starboard. The ship slowly rocked back and forth several times. The next sound that was heard was the Captain slamming his cabin door as he screamed profanities and ran to the wheel house. Once the Captain was in the wheel house you could hear the beating that he gave the poor first officer that was on duty. I do not know how big the wave was but the ships "tilt" meter was stuck for the rest of the cruise at some ungodly angle that I can not recall. In my fourteen months of fisheries observer experience THIS WAS THE WORST AND THAT INCLUDES THE FIVE TYPHOONS THAT SMACKED MY POOR KOREAN SQUID DRIFT NET SHIP OFF THE COAST OF JAPAN IN 1991(?)
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