GIANT WAVE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9789, 4 March 1910, Page 2

GIANT WAVE.

THE LUSITANIA'S EXPERIENCE

The Lusitania was twenty-six hours late arriving at New York from a recent trip. Sho had had her forward pilot-house washed away, four lifeboats badly smashed and the officers' quarters d WMkf'Captain Turner and the passengers were dining a great wave struck the ship. No one was, on deck at the time, or he would certainly have been washed overboard The wrecked pilot-house is normally 84ft above water The first officer, who was in the wheelhouse, says that the wave was a hundred feet high The quartermaster, who was in the forward pilothouse, was the only person 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 made 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 weather 48 feet. The length, on which depends the velocity, varied considerably, between -500 feet and 600 feet being common m storms, while the longest ever measured was half a mile from crest to crest, and lasted nearly half a minute. A French naval officer who gathered many wave statistics in the great oceans of the world experienced the highest in the Indian Ocean, the maximum being 37 feet. _