Facing down that 1995 wave, the QE2 captain said it looked as if they were headed for Britain’s White Cliffs of Dover.
That same year, when the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was struck by a 27-metre tall wave en route from the UK to New York, scientists had to admit something else: these so-called rogue waves aren’t just possible, they happen relatively frequently. Then in 1995, a sensor on a Norwegian oil rig captured proof of what Dumont d’Urville had faced: a wave 26 metres tall, more than twice the size of any recorded in the area in the hours before – taller even than the hypothetical waves scientists then believed could only happen once every 10,000 years. For centuries, ships’ disappearances at sea were blamed on pirates or misadventure, and stories of giant waves dismissed as readily as legends of sea monsters.Ī cruise ship, reportedly in waters near Australia, was hit by steep wave so big the crew in the bridge fell as the ship plunged down the trough. As far as the scientists of the 19th century were concerned, what they’d seen was impossible: no wave could reach more than nine metres. Somehow, they made it back to shore, losing just one man on that dangerous crossing of the Indian Ocean in 1826.īut when Dumont d’Urville, known as France’s Captain Cook, and his crew later recounted the tale of the monster wave, no one believed them. On deck, explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville estimated the wave loomed at least 30 metres high – and it was bearing down on his ship the Astrolabe fast. It came out of the storm a sudden wall of water as tall as a 10-storey building.
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