In 1966, the Italian cruise ship Michelangelo was traveling to New York when it was hit by a wave estimated to be 24 meters (80 feet) high. Joshua Slocum, who completed the world’s first solo sail around the world, probably encountered a gigantic wave that submerged the hull of his sailboat in 1895. We were unable to head for shore since we would be rolled over by the swell, so we slowly steamed into the sea until a Coast Guard cutter could reach us and escort us back to shore while telling us over the radio how to treat two crew members who were badly injured when the wave hit us.” Ballard is not the only seaman who has encountered these huge waves. “We were in a storm with 30-foot swells when a rogue wave over 50 feet high hit us, blowing out the windows of the bridge, blowing out the portholes in the galley, destroying the mast and splash rail, and flooding the engineer room with water. “We were 500 miles out to sea off Eureka, California, on a Scripps ship called the ORCA,” Ballard writes by email. On his very first ocean expedition, as a 17-year-old National Science Foundation scholar, Ballard also encountered one of the sea’s most amazing, and dangerous, natural marvels: a rogue wave. Robert Ballard has discovered some of the ocean’s most fascinating treasures, from the Titanic to hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr.
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