Storm vs Tanker
August 28, 2006 3:40 PM   Subscribe

Amazing photoseries of 70 foot storm waves crushing the surface of a large tanker in the North Pacific. More on the post-storm damage here.
posted by jonson (35 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ouch, a Geocities fpp. Recipe for a website overload?
posted by ktoad at 3:45 PM on August 28, 2006


sadly, nothing to see here...
posted by owhydididoit at 3:51 PM on August 28, 2006


Does a good job of showing you the power of the sea..... and what many many tons of water can do to our puny little efforts.
posted by knapah at 3:51 PM on August 28, 2006


oops! second time's a charm...
thanks, jonson!
posted by owhydididoit at 3:52 PM on August 28, 2006


It's a coral cache of the geocities post, hopefully it should hold up.
posted by jonson at 4:04 PM on August 28, 2006


great post !
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:11 PM on August 28, 2006


I dunno if I can find it online, but I've seen a picture of a "Stoof" (S2F) antisubmarine patrol aircraft being catapulted off the bow of a 1960s aircraft carrier while green water was coming over the bow. A piston-engine airplane can keep running (albeit briefly) with such a dousing; a jet engine will flame out.
posted by pax digita at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2006


DAY-um! Nice images.

He said fellas, it's been nice to know ya

Excellent post.
posted by squidfartz at 4:13 PM on August 28, 2006


Arrrrrrrrrrr ! Ye mateys found more rrrrespect for piratez sailors arrr ??
posted by elpapacito at 4:58 PM on August 28, 2006


Way better than the sucking nautical vortex on Mythbusters!

Mythbusters : Blar.
jonson : Yarrrrr!!!!!!!
posted by snsranch at 5:08 PM on August 28, 2006


I was expecting much more damage. Like the sides of it being crushed in or something. Boo.
posted by antifuse at 5:36 PM on August 28, 2006


"I was expecting much more damage. Like the sides of it being crushed in or something."

Come on, that dining table was totally ruined!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:46 PM on August 28, 2006


Is there a working cache of this anywhere?
posted by gottabefunky at 6:03 PM on August 28, 2006


gottabefunky; I don't understand what you're saying. Is the link not working for you (unlike for others in this thread)?
posted by jonson at 6:41 PM on August 28, 2006


doesn't work for me either
posted by docpops at 6:45 PM on August 28, 2006


well, the officers mess looks to be appropriately named anyway!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:48 PM on August 28, 2006


Now THAT's an Officers mess. </obvious>
posted by spock at 6:49 PM on August 28, 2006


missed it by THAT much!
posted by spock at 6:50 PM on August 28, 2006


doesn't work for me either

weird... maybe something about your location doesn't work well with coral caching? Either way, here's the original geocities link (grab it quick, cause it won't last long).
posted by jonson at 7:01 PM on August 28, 2006


Fantastic. Great post.
posted by Mave_80 at 7:35 PM on August 28, 2006


The guy uses more than his fair share of exclamation points. That aside, the photos are amazing.
posted by craven_morhead at 7:41 PM on August 28, 2006


wow. imagine that while powered by sails alone.
tremendous post, thankee!
posted by Busithoth at 9:01 PM on August 28, 2006


Yeah, that's nice, but you can't surf it.

Find me something that big that's ridable, and then I'd be interested.
posted by Relay at 10:06 PM on August 28, 2006


I always wanted to go out on a ship like that ... until now.
posted by RavinDave at 10:42 PM on August 28, 2006


Holy shit. The entire time I was taking my (lol) canoeing experiences and multiplying it by ten million times and thinking to myself, "shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" seeing those waves. If they can even be called waves. They look like mountains.
posted by blacklite at 10:52 PM on August 28, 2006


you know, I wish people chased these like they do tornados.
I think these are more fascinating.
posted by Busithoth at 1:08 AM on August 29, 2006


I've said it before and I'll say it again. When it comes to the sea, we are her bitch!
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:23 AM on August 29, 2006


Whoa!
posted by OmieWise at 5:55 AM on August 29, 2006


That reminds me, I need to get a puke-protection screen for my digital camera.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:44 AM on August 29, 2006


jonson writes "maybe something about your location doesn't work well with coral caching?"

It uses port 8090 which is blocked by many firewalls.
posted by Mitheral at 8:23 AM on August 29, 2006


I love pictures of big waves. Its hard to get a sense of the scale involved, but if you look at the pictures of the boat docked and then try to imagine that same size of boat being towered over by waves... crazy.
posted by maxpower at 8:55 AM on August 29, 2006


This reminds me of a bit from my favorite Aubrey-Maturin novel, HMS Surprise.

The Surprise has been dispatched to ferry an envoy to China. After touching in Brazil, our heroes make for the tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. As the journey southward continues, they begin to encounter albatross, and they begin to kill them. (Sailors have a superstitious fear of the albatross, the history of which I do not fully comprehend.) Stephen doesn't care for this wanton killing, and asks Jack to order its halt. The sailors become convinced that this is a bad omen, and sure enough: the Surprise is beset by stormy seas, trapped for days in enormous (50 ft!) swells:
During the night Stephen heard a number of bumps and cries through his sleep, and he was aware of a change of course, for his cot no longer swung in the same direction. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he came on deck. Under the low grey tearing sky, half driving rain, half driving spray, the whole sea was white — a vast creaming spread as far as the eye could see. He had seen the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and the great south-west gales on the Irish coast: they were nothing to this. for a moment the whole might have been a wild landscape, mountainous yet strangely regular; but then he saw that the whole was in motion, a vast majestic motion whose size concealed its terrifying dreamlike speed. Now the crests and troughs were enormously greater; now they were very much farther apart; and now the crests were curling over and breaking as they came, an avalanche of white pouring straight down before the steep face. The Surprise was running almost straight before them, east by south; she had managed to strike her mizentopmast at first light — anything to diminish the wind-pressure aft and thus the risk of broaching-to — and man-ropes were rigged along her streaming deck. As his eyes reached the level of the quarterdeck he saw a wave, a green-grey wall towering above the taffrail, racking towards them — swift inevitability. He strained his head back to see its top, curving beyond the vertical as it came yet still balancing with the speed of its approach, a beard of wind-torn spray flying out before it. He heard Jack call an order to the man at the wheel: the frigate moved a trifle from her course, rose, tilting her stern skywards so that Stephen clung backwards to the ladder, rose and rose; and the mortal wave swept under her counter, dividing and passing on to smother her waist in foam and solid water, on to bar the horizon just ahead, while the ship sank in the trough and the shriek of the rigging sank an octave as the strain slackened.
It's a great passage in a great book. I am awed by the might of the sea. (Of course there's another similar great passage a few books later as our heroes — aboard the "horrible old Leopard" — flee from the Dutch ship Waakzamheid. Fans will know what I mean...
posted by jdroth at 9:53 AM on August 29, 2006


Yowza! Awesome pics indeed, thanks. Glad I'm on land.
posted by stinkycheese at 12:11 PM on August 29, 2006


That picture of the gangway twisted up over the catwalk... YIPE! And I agree that looking at the pictures of the ship while docked and then imagining the waves towering over the bow really helps give some perspective on the size of the waves.
posted by Marla Singer at 1:06 PM on August 29, 2006


sublim e pics. beautiful and dangerous. Reminds you that the power of nature is effectively infinite.

yeah, it's great to have the ship in the shot so we can judge the scale. All waves look alike.
posted by Miles Long at 1:12 PM on August 29, 2006


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