Sailors have long known solitary waves of great height, which destroy ships. For a long time it was believed that this is only found in the open ocean. However, recent data suggest that single rogue waves (up to 20-30 meters high), or solitons (from the English solitary - "solitary"), can appear in coastal zones.
Incident with "Birmingham"
First, let's refer to eyewitness accounts.
“We were about 100 miles southwest of Durban on our way to Cape Town. The cruiser was going fast and almost without heaving, meeting moderate swell and wind waves, when suddenly we fell into a hole and rushed down to meet the next wave, which swept through the first gun turrets and crashed into our open captain's bridge. I was knocked down and, at a height of 10 meters above sea level, I found myself in a half-meter layer of water. The ship suffered such a blow that many thought we were torpedoed. The captain immediately reduced the speed, but this precaution was in vain, since moderate sailing conditions recovered and no more holes were found. This is an incident that happened at night with a darkened ship. was one of the most thrilling at sea. I readily believe that a loaded ship can sink under such circumstances."
This is how a British officer from the cruiser Birmingham describes an unexpected encounter with a single catastrophic wave. This story took place during World War II, so the reaction of the crew, who decided that the cruiser was torpedoed, is understandable.
A similar incident with the steamer "Huarita" in 1909 ended not so successfully. It carried 211 passengers and crew. All died.
Such single waves unexpectedly appearing in the ocean, in fact, are called rogue waves, or solitons.
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It would seem. any storm can be called a murder … Indeed, how many ships were lost during the storm and are dying now? How many sailors have found their last refuge in the depths of the raging sea? And yet the waves. those resulting from sea storms and even hurricanes are not called "killers".
Broken tanker
It is believed that a meeting with a soliton is most likely off the southern coast of Africa. When shipping routes changed thanks to the Suez Canal and ships stopped sailing around Africa, the number of encounters with killer waves decreased. Nevertheless, after the Second World War, since 1947, in about 12 years, very large ships - "Bosphontein", met with solitons. Gyasterkerk, Orinfontein and Jaherefontein, not counting the smaller local courts.
During the Arab-Israeli war, the Suez Canal was practically closed, and the movement of ships around Africa again became intense. From a meeting with a killer wave in June 1968, the World Glory supertanker with a displacement of more than 28 thousand tons was killed. The tanker received a storm warning, and when a storm approached, everything was carried out according to instructions. Nothing bad was foreseen. But among the usual wind waves, which did not pose a serious danger. a huge wave, about 20 meters high, with a very steep front suddenly appeared. She lifted the tanker so that its center rested on the wave, and the bow and stern parts were in the air. The tanker was loaded with crude oil and broke in half under its own weight. These halves remained buoyant for some time, but after four hours the tanker sank to the bottom. True, most of the crew was saved.
In the 70s, the "attacks" of killer waves on ships continued. In August 1973, the ship "Neptune Sapphire", sailing from Europe to Japan, 15 miles from Cape Hermis, with a wind of about 20 meters per second, experienced an unexpected blow from nowhere, a single wave. The impact was so strong that the bow of the ship, approximately 60 meters long, broke off the hull!
The vessel "Neptune Sapphire" had the most perfect design for those years. Nevertheless, the meeting with the killer wave turned out to be fatal for him.
Quite a lot of such cases have been described. The terrible list of disasters, naturally, includes not only large ships, on which there are possibilities for rescuing the crew. An encounter with killer waves for small ships often ends much more tragically. Such ships not only experience the strongest blow. capable of destroying them, but on a steep leading edge, waves can easily topple over. This happens so quickly that it is impossible to count on salvation.
This is not a tsunami
What are these killer waves? The first thought that comes to mind for the knowledgeable reader is tsunami. After the catastrophic "raid" of gravitational waves on the southeastern shores of Asia, many imagine the tsunami as an eerie wall of water with a steep leading edge, crashing onto the shore and washing away houses and people.
Indeed, tsunamis can do a lot. After the appearance of this wave off the northern Kuriles, hydrographers, studying the consequences, discovered a decent-sized boat, thrown over the coastal hills inland. That is, the energy of the tsunami is simply amazing.
However, this all concerns the tsunamis "attacking" the coast.
Translated into Russian, the term "tsunami" means "big wave in the harbor." It is very difficult to find it in the open ocean. There, the height of this wave usually does not exceed one meter, and the average, typical dimensions are tens of centimeters. And the slope is extremely small, because at such an altitude its length is several kilometers. So it is almost impossible to detect a tsunami against the background of traveling wind waves or swell.
Why do tsunamis become so frightening when "attacking" the coast? The fact is that this wave, due to its great length, sets the water in motion throughout the depth of the ocean. And when, during its spread, it reaches relatively shallow areas, all this colossal mass of water rises up from the depths. This is how a “harmless” wave in the open ocean becomes destructive on the coast. So killer waves are not tsunamis.
In fact, solitons are an extraordinary and little-studied phenomenon. They are called waves, although in reality they are something different. For the emergence of solitons, of course, a certain initial impulse, a shock, is necessary, otherwise where will the energy come from, but not only. Unlike ordinary waves, solitons propagate over long distances with very little energy dissipation. This is a mystery that still awaits study.
Solitons practically do not interact with each other. They usually travel at different speeds. Of course, it may happen that one soliton overtakes another, and then they are summed up in height, but then they still scatter along their own paths.
Of course, the addition of solitons is a rare event. But there is another reason for the sharp increase in their steepness and height. This is because of the underwater ledges through which the soliton "runs". In this case, energy is reflected in the underwater part, and the wave, as it were, "splashes" upward. A similar situation was studied on physical models by an international scientific group. Based on this research, safer routes for ships can be plotted.
But there are still many more mysteries than studied features, and the mystery of the killer waves still awaits their researchers. Particularly mysterious are solitons inside sea waters, on the so-called "density jump layer". These solitons can lead (or have already led) to submarine disasters.
Maxim Klimov. Secrets of the 20th century magazine