1
00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:09,600
There is something out at sea
terrorising the world's shipping.

2
00:00:09,880 --> 00:00:14,021
Out of the darkness
came this great wall of water.

3
00:00:15,884 --> 00:00:19,727
I have never seen a wave
as big as this in my whole life.

4
00:00:20,228 --> 00:00:24,600
It can strike out of the blue
with devastating consequences.

5
00:00:28,174 --> 00:00:31,941
You hit solid water
and it is like running into a brick wall.

6
00:00:33,126 --> 00:00:35,412
The entire bridge was wrecked.

7
00:00:40,120 --> 00:00:42,834
Horrific, monstrous.

8
00:00:43,001 --> 00:00:46,715
You feel as if
the end of the world has come.

9
00:00:51,765 --> 00:00:56,278
This is the story of a wave
that is sinking ships around the world,

10
00:00:56,619 --> 00:01:00,604
a killer that defies all scientific understanding

11
00:01:00,605 --> 00:01:04,812
and that no ship is designed to withstand.

12
00:01:17,534 --> 00:01:20,521
It is one of the best kept
secrets of the sea,

13
00:01:20,705 --> 00:01:24,738
that once a week a ship sinks
to the bottom of the ocean,

14
00:01:25,293 --> 00:01:29,671
often without Mayday or any clue
as to what happened.

15
00:01:32,218 --> 00:01:37,662
One of the most mysterious of these
disappearances is that of the Munchen.

16
00:01:43,240 --> 00:01:46,118
The Munchen was a vast
new type of cargo ship,

17
00:01:46,339 --> 00:01:48,687
the length of 2¨ö football pitches

18
00:01:48,869 --> 00:01:51,861
she was the pride of
the German merchant navy.

19
00:01:54,377 --> 00:01:57,420
On 7 December 1978

20
00:01:57,452 --> 00:02:00,888
she set sail on a routine trip to America.

21
00:02:05,940 --> 00:02:10,957
On board were 27 crew,
including Uwe Hinrichs.

22
00:02:13,788 --> 00:02:18,056
This was my son Uwe,
 20 years old.

23
00:02:19,563 --> 00:02:21,509
He liked going to sea.

24
00:02:21,777 --> 00:02:24,778
He said it was the safest ship
in the world.

25
00:02:26,549 --> 00:02:30,813
Everybody said it was unsinkable,
the best ship in the world.

26
00:02:33,106 --> 00:02:38,332
That night in December
there was a giant storm
raging across the Atlantic.

27
00:02:39,482 --> 00:02:41,788
The waves were the size of houses,

28
00:02:44,633 --> 00:02:46,985
but that would not have troubled
the Munchen.

29
00:02:49,550 --> 00:02:54,971
For a ship so powerful and well maintained
such storms were just routine.

30
00:02:57,209 --> 00:03:00,935
It was assumed that all was well
and going to schedule,

31
00:03:04,481 --> 00:03:08,323
until 3 AM
 on the night of 12 December.

32
00:03:13,177 --> 00:03:15,404
It was an SOS from the Munchen.

33
00:03:15,806 --> 00:03:18,439
She was in trouble and needed help,

34
00:03:19,418 --> 00:03:21,995
but at this stag no-one
was too alarmed

35
00:03:21,996 --> 00:03:26,804
because even if damaged 
the powerful Munchen could float for days.

36
00:03:29,203 --> 00:03:31,340
At the beginning we were very calm.

37
00:03:31,344 --> 00:03:34,431
I told myself this
couldn't happen to the Munchen.

38
00:03:34,504 --> 00:03:36,299
It's so safe.

39
00:03:36,908 --> 00:03:39,405
Everything had been taken care of.

40
00:03:39,459 --> 00:03:41,531
They'd thought about everything.

41
00:03:46,493 --> 00:03:49,984
Within hours search and rescue planes
were sent to find her

42
00:03:50,084 --> 00:03:52,515
and all the ships in the busy shipping route

43
00:03:52,615 --> 00:03:54,877
came to join in the search.

44
00:03:59,367 --> 00:04:03,489
Like a police hunt,
they were lined up three miles apart

45
00:04:03,491 --> 00:04:06,778
combing vast areas of the ocean
for the Munchen.

46
00:04:11,470 --> 00:04:14,729
It was the biggest search
in the history of shipping.

47
00:04:14,893 --> 00:04:17,991
In charge was Captain Pieter de Nijs.

48
00:04:18,486 --> 00:04:20,355
We hoped to find the ship,

49
00:04:20,455 --> 00:04:25,682
or at least people or a lifeboat,
a life raft with people and we never found

50
00:04:25,702 --> 00:04:32,548
any living soul
which every day became
more disappointing.

51
00:04:35,221 --> 00:04:39,574
All that was recovered
was an empty lifeboat and some wreckage.

52
00:04:39,577 --> 00:04:42,544
That a ship can be in trouble
that can happen to any ship.

53
00:04:43,765 --> 00:04:46,901
It happens all the time
everywhere now and then,

54
00:04:48,041 --> 00:04:50,825
but that it completely disappeared,

55
00:04:50,860 --> 00:04:57,360
that such a big modern ship
could disappear
that was surprising.

56
00:05:00,871 --> 00:05:06,662
For some reason the great ship
and her crew had disappeared
off the face of the earth

57
00:05:07,324 --> 00:05:09,950
and no-one could understand why.

58
00:05:17,945 --> 00:05:20,632
An investigation started immediately,

59
00:05:21,688 --> 00:05:24,541
going over every detail of her design

60
00:05:24,576 --> 00:05:27,173
and the few remains that had been found.

61
00:05:30,839 --> 00:05:35,510
The only clue to what happened
was found on the recovered lifeboat.

62
00:05:38,898 --> 00:05:42,590
Normally it hung 20 metres
above the waterline

63
00:05:42,690 --> 00:05:45,868
and it was one of the tiny metal pins
that it hung from

64
00:05:45,869 --> 00:05:48,814
that drew the investigators' attention.

65
00:05:50,568 --> 00:05:53,144
One of them was Werner Hummel.

66
00:05:53,742 --> 00:05:57,814
The key actually to what,
what could have happened to the Munchen

67
00:05:57,815 --> 00:06:01,069
is the forward block
of the starboard lifeboat.

68
00:06:01,547 --> 00:06:05,308
The, which is shown here on, on this picture.

69
00:06:06,745 --> 00:06:10,035
We see here on the pictures these steel pins,

70
00:06:10,070 --> 00:06:13,295
pins bent from forward to aft.

71
00:06:13,690 --> 00:06:18,707
This indicates
that the boat hanging underneath

72
00:06:18,708 --> 00:06:25,871
was struck by a tremendous force
forward aft

73
00:06:25,906 --> 00:06:31,149
which caused these bendings
of these rather strong steel pins.

74
00:06:33,730 --> 00:06:38,364
Some huge force had hurled the lifeboat
out of its metal pins

75
00:06:38,365 --> 00:06:42,430
20m up above sea-level,

76
00:06:42,465 --> 00:06:46,222
but what this force was
was a mystery.

77
00:06:49,615 --> 00:06:52,071
The Maritime Court could only conclude

78
00:06:52,072 --> 00:06:55,302
that bad weather caused an unusual event

79
00:06:55,337 --> 00:06:57,637
which led to the sinking of the ship

80
00:07:01,514 --> 00:07:05,668
but many mariners suspected
they knew what sunk the Munchen,

81
00:07:07,109 --> 00:07:13,407
something that according to legend
sinks a huge number of ships every year:

82
00:07:15,462 --> 00:07:17,715
a freak wave.

83
00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:31,632
The freak, or rogue, wave
is one of the great myths of the sea.

84
00:07:32,360 --> 00:07:35,345
All my sea career I've been
hearing stories about rogue waves.

85
00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:40,695
Mariners talk of a single breaking wave
the size of a tower block

86
00:07:40,697 --> 00:07:42,914
that can rear up out of nowhere.

87
00:07:42,949 --> 00:07:43,985
It was colossal.

88
00:07:44,020 --> 00:07:46,845
At least 80ft high,
probably even bigger.

89
00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:49,721
We estimate the height of the wave
30 metres.

90
00:07:49,756 --> 00:07:52,510
It looked enormous,
it looked like a white cliff.

91
00:07:52,545 --> 00:07:56,477
It was just like a mountain,
a wall of water coming against us.

92
00:07:56,599 --> 00:08:00,303
I've never seen a wave
as big as this in my whole life.

93
00:08:01,800 --> 00:08:04,670
It's not a tsunami or tidal wave,

94
00:08:04,671 --> 00:08:08,675
it's not caused by earthquakes
or giant landslides.

95
00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:13,429
No-one knows where it comes from
or why it happens.

96
00:08:14,200 --> 00:08:15,941
The freak wave is a huge,

97
00:08:15,942 --> 00:08:18,869
steep wave coming out of the blue
without any prediction,

98
00:08:18,904 --> 00:08:22,009
any expectations.
It's just there.

99
00:08:22,840 --> 00:08:26,344
But there's one small problem
with all these stories.

100
00:08:28,836 --> 00:08:31,989
According to all scientific knowledge
of the sea

101
00:08:33,616 --> 00:08:37,025
freak waves are practically impossible.

102
00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:47,787
Scientists have understood ocean waves
 for centuries.

103
00:08:48,768 --> 00:08:51,096
They are simply made by the wind.

104
00:08:53,562 --> 00:08:58,282
The stronger the wind and the longer it blows
the bigger the waves.

105
00:09:03,240 --> 00:09:07,028
In order to predict the biggest wave
a ship will meet

106
00:09:07,029 --> 00:09:12,541
scientists use a set of mathematical equations
called the Linear Model.

107
00:09:16,640 --> 00:09:19,081
This says that in any sea condition

108
00:09:19,082 --> 00:09:24,073
there is a limit
to how big the largest wave will be

109
00:09:25,493 --> 00:09:29,493
and that mariners tales of monster waves
that come out of nowhere

110
00:09:29,494 --> 00:09:32,405
have got to be wrong.

111
00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:35,272
Mariners are like fishermen aren't they.

112
00:09:35,273 --> 00:09:38,443
I mean they,
sure they come back from the sea
and they tell all kinds of interesting stories

113
00:09:38,478 --> 00:09:40,618
and people look at them suspiciously.

114
00:09:40,619 --> 00:09:43,443
It's sort of like
you know the fish that got away

115
00:09:43,444 --> 00:09:47,052
and he says oh that was 10 metres long,
you know.

116
00:09:47,087 --> 00:09:49,270
Well waves are sort of the same.

117
00:09:51,625 --> 00:09:53,492
Jim Gunson of the Met Office

118
00:09:53,493 --> 00:09:58,736
uses the Linear Model to explain
why freak waves shouldn't exist.

119
00:09:58,840 --> 00:10:01,835
Using the Linear Model
for a given sea state

120
00:10:01,836 --> 00:10:07,209
this bell-shaped graph gives
the probability of a certain wave height

121
00:10:07,244 --> 00:10:10,721
and it's like the inner population
of children in a class.

122
00:10:10,756 --> 00:10:11,986
There is an average height of the children

123
00:10:11,987 --> 00:10:14,880
and most children are around that height.

124
00:10:14,915 --> 00:10:17,343
Some are quite a bit taller or shorter,

125
00:10:17,378 --> 00:10:19,521
but there's, the chance that a child is,

126
00:10:19,556 --> 00:10:23,040
is three or four times
the height of the average child
is very, very small.

127
00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:26,873
So according to the Linear Model

128
00:10:26,874 --> 00:10:31,610
even in a fierce storm
where average wave height may be 12 metres

129
00:10:32,727 --> 00:10:36,146
the chance of meeting
a 30m wall of water

130
00:10:37,746 --> 00:10:39,823
is practically zero.

131
00:10:43,600 --> 00:10:46,422
Using the Linear Model for a 12m sea state

132
00:10:46,423 --> 00:10:50,375
the chance of finding a 30m
trough to crest wave height

133
00:10:50,410 --> 00:10:54,961
is 10 to the minus 5 which is 0.00001.

134
00:10:54,996 --> 00:10:59,327
To put it in perspective the chan,
a wave like that would come along

135
00:10:59,362 --> 00:11:02,430
using the Linear Model
once every 10,000 years.

136
00:11:03,800 --> 00:11:07,044
The Linear Model is so well accepted

137
00:11:08,925 --> 00:11:13,358
that the entire multi-billion pound
shipping industry relies on it.

138
00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:23,689
Meteorologists use it to predict wave height

139
00:11:23,690 --> 00:11:27,944
and naval architects to calculate ship's strength

140
00:11:27,979 --> 00:11:33,263
and the biggest wave used in
ship design is just 15m.

141
00:11:34,240 --> 00:11:37,834
The idea that there might be
freak waves out there

142
00:11:37,835 --> 00:11:39,623
seemed impossible.

143
00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:44,039
Instead any mysterious
disappearances at sea

144
00:11:44,040 --> 00:11:48,257
have been blamed on far likely culprits,

145
00:11:48,292 --> 00:11:51,944
like corrosion and human error,

146
00:11:56,969 --> 00:12:00,888
but then one day something happened
that forced scientists

147
00:12:00,923 --> 00:12:04,552
to look again
at their ideas about ocean waves.

148
00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:13,993
On New Year's Day 1995

149
00:12:13,994 --> 00:12:17,252
a storm was brewing in the North Sea.

150
00:12:21,287 --> 00:12:25,936
The Draupner oil rig was 100 miles out
in the harshest of weather.

151
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:30,022
The sensors were regularly
reading waves of 12m

152
00:12:30,023 --> 00:12:36,822
when suddenly out of the blue 
came a wave that was so high and so steep

153
00:12:36,857 --> 00:12:40,062
scientists had thought it was impossible.

154
00:12:48,960 --> 00:12:53,505
For me it changed everything,
really changed everything.

155
00:12:55,971 --> 00:13:00,904
This wave is at 26m.
It's so much bigger than
the background sea state.

156
00:13:00,939 --> 00:13:02,830
When the New Year's Day wave came along

157
00:13:02,831 --> 00:13:07,903
which fits this picture,
a 30m crest to trough height
in a 12m sea state,

158
00:13:07,938 --> 00:13:11,745
alarm bells started going off
because of the very low probability
of this wave,

159
00:13:11,780 --> 00:13:13,792
yet we saw it.

160
00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:16,394
The sensors measured a wave so steep

161
00:13:16,395 --> 00:13:21,381
and so high it should only occur once
in every 10,000 years.

162
00:13:24,552 --> 00:13:28,904
Suddenly it seemed that the mariners
might be right after all.

163
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,885
The New Year wave shocked wave experts.

164
00:13:41,886 --> 00:13:44,747
Among them Julian Wolfram.

165
00:13:46,207 --> 00:13:50,481
He has spent years since then studying
the same part of the North Sea

166
00:13:50,516 --> 00:13:53,051
looking for more freak waves.

167
00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:57,334
What we need to do
is to study waves like this

168
00:13:57,335 --> 00:13:59,600
because we need to know how frequently

169
00:13:59,601 --> 00:14:01,671
they occur because if they occur quite frequently

170
00:14:04,042 --> 00:14:04,060
they could actually pose a serious danger

171
00:14:04,095 --> 00:14:06,513
to offshore structures and ships.

172
00:14:09,440 --> 00:14:14,065
Wolfram was looking for any waves
that were bigger than the Linear Model
would predict

173
00:14:14,478 --> 00:14:18,382
and to measure them
he installed a radar device

174
00:14:18,433 --> 00:14:21,771
looking down to the sea's surface.

175
00:14:24,040 --> 00:14:27,345
We have a device which faces down
to the surface of the sea

176
00:14:27,346 --> 00:14:30,076
and basically sends out an electric pulse,

177
00:14:30,111 --> 00:14:32,275
hits the surface of the water
and comes back again

178
00:14:32,310 --> 00:14:35,566
and we time the amount of time
it takes to go down
and come back and from that

179
00:14:35,567 --> 00:14:39,551
we can estimate the distance from
the radar to the wave

180
00:14:39,552 --> 00:14:43,454
and we do that continuously
so we actually get the profile
of the surface.

181
00:14:44,880 --> 00:14:48,555
Over four years
Wolfram measured every large wave

182
00:14:48,556 --> 00:14:50,623
that hit the platform

183
00:14:56,975 --> 00:14:59,203
and when he plotted the size
of these waves

184
00:14:59,204 --> 00:15:01,663
compared to the height
of the waves around them

185
00:15:02,114 --> 00:15:05,300
he found something completely unexpected.

186
00:15:09,280 --> 00:15:10,979
The Linear Model predicts

187
00:15:10,980 --> 00:15:14,020
that when you plot
the height of individual waves

188
00:15:14,055 --> 00:15:16,696
relative to the waves either side

189
00:15:16,731 --> 00:15:19,268
they should all lie on a straight line

190
00:15:19,890 --> 00:15:23,250
and when the average size
of the waves were small

191
00:15:23,558 --> 00:15:25,608
the Linear Model held true,

192
00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:35,535
but he found 24 waves
that veered well above the line.

193
00:15:39,920 --> 00:15:43,480
These biggest waves occurred
far more frequently

194
00:15:44,470 --> 00:15:46,582
than the Linear Model predicted.

195
00:15:48,427 --> 00:15:51,520
It appeared that these 24 waves

196
00:15:51,555 --> 00:15:54,543
were a completely
different sort of beast.

197
00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:57,158
One of the things we learn
when we plotted out the graph

198
00:15:57,159 --> 00:16:00,003
was that in fact the really extreme waves

199
00:16:00,038 --> 00:16:03,905
are different from
the slightly smaller waves.

200
00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:05,902
They have different characteristics,

201
00:16:05,903 --> 00:16:08,278
they tend to be significantly steeper,

202
00:16:08,313 --> 00:16:11,705
they also tend to be higher than
we would normally expect

203
00:16:11,740 --> 00:16:14,554
based on the ordinary theories
we've used up to date.

204
00:16:15,808 --> 00:16:18,594
They're unusual,
they are freak waves.

205
00:16:18,620 --> 00:16:21,315
It seemed Wolfram really had found

206
00:16:21,316 --> 00:16:24,430
the rogue wave of mariners' myth.

207
00:16:39,400 --> 00:16:41,572
For the shipping industry

208
00:16:41,573 --> 00:16:44,990
Wolfram's research
could have been a disaster.

209
00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:50,328
If there really were
freak waves out there

210
00:16:50,329 --> 00:16:53,416
then potentially billions of dollars
were at risk.

211
00:16:53,451 --> 00:16:57,804
It could mean having to redesign
every single ship.

212
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:03,463
With so much at stake
scientists needed to understand

213
00:17:03,464 --> 00:17:05,041
what was going on.

214
00:17:05,238 --> 00:17:06,803
Where did freak waves come from

215
00:17:06,838 --> 00:17:09,733
and was there any way
of predicting them?

216
00:17:10,800 --> 00:17:12,742
Searching for clues

217
00:17:12,743 --> 00:17:16,210
they looked at where mariners
have reported seeing freak waves

218
00:17:17,226 --> 00:17:19,552
and found one place
where they seemed to happen

219
00:17:19,587 --> 00:17:25,370
over and over again - South Africa.

220
00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:40,381
The southern cape of Africa
is a major shipping route

221
00:17:40,382 --> 00:17:43,965
with millions of tons of cargo
being shifted every year.

222
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:47,960
The seas here may look calm

223
00:17:47,995 --> 00:17:51,737
but for years they have been
notorious to sailors

224
00:17:51,772 --> 00:17:54,107
for the ferocity of their waves.

225
00:17:58,080 --> 00:18:03,010
Captain Dai Davies is one of the leading
salvage experts in South Africa.

226
00:18:05,026 --> 00:18:09,268
He's seen the damage these waves
can cause dozens of times.

227
00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:19,027
The Neptune Sapphire was a brand new vessel
on her maiden voyage.

228
00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:25,277
It was as if a cutting torch had cut
the ship in half completely.

229
00:18:27,713 --> 00:18:30,827
Atlas Pride happened in horrific weather.

230
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:33,651
This big wave just came out of nowhere,

231
00:18:33,652 --> 00:18:37,028
hit the bow and destroyed the whole bow.

232
00:18:39,268 --> 00:18:41,652
Mimosa was a very big vessel.

233
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:46,154
The ship's side plating was punched in,

234
00:18:46,155 --> 00:18:50,450
completely smashed in
causing a hole to be formed

235
00:18:50,451 --> 00:18:53,505
you could fit three double-decker
buses into.

236
00:18:57,211 --> 00:19:00,311
When I went aboard the ship
to carry out the salvage

237
00:19:00,312 --> 00:19:03,554
the Captain, who was
a very experienced Norwegian Master,

238
00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:06,417
said it was the biggest wave
he'd ever seen in his life, 
he'd ever seen.

239
00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:14,612
Since 1990, 20 ships
have been devastated by rogue waves

240
00:19:14,613 --> 00:19:17,288
off the coast of South Africa.

241
00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:29,591
Scientists like Marten Grundlingh

242
00:19:29,592 --> 00:19:33,002
decided to find out
what was going on in these waters

243
00:19:33,037 --> 00:19:35,038
to make them so dangerous,

244
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:42,486
so they plotted the locations
of all the accidents on a chart

245
00:19:56,200 --> 00:20:00,287
and when they laid this over
an infrared image of the ocean

246
00:20:00,288 --> 00:20:03,030
they noticed a very striking pattern.

247
00:20:03,969 --> 00:20:08,163
All the points lay along the same
strong ocean current,

248
00:20:12,430 --> 00:20:14,591
the Agulhas current.

249
00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:18,966
These crosses that we plotted
on all the accidents that occurred off
the South African coast

250
00:20:18,967 --> 00:20:21,723
they're all located in this red band

251
00:20:21,758 --> 00:20:24,669
and this band signifies the Agulhas current

252
00:20:24,704 --> 00:20:27,886
which is a major current
flowing down the South African coast

253
00:20:27,921 --> 00:20:30,083
that originates in the Indian Ocean

254
00:20:30,084 --> 00:20:33,412
so it's warmer water and therefore
visible on this infrared image.

255
00:20:33,447 --> 00:20:37,359
The Agulhas current is
a huge ocean current of warm water

256
00:20:37,360 --> 00:20:39,685
streaming down from the north.

257
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:43,220
On its own
it shouldn't cause freak waves,

258
00:20:43,255 --> 00:20:47,779
but scientists suspected
that if the current heading one way

259
00:20:47,814 --> 00:20:51,217
were to meet wind
and waves coming in the opposite direction

260
00:20:52,317 --> 00:20:55,951
then perhaps this could be the source
of all the trouble.

261
00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:01,488
Down here in the south
is the area where all our waves
and storms are generated,

262
00:21:01,489 --> 00:21:03,164
deep in the southern ocean

263
00:21:03,199 --> 00:21:06,478
and they propagate
in a north-easterly direction up like this

264
00:21:06,513 --> 00:21:09,568
and this is the area
then where the Agulhas current

265
00:21:09,603 --> 00:21:13,884
coming from the north-east
meet up with these wave
and swell conditions coming from,

266
00:21:13,885 --> 00:21:15,398
from this area down here,

267
00:21:15,433 --> 00:21:20,018
so this is the area,
the danger area in terms of
these two significant phenomena.

268
00:21:26,401 --> 00:21:30,555
But it was only when Grundlingh
got access to a new type of satellite,

269
00:21:30,556 --> 00:21:32,156
one using radar,

270
00:21:32,191 --> 00:21:35,932
that he could actually measure
the height of waves in the current

271
00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:46,546
and it was just as Grundlingh had thought.

272
00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:53,581
When the waves were going with
the current they were small,

273
00:21:55,732 --> 00:21:59,419
but when the waves were going
in the opposite direction to the current

274
00:21:59,454 --> 00:22:01,885
the effect was dramatic.

275
00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:05,647
What we have here
is a plot of the wave height.

276
00:22:05,648 --> 00:22:11,320
Outside the current
and the wave height inside the current

277
00:22:11,355 --> 00:22:13,908
and what is quite conspicuous
here is this very,

278
00:22:13,943 --> 00:22:16,617
very significant increase in the wave height

279
00:22:16,652 --> 00:22:19,505
as the satellite moved across the current.

280
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:24,751
When the waves had to fight the current
they grew massive.

281
00:22:24,752 --> 00:22:29,127
The current pushed against them
driving them so high and steep

282
00:22:29,162 --> 00:22:31,359
a monster would rear up.

283
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:43,795
Here it seemed was a simple explanation
for the mythical freak.

284
00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:47,645
These things are not really
what used to be called freak waves.

285
00:22:47,646 --> 00:22:51,519
They, they're not of a freakish nature,
but they're quite common.

286
00:22:51,554 --> 00:22:53,886
They will occur every time

287
00:22:53,890 --> 00:22:56,602
that there are
waves moving against the current

288
00:22:56,637 --> 00:22:59,255
and that happens very, very often.

289
00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:04,038
This simple explanation
was a godsend for the shipping industry.

290
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:08,062
It meant that huge waves
were easy to avoid.

291
00:23:09,750 --> 00:23:12,559
Just steer around the Agulhas current.

292
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,361
There was no need to spend huge sums

293
00:23:17,362 --> 00:23:19,986
redesigning the world's fleet

294
00:23:23,006 --> 00:23:27,553
and when scientists
looked at other places where freak waves
were most often reported

295
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:34,146
like Norway,
straightforward local conditions were again
found to be the cause.

296
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:45,631
Ships were simply ordered
to follow a different route

297
00:23:45,632 --> 00:23:48,127
and avoid the danger areas.

298
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:55,992
There was now no need to question
science's understanding of the sea

299
00:23:58,867 --> 00:24:03,150
and it seemed that the freak wave mystery
had been solved

300
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:14,580
but then something happened last year
in the South Atlantic

301
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,339
that no-one could explain away

302
00:24:19,383 --> 00:24:23,511
and which would shatter
all the simple explanations.

303
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:32,392
In February 2001
the Caledonian Star spent several weeks

304
00:24:32,393 --> 00:24:34,927
cruising around the Antarctic.

305
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:41,482
On board were 105 British
and American tourists

306
00:24:41,483 --> 00:24:45,394
enjoying the wonders
of the southern ocean.

307
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:56,763
The Caledonian Star is a strong
as almost any ship in the world,

308
00:24:56,764 --> 00:25:00,317
specially built to cope with the ice
and harsh conditions,

309
00:25:02,628 --> 00:25:06,309
so when they received
a bad weather report for the journey home

310
00:25:06,444 --> 00:25:08,737
no-one on board was worried.

311
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:11,860
We had a weather forecast predicting
gale force winds.

312
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:15,701
It's a very common weather report.

313
00:25:15,702 --> 00:25:19,299
The ship is expected to face
that sort of weather all the time.

314
00:25:19,334 --> 00:25:21,107
That didn't bother us at all.

315
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:30,147
The storm worsened till the waves
were over 12 metres high.

316
00:25:34,414 --> 00:25:36,630
The ship rode these easily

317
00:25:36,665 --> 00:25:40,569
and still no-one was concerned

318
00:25:42,572 --> 00:25:46,328
until 5.30pm on 2 March

319
00:25:47,315 --> 00:25:50,774
when the First Officer
 saw something unexpected.

320
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:54,785
Out of nowhere I saw
in the distance about a mile away

321
00:25:54,786 --> 00:26:01,242
a wave that appeared
to be twice the height of the
average wave height.

322
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:05,493
We estimate the height of the wave 30m
which is extremely high.

323
00:26:05,528 --> 00:26:09,644
It was just like a mountain,
a wall of water coming against us

324
00:26:09,645 --> 00:26:13,863
and it came from a different direction
like 30¡Æ on the starboard bow.

325
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:19,322
As the wall of water approached

326
00:26:19,323 --> 00:26:22,997
they saw a huge trough
open up before it.

327
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:26,783
The ship probably went down
at an angle like this

328
00:26:26,784 --> 00:26:32,287
and more or less
like a free-fall because the waves
were moving very fast

329
00:26:32,322 --> 00:26:34,602
and when the ship
is tipping she fell like this

330
00:26:34,637 --> 00:26:36,840
and talking to the other people
on board the ship

331
00:26:36,841 --> 00:26:39,445
they were all falling
against the bulkheads

332
00:26:39,450 --> 00:26:41,911
in the forward part of the section
wherever they were,

333
00:26:42,002 --> 00:26:45,303
so she went like this 
directly hitting a wave

334
00:26:45,338 --> 00:26:48,771
and just buried
the bow into the wave.

335
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:54,615
The helmsman he was standing here
and he actually took cover

336
00:26:54,616 --> 00:26:58,120
and when he looked down
he could not see the crest of the wave.

337
00:26:58,155 --> 00:27:00,103
You had a wall of water ahead of you

338
00:27:00,104 --> 00:27:03,041
and the ship was just running
into that wall.

339
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,664
The whole bridge was like an explosion

340
00:27:08,665 --> 00:27:13,244
and I was washed
like I was blown away by water jet
over to the other side,

341
00:27:13,279 --> 00:27:15,470
me and the helmsman
we were lying on top of each other

342
00:27:15,505 --> 00:27:19,959
underwater fighting
books and cushions and shorts

343
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,018
and I had to swim,
actually I had to swim and,

344
00:27:25,019 --> 00:27:30,011
and crawl to get back to the controls
to be able to put the ship back on,
on course.

345
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,992
The effect of the wave was devastating

346
00:27:37,993 --> 00:27:40,464
shattering the ship's instrumentation.

347
00:27:42,388 --> 00:27:45,030
The ship was effectively blind.

348
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:50,430
We lost our radars, the gyro compasses,

349
00:27:50,431 --> 00:27:56,632
the echo sounders, the sonar,
parts of the radio communication.

350
00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,815
It was a very humbling experience.

351
00:27:59,816 --> 00:28:01,839
Of course it went through
your mind that this,

352
00:28:01,874 --> 00:28:05,310
this might be it,
we might not make it.

353
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,821
But the Caledonian Star was lucky.

354
00:28:16,822 --> 00:28:19,212
Her engines were still working.

355
00:28:20,624 --> 00:28:23,417
The crew boarded up the windows

356
00:28:23,418 --> 00:28:27,579
and eventually the ship limped back to port

357
00:28:30,365 --> 00:28:35,101
but another ship out at sea
at that time was less fortunate.

358
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:42,724
The Bremen was a German cruise liner.

359
00:28:45,584 --> 00:28:48,553
Again she was built to withstand anything

360
00:28:48,588 --> 00:28:50,824
the South Atlantic could throw at her.

361
00:28:52,171 --> 00:28:55,382
On board were 137 tourists.

362
00:28:59,920 --> 00:29:03,555
They too were hit by a giant 30m wave

363
00:29:03,556 --> 00:29:06,112
which devastated the bridge.

364
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,058
The bridge wasn't operable.

365
00:29:14,059 --> 00:29:17,053
All the nautical tools, instruments,

366
00:29:17,088 --> 00:29:21,558
the whole electronics failed immediately
with the break-in of seawater.

367
00:29:27,802 --> 00:29:30,232
Everything including radar equipment,

368
00:29:30,233 --> 00:29:35,009
weather faxes, ventilator, alarms,
everything malfunctioned.

369
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:41,122
All the instruments short-circuited, 
the steering gear failed completely.

370
00:29:41,157 --> 00:29:44,986
The ship was in distress,
 not manoeuvrable,

371
00:29:47,358 --> 00:29:52,688
but unlike the Caledonian Star
the Bremen also lost her engines.

372
00:29:55,154 --> 00:29:58,780
The ship and all on board
were now in desperate trouble.

373
00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:04,677
Unable to power her way through the sea

374
00:30:04,678 --> 00:30:10,358
the ship drifted side on to the waves
exposing her weakest parts.

375
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,882
When the engine failed the ship
lay transversely to the sea

376
00:30:15,883 --> 00:30:20,824
and the sea rolled crossways
to the ship against the big windows
of the restaurant.

377
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,107
This was the worst situation possible.

378
00:30:26,108 --> 00:30:31,776
The restaurant windows are extremely weak.

379
00:30:35,419 --> 00:30:38,476
If they were hit by any large wave

380
00:30:38,511 --> 00:30:42,306
water would flood in and the ship would sink.

381
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:46,246
We would have capsized.

382
00:30:46,247 --> 00:30:49,609
It would have broken through
or smashed the windows.

383
00:30:50,200 --> 00:30:53,049
It was now a race against time.

384
00:30:55,183 --> 00:30:59,505
To turn the ship
away from the waves they desperately
needed to restart the engine,

385
00:30:59,540 --> 00:31:03,024
but the starter generator
 was in pieces on the floor.

386
00:31:03,059 --> 00:31:09,471
If they couldn't start the engine
the ship and everyone on her
was doomed.

387
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:18,357
We came from the Antarctic
and had nearly zero degree
water temperature

388
00:31:18,358 --> 00:31:20,335
and the air temperature was the same.

389
00:31:23,141 --> 00:31:25,271
In those high sea conditions

390
00:31:25,306 --> 00:31:30,036
it wouldn't have been possible
to put lifeboats of life jackets
or life rafts in the water.

391
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:35,023
As well as that,
the passengers we sail with aren't 
the youngest anymore.

392
00:31:36,487 --> 00:31:39,080
I doubt any of us would have survived.

393
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:47,943
So in dark, rolling seas
they set to repairing the engine.

394
00:31:47,944 --> 00:31:51,743
All the time the waves
were smashing against the windows

395
00:31:55,069 --> 00:31:57,495
and then they got lucky.

396
00:31:58,158 --> 00:32:00,677
The engine finally started.

397
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:07,464
Then for the first time
I had hope we would make it.

398
00:32:07,465 --> 00:32:11,746
There are wonderful moments
when you know everything works
normally again.

399
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:22,712
Both the Caledonian Star
and the Bremen were fortunate to survive,

400
00:32:23,426 --> 00:32:27,788
but their experiences challenged
everything known about freak waves.

401
00:32:27,823 --> 00:32:34,220
There are no currents
or local conditions to cause rogue waves
in the South Atlantic.

402
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:43,021
According to traditional theory
such waves should be incredibly rare,

403
00:32:46,176 --> 00:32:50,582
yet here were two
within days of each other,

404
00:32:51,749 --> 00:32:54,172
so what was going on?

405
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:12,111
Science mobilised every technology
to solve the mystery.

406
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:19,554
Using a new radar satellite
Suzanne Lehner
of the German Aerospace Centre

407
00:33:19,555 --> 00:33:23,587
began searching for freak waves
around the globe.

408
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:29,563
Now with these radar images
you can really see the individual waves.

409
00:33:31,994 --> 00:33:35,808
You can see wave lengths,
wave directions, wave grouping.

410
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:39,300
The European remote sensing satellite

411
00:33:39,301 --> 00:33:42,994
travels across the ocean
using highly sensitive radar

412
00:33:43,029 --> 00:33:46,357
to get a detailed picture of the sea's surface.

413
00:33:46,492 --> 00:33:51,434
It can pick out individual rogue waves
from anywhere in the world.

414
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:54,396
What we get is an image like this one.

415
00:33:54,397 --> 00:33:58,638
This is actually the radar image
with the highest wave

416
00:33:58,673 --> 00:34:02,630
we found on all of our
30,000 images we analysed.

417
00:34:02,665 --> 00:34:05,269
This is a 30m wave here.

418
00:34:05,900 --> 00:34:09,574
The high crest
followed by very low trough.

419
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:16,169
This is exactly the size of wave
which hit the Bremen
and the Caledonian Star,

420
00:34:19,343 --> 00:34:23,254
the sort of wave 
that science said was practically impossible

421
00:34:24,458 --> 00:34:27,344
and in just three weeks' worth of data

422
00:34:27,345 --> 00:34:32,725
they found over 10 such huge waves
out in the deep ocean.

423
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:38,480
What you can see here
is this highest wave
we found of about 30m -

424
00:34:38,481 --> 00:34:40,959
that is colour-coded in red.

425
00:34:42,061 --> 00:34:49,174
The next highest waves here
are about 27m high waves colour-
coded in orange.

426
00:34:49,209 --> 00:34:54,137
We find another high wave here
in the North Pacific.

427
00:34:54,467 --> 00:34:58,907
This is again kind of 26m high wave here.

428
00:35:05,630 --> 00:35:09,267
We did not expect to find
in this limited amount of time

429
00:35:09,302 --> 00:35:13,124
so many of these extreme wave events.

430
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:16,132
If the satellite data is right

431
00:35:16,133 --> 00:35:19,123
it looks as if freak waves occur
in the deep ocean

432
00:35:19,158 --> 00:35:24,175
far more frequently
than the traditional Linear Model
would predict.

433
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,398
The question is: why?

434
00:35:34,543 --> 00:35:39,352
The answer seems to lie
in a completely different branch of science.

435
00:35:48,720 --> 00:35:53,793
Al Osborne inhabits
a strange mathematical world

436
00:35:53,794 --> 00:35:55,941
where almost anything can happen.

437
00:35:58,085 --> 00:36:02,543
It's the bizarre non-linear world
of quantum physics.

438
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:09,014
In this world objects appear and disappear
according to one remarkable equation,

439
00:36:09,015 --> 00:36:10,731
the Schrodinger equation.

440
00:36:10,860 --> 00:36:13,934
The Schrodinger equation,
quantum mechanics,

441
00:36:13,935 --> 00:36:17,172
we have TV programmes called
Quantum Leap

442
00:36:17,207 --> 00:36:21,326
and so on and so forth
so we all think we know something
about that equation.

443
00:36:21,361 --> 00:36:24,689
There's a version, however, modified,

444
00:36:24,724 --> 00:36:28,013
that describes deep water waves.

445
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:35,604
Osborne is one of the world's
leading wave mathematicians.

446
00:36:35,605 --> 00:36:39,091
For 30 years he has been obsessed
with the theoretical wave

447
00:36:39,126 --> 00:36:42,420
described by the Schrodinger equation.

448
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,814
The equation describes
a theoretical water surface

449
00:36:47,815 --> 00:36:52,047
where huge waves can suddenly leap up
out of nowhere,

450
00:36:52,082 --> 00:36:58,401
where for some reason
normal waves become unstable
and grow huge.

451
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:03,203
The physics of the non-linear
Schrodinger equation

452
00:37:03,204 --> 00:37:05,820
we can see in this simple example.

453
00:37:05,855 --> 00:37:09,091
In the beginning it doesn't seen
like there's anything happening

454
00:37:09,126 --> 00:37:11,820
and we could all just give up
and go drink a beer if we wanted.

455
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:16,295
On the other hand
we could keep moving forward
and maybe something will happen.

456
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:21,180
What we'll see is this central wave
here's going to start to grow.

457
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:26,978
It's growing because
it's robbing energy from its two,
two nearest neighbours

458
00:37:26,979 --> 00:37:30,578
so here it's starting to come up,
you see it's growing,

459
00:37:30,660 --> 00:37:33,309
it's stealing energy from
the nearest neighbours

460
00:37:33,310 --> 00:37:36,078
and these waves are starting to drop.

461
00:37:36,113 --> 00:37:38,043
See how this is coming down here.

462
00:37:38,044 --> 00:37:39,951
Look at that decrease

463
00:37:40,507 --> 00:37:46,194
and now in its full glory
it's a very large wave,

464
00:37:46,195 --> 00:37:48,951
it has two smaller waves on each side

465
00:37:48,986 --> 00:37:53,367
and two rather deep holes in the sea
around the peak.

466
00:37:54,280 --> 00:38:00,236
In Osborne's theoretical world
these non-linear waves
could grow into monsters,

467
00:38:01,375 --> 00:38:05,035
but the idea of waves becoming
unstable like this in the real world

468
00:38:05,070 --> 00:38:09,322
was so outlandish that oceanographers said
it could never happen.

469
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:11,251
If you talk to people

470
00:38:11,252 --> 00:38:13,283
who know something about ocean waves

471
00:38:13,318 --> 00:38:16,584
nobody was going to take
this theory seriously.

472
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:21,668
Until someone sent him
the profile of a wave.

473
00:38:22,737 --> 00:38:27,372
It was the one
that hit the Draupner oil rig in 1995,

474
00:38:27,707 --> 00:38:30,460
the New Year wave.

475
00:38:43,240 --> 00:38:47,796
For me it changed everything,
really changed everything.

476
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:52,536
The New Year wave looked identical

477
00:38:52,537 --> 00:38:56,776
to one of his theoretical
non-linear waves.

478
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:03,505
I was flabbergasted,
absolutely flabbergasted.

479
00:39:03,506 --> 00:39:08,030
It just looked exactly
like one of these exotic solutions

480
00:39:08,065 --> 00:39:10,711
to the non-linear Schrodinger equation.

481
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,182
One of the ones
that we threw away

482
00:39:13,183 --> 00:39:15,643
over the last 30 years
because we said

483
00:39:15,678 --> 00:39:17,781
this kind of thing can't happen,

484
00:39:17,816 --> 00:39:20,010
this kind of thing is just too strange

485
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,820
yet it just sits there and it looks at you

486
00:39:22,821 --> 00:39:27,589
and you have to entertain
the possibility that it is a real effect

487
00:39:28,473 --> 00:39:31,818
and it might really have something to do

488
00:39:31,853 --> 00:39:34,819
with these extreme waves in the ocean.

489
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:42,393
If Osborne is right,
here is the reason why rogue waves
occur in the deep ocean.

490
00:39:42,394 --> 00:39:45,497
It isn't to do with strange local conditions.

491
00:39:45,532 --> 00:39:52,404
It's because waves start to behave
in a bizarre non-linear fashion.

492
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:57,468
For some reason they become unstable

493
00:39:57,469 --> 00:40:01,692
and start sucking up energy
from waves around them.

494
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,125
You have what's called a rogue sea.

495
00:40:06,126 --> 00:40:08,584
Now mariners have known about this.

496
00:40:08,619 --> 00:40:14,038
You look at the sea state in one moment
everything just looks random

497
00:40:14,073 --> 00:40:17,470
boring waves that we've known
about for a long time,

498
00:40:17,471 --> 00:40:20,962
but then one of these waves
will come up,

499
00:40:21,054 --> 00:40:23,181
they're all there they're all hiding away,

500
00:40:23,182 --> 00:40:26,064
one of 'em will come up,
then a little later another will come up,

501
00:40:26,099 --> 00:40:29,896
but in-between
you won't see them necessarily.

502
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,328
Osborne's theory means
that there are two types of wave -

503
00:40:35,329 --> 00:40:41,881
the ordinary, stable linear wave
and an unstable non-linear monster,

504
00:40:41,916 --> 00:40:46,577
a wave that at any point
can turn into a rogue.

505
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:50,621
This says that there are really
two kinds of waves.

506
00:40:50,622 --> 00:40:52,096
Amazing thing.

507
00:40:52,131 --> 00:40:57,038
Not the old boring sine waves
that we've known about for two centuries,

508
00:40:57,039 --> 00:41:00,342
not only those,
but there's another kind of wave.

509
00:41:01,329 --> 00:41:03,724
It's a really special beast.

510
00:41:03,759 --> 00:41:09,306
It hides below the background waves
and then comes up
every once in a while.

511
00:41:10,996 --> 00:41:15,319
This could then explain
what Wolfram saw in the North Sea.

512
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:19,581
It could explain
what caused the wave

513
00:41:19,582 --> 00:41:25,649
that hit the Bremen 
and the Caledonian Star

514
00:41:26,605 --> 00:41:32,260
and it could explain
what caused the large number of waves
observed by satellite.

515
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:41,657
It seems that there is a separate
population of waves out in the ocean

516
00:41:43,438 --> 00:41:48,210
that are higher and more frequent
than anyone had thought possible

517
00:41:50,814 --> 00:41:54,921
and there's something that makes
these waves especially deadly

518
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:01,365
It's not just their size,
it's their shape.

519
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,478
The Linear Model
used by the shipping industry

520
00:42:13,479 --> 00:42:18,447
has always assumed that waves
are smooth and gently sloping

521
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:24,583
so ships are only designed to cope with
undulating waves like these,

522
00:42:24,584 --> 00:42:30,471
but according to mariners
freak waves are very different.

523
00:42:30,506 --> 00:42:34,039
It was a vertical wall,
it wasn't a sloping wave,

524
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:36,494
it was a vertical wall
of solid green water.

525
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:39,449
I likened it to the white cliffs of Dover.

526
00:42:39,450 --> 00:42:43,539
It just looked as though
there was this enormous great cliff
ahead of us.

527
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:48,881
Freak waves aren't the smooth,
undulating waves ships are designed for.

528
00:42:49,968 --> 00:42:53,542
They are so steep
they can actually break.

529
00:42:53,577 --> 00:42:57,814
It means they can hit a ship
with astonishing force.

530
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:03,063
The reason why rogue waves
are so damaging

531
00:43:03,064 --> 00:43:05,234
is because they're breaking.

532
00:43:05,725 --> 00:43:07,659
It's no longer really a wave.

533
00:43:07,694 --> 00:43:12,446
It's just a pile of water coming flying
at you and it just goes bang.

534
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:22,840
Engineer Rod Rainey analyses
ship damage for the marine industry.

535
00:43:24,034 --> 00:43:26,332
He has been calculating the huge forces

536
00:43:26,367 --> 00:43:31,748
that these giant breaking waves
have on ships compared to normal waves.

537
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:42,004
This ball here
represents the force of a three metre
classical linear wave hitting a ship.

538
00:43:43,325 --> 00:43:46,387
That's a force of about
1.5 tons per square metre.

539
00:43:49,391 --> 00:43:54,496
This represents a typical storm wave
say 12m high hitting a ship -

540
00:43:55,721 --> 00:43:58,126
about 6t/m©÷ .....

541
00:44:00,366 --> 00:44:06,008
and this represents a force
from a rogue wave,
that's about 100 t/m©÷.

542
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:19,071
This force is far greater than most ships
are designed to withstand.

543
00:44:19,106 --> 00:44:23,450
We've looked very carefully
at ships that have been damaged
by breaking waves

544
00:44:23,451 --> 00:44:26,514
and we are sure that
the pressures that you can get

545
00:44:26,549 --> 00:44:30,763
over substantial areas
are about 100 t/m©÷.

546
00:44:30,798 --> 00:44:34,168
Now that compares with what
a ship is normally designed for

547
00:44:34,169 --> 00:44:36,950
high up on the side
which typically about 15.

548
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,885
Now just to be clear here 15 t/m©÷

549
00:44:39,886 --> 00:44:42,275
is what it can take without
any damage at all.

550
00:44:42,310 --> 00:44:45,172
It can take perhaps double that
if you allow,

551
00:44:45,173 --> 00:44:49,938
if you allow it to dent,
but it can't take 100 t/m©÷.
That will hole it.

552
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,657
It seems that rogue waves
are not only out there,

553
00:44:58,658 --> 00:45:02,439
but they are far more powerful 
than any ship can handle.

554
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:05,683
All the scientific evidence suggests

555
00:45:05,684 --> 00:45:08,643
that the old explanation
for why the shipping industry

556
00:45:08,678 --> 00:45:12,603
loses a ship a week may be inadequate.

557
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,837
It may not be just corrosion or pilot error.

558
00:45:23,838 --> 00:45:27,791
Some at least must be due to freak waves.

559
00:45:27,826 --> 00:45:34,307
It means that at last
we can lay to rest some of those mysterious
disappearances at sea,

560
00:45:34,342 --> 00:45:37,058
like that of the Munchen.

561
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:50,806
As the storm grew on
that fateful night in December 1978

562
00:45:50,807 --> 00:45:53,823
the Munchen would have carried confidently on

563
00:45:53,825 --> 00:45:56,853
carving through the rising seas,

564
00:46:03,543 --> 00:46:06,857
until suddenly out of the darkness

565
00:46:06,892 --> 00:46:11,373
there would have loomed
a huge 30 metre wall of water.

566
00:46:16,720 --> 00:46:21,886
The way it most probably goes is
that the bow of the vessel
is diving into a trough,

567
00:46:21,887 --> 00:46:25,155
a wave trough and then before it

568
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:30,340
it has raised up again the wave
is so to say collapsing

569
00:46:30,341 --> 00:46:37,035
over the bow and the superstructure
and with tremendous force
is striking against the front bulkhead

570
00:46:38,573 --> 00:46:43,392
hitting the starboard lifeboat
and doing the damage
which we have seen on the picture.

571
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:51,044
The wave would have smashed
into the bridge

572
00:46:51,045 --> 00:46:53,965
just like it did in the Bremen

573
00:46:57,925 --> 00:47:01,597
taking out the instruments and engines

574
00:47:01,632 --> 00:47:04,689
and rendering the ship helpless.

575
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:09,111
If the ship had turned side on to the waves

576
00:47:09,112 --> 00:47:11,422
another wave could have holed her.

577
00:47:11,114 --> 00:47:14,327
Water would have poured in

578
00:47:14,539 --> 00:47:17,759
eventually plunging the great ship Munchen

579
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:22,989
and everyone on her
to the bottom of the sea.

580
00:47:23,024 --> 00:47:33,240
Edited and Sync. by haN25771