A true story near Copper River

Here's a short article appeared in the Cordova Times of Alaska this morning.  It was its title "True Stories - Rogue Waves" that attracted me to take a look. It is a nice and concise one:

I have to add my thoughts on these rogue waves. For years, so-called scientists thought these were just seaman's tales to escape fault for losing a ship of getting it damaged. In general, the stories about them were not believed.

When this happened to me, and knowing I was to be in the court, I went to the tsunami center in Palmer, Alaska, to see about an earthquake. There had been no earthquakes for several days previous to my accident. Then I thought of underwater landslides that can cause a tsunami. But on reflection, my thoughts are, it might be possible to predict rogue waves in certain situations.

In this case there was a south-west swell, and a forty-five knot wind coming out of the Copper river. On top of that, there was an out-going tide from the Copper River, also opposing that swell. These conditions could have slowed up a south-west swell until several grouped together, one right behind the other and pushing each other. Thus the three waves, one behind the other, that hit me. The push behind the first wave is what increased its height, and the two that followed. So these conditions may be observed an in all probability a rogue wave predicted.

There was one great wave that almost sank the Queen Mary in World War II, with troops aboard. For some reason it was kept secret. Some claim this occurs in the ocean when the Gulf stream comes against the North Sea current. Other factors may be involved also.

Now this is interesting because the author, a fisherman, obviously had a personal experience of having encountered with a freaque wave, and even more interesting is that he really searched and researched on the cause for what he called he called his "accident", and developed a plausible interactive three wave theory for the wave that hit him.  The theory is certainly as good as any high-power scientist can provide.  Note that the author did not appeared to have much respect for the scientists when he used the expression "so-called scientists".  Unfortunately he did not gave much details on how, what, and when about his accident which he was end up "to be in the court" except it was near the Copper River.  But he really did try to figured the why on his own.  I'll have my two thumbs up for him!