An encounter of Pacific Sun

There has not been much worldwide news about cruise ship encounter large waves since Norwegian Down survived an early morning rogue wave attack off the coast of George in western Atlantic in April, 2005. On July 31st last week, the news about Australian P & O Cruise ships' Pacific Sun encountered bad weather and large waves had caused passenger injuries and led to worldwide publicity.

(from Wikipedia)

Some headlines:

Passengers hurt as storm rocks New Zealand cruise ship. (U.K. Telegraph)
Storm-tossed cruise was 'like a disaster movie'. (USA Today)
Cruise passengers hurt in rough sea. (News.com.au)
Terrified cruisers back on dry land. (N.Z. Herald)
42 injured after cruise liner hit by storm in New Zealand. (Xinhua.)

Reading them are just about telling the whole story. Probably the most relevant details of what happened is the one reported by Paul Chapman of U.K. Telegraph:

Some passengers told how they were flung across the ship, along with crockery and "anything not nailed down", when the ship tried to turn to face its bow into the storm.

They said huge waves caught it side-on as it maneuvered, causing the ship to pitch violently.

One passenger said the water lashed as high as the fifth deck.

Many of the worst injuries were caused when gambling machines crashed over on top of people.

The ship, with 1732 passengers and 671 crew, was returning to Auckland from the islands of Vanuatu at the end of an eight-night cruise. The incident occurred just after dark, as many of the passengers were sitting down to dinner.

I guess that's not something to be expected when we go on cruising. The modern cruise ships' highly stabilized design certainly provides ground for us to expect smooth sailing all the way. However, storm waves or freaque waves when there is no storm can always upset the best of expectations. May be that's why cruise ship owners and cruise ship builders generally don't like to talk or even think about freaque waves. Oh well, the case of Pacific Sun does remind us the undesirable things are unfortunately unavoidable -- just not as bad as the kind the Hollywood dimwitted filmmakers trying to terrify you about.