April 17, 2005
Soliton
Cruise Ship meet Soliton The NY Daily News has the story:'Freak' wave rocks cruiseMore on the effect to the ship:
70-footer hits N.Y.-bound ship
A "freak wave" more than 70 feet high slammed a luxury cruise ship steaming for New York yesterday, flooding cabins, injuring passengers and forcing the liner to stop for emergency repairs.
The Norwegian Dawn, an opulent ocean liner almost 1,000 feet long, limped into Charleston, S.C., yesterday afternoon after it hit vicious seas in an overnight storm off Florida - then was creamed by the rogue wave after dawn.
It weathered most of a wild storm that featured gale-force winds and choppy seas. But then the vessel, longer than three football fields, was suddenly smacked by the "freak wave," said Norwegian Cruise Line spokeswoman Susan Robison. It broke a pair of windows and flooded 62 cabins, she said.OK - it was NOT a Tidal Wave and from the three paragraphs we can read that it broke two windows but wrecked windows on the ninth and 10th floors and I'm really sad about the store that sold expensive gifts. Still, it was a freak wave and these are called Solitons (and this IS the NY Post we are dealing with here...) What probably happened (there was no major earthquake activity in the Atlantic Oceans that day (I subscribe to an email service for seismic events)) was a Soliton -- several waves met in a way that allowed each of their heights to combine into a single rogue wave of greater than normal power. Here is a photo of a soliton hitting the Tanker Esso Nederlander taken from this website
"The sea had actually calmed down when the wave seemed to come out of thin air at daybreak," Robison said. "Our captain, who has 20 years on the job, said he never saw anything like it."
The tidal wave wrecked windows on the ninth and 10th floors and wreaked havoc below decks, destroying furniture, the onboard theater, and a store that sold expensive gifts.
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