A GIANT WAVE.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXII, Issue 65, 18 March 1910, Page 8

A GIANT WAVE.

THE LUSITANIA'S EXPERIENCE

The Lusitania was twenty-six hours late arriving at New York from a .recent trip. She had had her forward pilot-house washed away, four lifeboats badly smashed and the offi/cers' quarters damaged. While Captain Turner and the passengers were dining a great wave struck the ship. No one was on deck at the time, or he would have certainly been washed overboard. The wrecked pilot-ho-u-se is normally 84 feet above wate.r. The first officer, -who was in the wheelhouse, says that the wave was a- hundred feet high. The quartermaster, who was in the forward pilot-house, was the only ipei'isoii injured. He was badly bruised. It was necessary for the Lusitania to lie-to for five hours for repairs to her steering apparatus. The wave which struck the Lusitania must surely constitute a record. Most careful measurements have been niade of the waves in the Atlantic by •the Washington Hydrographic Bureau, with the result that the average height was found to be 30 feet, and the maximum height in rough Aveather 48 feet. The. length, on Avhicli depends the velocity, varied considerably, between 500 feet and 600 feet being common in storms, while the longest ever measured Avas half a mile from -crest to crest, and lasted nearly half a minute. A French naval officer avllo gathered many Avave statistics in- the great oceans of the world, experienced the highest in the .Indian Ocean, the maximum being 'AT feet.