Again, you need to consider the tremendous weight of these ships. It would be far more likely that if such a rogue wave hit the ship bows on* (or stern on), that it would simply wash over the ship in the green water noted above. Remember that the ship floats because it displaces water that weighs more than the ship’s volume. (That old rascal Archimedes, again.) To be a wave, and not a swell, it would have to be substantially shorter than the ship. This means that it would not be supporting the ship in the troughs on either side (which is your point) but that would mean that the weight of the ship would pull the ship down through the wave.
Now, such a wave would definitely subject the ship to the stresses of hogging and sagging and might actually cause the ship to crack open, but there would be no point at which the bow and stern would be out of the water with a single wave holding it up amidships.
Claims have been made (more frequently regarding wooden ships than iron ones) that one ship or another broke when it was suspended on a wave or between two waves. On the other hand, I know of no eyewitness accounts of such actions from persons on the shore or other ships and the persons on such a ship were probably a bit too busy to make scientific observations at the moment of the event. It is entirely possible that such ships broke up under the ongoing stresses of hogging and sagging and not due to the actions of a single wave or pair of waves, even if it seemed to the survivors that their ship had actually been lifted out of the water.
(There are off-ship eyewitness claims of various vessels being mostly out of the water, but they were regarding smaller vessels and I do not know that any resulted in a hull breaking in two. The earlier reference to the America’s Cup was to the 1995 breakup of One Australia during competition. I am not sure that anyone definitely ascertained what caused the hull failure (the ship sank in deep water), but with the strength of the winds on that day and the issues of new materials and lighter construction, I suspect that it was not a simple matter of being suspended from a wave. It was filmed live for TV, but all the videos that used to be out there seem to have disappeared from the internet.)
(If the wave hit the ship from the beam (side), it would more likely roll the ship or swamp the ship.)
Here’s a full-length version. All others have the last (and maybe best!) gag line cut off.
(Interview preceded by actual tanker footage, details unknown.)
In the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 (the “Big Blow”) one of the 12 ships lost was the Argus, a 436 foot long laker, with a beam of 50 feet. She was carrying a load of coal, and her loss was witnessed by another ship’s captain, who reported that the Argus was caught on the crest of two waves, with the center unsupported, and broke in half and sank, almost immediately.
(I first read this story in Dwight Boyer’s True Tales of The Great Lakes over 30 years ago, and it has always stuck with me.)
And as I have to add whenever John Clarke is cited, he did a series called The Games, a mockumentary about the organizing of the Sydney Olympics, that is one of the funniest things I ever seen.
And if any Down Under dopers (DUDs?) can find me the second series on DVD, I’d be eternally grateful.
holy crap, man! That’s two ships like supertankers or container carriers sinking PER WEEK. That freaks me right out. How would we react if we had 2 major train derailments or two major cargo plane crashes a week? There would be a massive outcry, opposition politicians banging fists on lecterns demanding action, government panel investigations, breathless CNN reports complete with their own animated logos and musical themes. And we hear nothing about this on any news??? WTF :eek:
Hah, I haven’t seen that earlier clip for about 15 years.
The clip was produced by United Salvage, the company that salved the “Kirki” in 1991. The vessel is the “Kirki”.
The level of financial award given to salvors is typically decided at an arbitration, usually in London. United Salvage put that clip together for amusement, and at the end of the arbitration, when all the serious business was over, showed it to the arbitrators for a laugh. The then-head of United Salvage showed the clip to a meeting I attended shortly after that and explained its provenance. I never thought I’d see it again.
Someone appears to have taken that clip and put it together with John Clarke/Bryan Dawes’ take on the same incident
Yanno, I hear this comment regularly, but we don’t kidnap these people: they cross the ditch voluntarily. Some day you’re going to have to face up to what that implies
Implies nothing. I’m on the flat side of the ditch cos I married an aussie. And anyway, the traffic goes both ways.
[personal rant]It’s a bit frustrating to be living here and have important parts of my culture so flippantly disregarded and disrespected. Consistently.
This week’s list of icons is sam Neill, Crowded House, pavlova, wood-chopping, sheep shearing: all claimed to be uniquely Australian. And now John Clarke and it’s only Tuesday.
Tell you what: I’ll let you keep Russel Crowe in return for a polite word about kiwis every now and then. And I promise not to call Kylie British.[/pr]
Now, on topic. Well, sort of. The clip is hilarious. I’m saving that one and will show it to my students when we get a spare moment.
Spend some time lurking on Trainorders.com - you’d be surprised how often freight trains ‘hit the ground’. Not always in a major way, but it does happen a lot.
I really doubt that. I think it probably depends what you mean by “large ships” for a start. Also, I notice the article contradicts itself: earlier they say:
200/20 is 10 a year which is ten times less than 2 a week. I’m guessing someone stuffed up their arithmetic.
because that stat is probably untrue. Or at least misleading. perhaps 2 commercial ships-say 2 commercial fishing vessels or two intra-coastal cargo ships, but large cargo or tanker ships seems very unlikely. I also think the speculation about helicopters being lost is unlikely-but not impossible. It is a big ocean out there and strange things happen.
Others have answered the OP to my and others’ edification and perhaps to **Mangeorge’s ** satisfaction. I have been on ships that I thought were going to break up or at least capsize but we made it thru, even though the admiral fell out of bed on his Mediterranean flagship on the way to Malaga in January 1965. The other was in a storm in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, off Cape Hatteras, on the way from Boston to San Juan on my Naval Reserve annual cruise in January 1964 on board the *USS Miller * (DD535). BTW, I recommend the book, Halsey’s Typhoon by Robert Drury and Tom Clavin for info about storm-tossed and sunk ships.
