Top 16 How Big Of Waves Can Cruise Ships Handle The 175 New Answer

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According to naval architects interviewed by the BCC as part of their documentary Freak Wave, modern ships, whether they’re merchant vessels or cruise ships, are designed to withstand waves up to 15-metres.Rogue waves can disable and sink even the largest ships and oil rigs. This NOAA research vessel, the DISCOVERER, endures punishing waves in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.It is highly unlikely that a wave could flip a cruise ship. They are built to be wide and have a heavy enough ballast on lower decks that they will survive rogue waves.

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Can big waves sink a cruise ship?

Rogue waves can disable and sink even the largest ships and oil rigs. This NOAA research vessel, the DISCOVERER, endures punishing waves in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.

Can cruise ships survive big waves?

It is highly unlikely that a wave could flip a cruise ship. They are built to be wide and have a heavy enough ballast on lower decks that they will survive rogue waves.

Can a wave destroy a cruise ship?

Though there haven’t been reports of large cruise ships capsizing, rogue waves have destroyed container ships and tankers, and have damaged passenger vessels. In 2001, two cruise ships encountered waves that broke bridge windows. In 1998, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 was struck by 90-foot wave.

Can cruise ships sail in rough seas?

“Ships can go through rough seas,” says captain Ben Lyons, who helmed small ships for Lindblad Expeditions for years, and is now CEO of Expedition Voyage Consultants, which advises cruise lines on best practices for planning and executing expedition sailings.

Can a tsunami flip a cruise ship?

“If you’re close to the coastline in shallow water, a tsunami can really toss ships around,” Heaton said. Cruise ships closer to land or at port would face an immense threat from the tsunami’s tall, high-energy and potentially devastating wave.

Can a rogue wave capsize a ship?

Rogue waves often appear out of nowhere, reach as high as 90 feet and can sink large ships. They are mysteries of the sea: huge walls of water called rogue waves that seemingly appear out of nowhere and can reach heights of 90 feet and can sink a big ship in extreme cases.

Has any cruise ship sunk in a storm?

According to the New York Times 16 passenger ships have sunk since 1980, most of them ferries (not cruise ships). In fact the last cruise ship that sank purely due to flooding in rough weather was the MTS Oceanos off South Africa’s Wild Coast, back in 1990 – and she was an ocean liner-turned cruise ship.

Can a cruise ship handle a hurricane?

Typically, it’s still safe for cruise ships to depart the home port while a hurricane is occurring in the Caribbean, as long as the hurricane is not impacting the embarkation (home) port – and if the home port is impacted, a cruise departure may only be delayed by a day or two rather than being canceled.

Can a yacht survive a tsunami?

Boats are safer from tsunami damage while in the deep ocean ( > 100 m) rather than moored in a harbor. But, do not risk your life and attempt to motor your boat into deep water if it is too close to wave arrival time. Anticipate slowdowns caused by traffic gridlock and hundreds of other boaters heading out to sea.

How do ships deal with large waves?

The ship must keep its bow (the front end) pointing into the waves to plow through them safely, since a massive wave striking the ship’s side could roll the vessel over and sink it. Wind and waves will try to turn the vessel, and pushing against them requires forward momentum.

Do cruise ships rock with waves?

The newer cruise ships have impressive stabilising technology which stops them from rocking in the waves. On some older cruise ships, the technology isn’t as advanced, so they are more prone to rocking.

Are cruise ships safe during storms?

While cruise ships can typically “outrun” most storms, passengers may still experience rough seas as their ship skirts the edges of a storm. On rare occasions, a ship may have to go through the outer bands of storm to reach safe haven in a port, though most times ships will go out to sea to avoid storms.

What happens when you fall overboard on a cruise ship?

If a guest on a cruise ship falls overboard the cruise ship will stop and return to the location of the accident to look for the passenger. The ship will spend several hours looking for the missing passenger and other ships may also join in the search. It can take a cruise ship up to a mile to stop.

Can you sink a cruise ship?

Cruise ships are designed to be as safe as possible, but it is still possible for them to sink.

Are cruise ships safe during storms?

Why would a cruise ship sink?

Vessels can sink due to a few main reasons- wind and other forces forcing the ship to lean at dangerous angles to the port or starboard sides, waves on the deck adding weight to the vessel and forcing it lower into the water, or waves crashing into the side of the vessel and causing flooding.

Has any cruise ship sank?

Costa Concordia disaster, the capsizing of an Italian cruise ship on January 13, 2012, after it struck rocks off the coast of Giglio Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. More than 4,200 people were rescued, though 32 people died.

How Big of a Wave Can a Ship Handle

How steeply can a cruise ship roll before it capsizes? –

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What is a rogue wave

How big are rogue waves

Where do rogue waves appear

Rogue Waves Vs Tsunamis Vs Tidal Waves

Can a rogue wave sink a ship

What size of waves can a cruise ship handle

Can a wave flip a cruise ship

Has a cruise ship ever hit a rogue wave

Can a cruise ship survive a rogue wave

How many ships are lost to rogue waves

The Bottom Line

Before you go!

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Are cruise ships safe in rough seas

Are there police on cruise ships

What height of waves is considered rough

Do cruise ships get caught in storms

Has anyone ever been murdered on a cruise ship

Do cruise ships rock alot

Do cruise ships get attacked by pirates

How cruise ships fill unsold cabins

Could a rogue wave capsize a cruise ship

Can a cruise ship survive a tsunami

Which sea is the calmest

What is the most dangerous sea animal in the world

Can a cruise ship survive a hurricane

Is working on a cruise ship good money

Do cruise ship employees sleep with guests

How big do waves have to be to rock a cruise ship

Can a whale flip a cruise ship

Can cruise workers sleep with guests

What is the roughest sea

What is the largest rogue wave ever recorded

Would a cruise ship survive a hurricane

How steeply can a cruise ship roll before it capsizes? –

The recent incident involving Viking Sky is the latest of several weather-related events that have caused discomfort and fear for passengers, and reignited a debate as to whether modern cruise ships are top heavy, and at risk of capsizing in rough seas.

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Whenever passengers are injured aboard a cruise ship due to bad weather, it reignites an ongoing debate. Are modern cruise ships top-heavy, unstable, and therefore at risk of capsizing in bad weather? And are they even sea-worthy enough to ride out a major storm at sea?

Laymen claim they aren’t, and that ocean liners were safer, but real-world experience and naval architecture show that a cruise ship can roll to almost 60-degrees before it’s in danger of capsizing, and can ride out 50-foot seas without danger of sinking.

But that doesn’t stop ill-informed opinions proliferating online.

According to the maritime lawyer Jim Walker “if it looks right, it is right…and cruise ships don’t look right to me”. He makes this statement in a blog post in which he posits that cruise ships are dangerously top-heavy, using the opinions of laymen to back up that argument.

But to European scholars in the Middle Ages, it looked right that the sun was orbiting the earth and that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Science showed us otherwise (unless you’re planning on taking the flat-earthers’ cruise), and it is because of scientific fact that Viking Sky did not capsize while wallowing without power in 26-foot seas.

Jim Walker’s coverage of the Viking Sky incident focuses on whether she had any valid reason to be sailing out into such conditions in the first place, which is a valid question, and his work in representing cruise passengers and crew after accidents at sea is exemplary. But the stability and seaworthiness of cruise ships is an ill-informed criticism.

Viking Sky’s problems started when she suffered engine failure in a storm off the coast of Norway. Without power, she turned beam-on to the weather and started rolling heavily. All furniture and equipment not bolted down careened across her public rooms and passengers were thrown from their feet in some instances.

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Sound familiar? Something similar happened recently aboard Norwegian Escape when she was unexpectedly struck by strong winds equivalent to a Category 3 cyclone. The ship heeled over, sending passengers and furniture flying.

Professional ship manager Neill Conroy from the Nautical Institute says: “By itself, no wind can cause any ship to capsize.”

Norwegian Cruise Line never confirmed just how steeply Escape heeled, but it was probably around the same degree of roll experienced by passengers aboard Viking Sky.

According to a video posted on Twitter during the Viking Sky incident, the degree of roll was around 15 to 20-degress, although it looks and likely felt much steeper.

According to Richard Burke, ABS Professor of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at Maritime College, State University of New York, this is because of orientation.

“If you’ve ever been on a ship that’s listing 20 degrees, you almost can’t walk on the ship. Walking up a 20 degree slope is like mountain climbing,” he told CNN back in 2010 after the cruise ship Louis Majesty was smacked in the face by a 26-foot wave, breaking the glass of her forward lounge windows and killing two passengers.

That incident caused the same debate that has been reignited by the Viking Sky emergency – are cruise ships safe?

Or are they top-heavy and/or unseaworthy in severe storms? According to naval architects interviewed by the BCC as part of their documentary Freak Wave, modern ships, whether they’re merchant vessels or cruise ships, are designed to withstand waves up to 15-metres.

“The largest wave marine architects are required to accommodate in the design strength calculations is 15m from trough to crest,” says the BBC.

This is based on a mathematical system called the linear model to predict wave height that says in a storm with a significant wave height of 12m (such as that experienced by Viking Sky), there will hardly ever be a wave higher than 15m and one of 30m (a freak wave) could indeed happen – but only once in ten thousand years.

The documentary found that waves larger than 15m do actually occur far more often than previously thought – but primarily only off the South African ‘Wild Coast’, where the ocean liner SS Waratah infamously sank in 1910.

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For context, some 40 or so cruise ships sail around the coast of South Africa every year, and none has ever sank due to a freak wave.

So cruise ships are designed to weather 15-metre (50-foot) waves, which are in themselves rare, and extremely unlikely to be encountered by a cruise ship. According to Harry Bolton, retired captain of the training ship Golden Bear at the California Maritime Academy, a modern cruise ship could hypothetically be capsized by a 70 to 100-foot wave if it took it directly on the beam.

“I guarantee you’re never going to be in those kinds of waves anyway,” he said. “[Cruise ships] avoid bad weather like the plague. They don’t want the passengers in peril, they don’t want to risk any injury or accidents,” he told the BBC.

In situations where cruise ships do find themselves in bad weather, it’s because the cruise ship has been unable to avoid it, such as Viking Sky, which was sailing in the North Sea at the tailing edge of winter specifically to give passengers a chance to the see the Northern Lights (it could be argued she should have stayed in port, though), or because of a misjudgement in forecasting, such as when Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas found herself caught short by Cyclone Hermine in the Atlantic.

The captain was forced to ride out a major storm and although it was uncomfortable for passengers, with the ship rolling and pitching heavily, and leaking due to rain water pushed through deck doors by the wind, she was never in any danger, according to Royal Caribbean.

“Safety is our highest priority and ships are designed to withstand even more extreme circumstances than Anthem of the Seas encountered. While the weather was unpleasant, the ship remained seaworthy at all times,” it said in a statement at the time.

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This is backed up by Burke, who made the following comments to CNN long before the Anthem of the Seas incident. “If a ship heels more than [20 degrees], your real problem is that you’re going to get thrown off your feet and a lot of equipment and furniture is going to break loose and go flying around. So the possibility of injury is very high when that happens. But the ship should right itself without any problem.”

In fact, in extreme cases, a ship can actually list 60 degrees and recover, according to Burke. An angle of 90 degrees would be the ship lying on its side. This figure is not arbitrary, it’s based on complex computer modelling and wave pool tests.

For context, the picture above shows Costa Concordia after she partially sank in January 2012. In this picture, she is lying at a 65-degree angle. It’s worth noting that Concordia didn’t actually capsize, despite the massive gash in her hull, she sank onto her starboard side.

It may appear that cruise ships are top heavy visually, but naval architects design them in such a way that all of the heavy liquids, machinery and the main engine are positioned very low, said Burke. So the ship’s center of gravity is also low even though the superstructure is very high.

Because of this, cruise ships have a shorter roll period than ocean liners, which were actually more top-heavy to make them more comfortable for passengers before stabilisers were invented. When a cruise ship rolls, it rights itself faster than an ocean liner would because of all that weight (the bilge, the fuel, the ballast tanks, the engines, the food stores etc) that’s all kept down below the waterline.

This was apparent in CCTV footage captured aboard Pacific Sun while sailing in a storm near New Zealand back in 2008. More than 40 passengers were injured by the intense rolling motion.

In the video, you can see her roll period is less than 10 seconds, causing that snap-back action due to her low centre of gravity. It was uncomfortable for the passengers, but never dangerous to the ship. Like Viking Sky and Anthem of the Seas, this incident also occurred in seas of around 26 feet (still well below the 50-foot threshold ships are designed to weather).

The opinion of professional naval architect Rick Spilman can be applied to Viking Sky, Pacific Sun, Norwegian Escape and any other modern cruise ship. “The recent encounter between a modern cruise ship and major storm was a test, not a calculation or a simulation but a full-scale blowout trial in highly dangerous conditions,” he wrote in reference to Anthem of the Seas.

“It was a test that probably could and should have been avoided, but proved interesting and revelatory, all the same.”

Anthem of the Seas, of course, weathered the severe storm without anything but superficial damage and a lot of interior mess due to furniture on the move.

Similarly, Viking Sky, although much smaller, but with the same so-called top-heavy design, weathered equally extreme seas taking it directly on her beam, and survived with only superficial damage.

Yet this doesn’t stop laymen speculating that cruise ships are top-heavy and unstable. In the (now-defunct) blog Made in America Blogging, the author ‘Teddy Sheperd’ says that cruise ships are unstable and therefore unsafe because they have a shallower draft than ocean liners.

According to the New York Times 16 passenger ships have sunk since 1980, most of them ferries (not cruise ships).

In fact the last cruise ship that sank purely due to flooding in rough weather was the MTS Oceanos off South Africa’s Wild Coast, back in 1990 – and she was an ocean liner-turned cruise ship.

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National Geographic Society

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Robert Ballard has discovered some of the ocean’s most fascinating treasures, from the Titanic to hydrothermal vents on the seafloor.

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.

“We were 500 miles out to sea off Eureka, California, on a Scripps [Research Institute] ship called the ORCA,” Ballard writes by email. “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 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. Capt. 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. 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. More recently, in 2005, the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn had its ninth and 10th floor windows smashed by a wave that rose to near 21 meters (70 feet) high.

A rogue wave is usually defined as a wave that is two times the significant wave height of the area. The significant wave height is the average of the highest one-third of waves that occur over a given period. Therefore, a rogue wave is a lot bigger than the other waves that are happening in its vicinity around the same time.

Tim Janssen, a research scientist who studies physical oceanography in Half Moon Bay, California, says one of the best examples of a rogue wave is the so-called New Year’s Wave of 1995. On Jan. 1, a 26-meter (85-foot) wave struck the Draupner oil rig in the North Sea off Norway.

“It was one of the first observations [of a rogue wave ] with a digital instrument,” Janssen says.

These so-called “freak waves” are not confined to the Atlantic Ocean or North Sea. One of the places rogue waves appear to happen most frequently is off the southeast coast of South Africa. A professor of applied mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Dr. Bengt Fornberg, studied this phenomenon with Marius Gerber of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Fornberg believes there is a particular reason extremely large waves occur there.

“It’s the interaction of wave swell with the current,” he says.

Specifically, it’s when a large ocean swell hits the fast-moving Agulhas current. When this happens, the curved current narrowly focuses the wave’s energy, like an optical lens can powerfully focus light into a single beam.

Dr. Libe Washburn, a geography professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explains what occurs to waves interacting with a current like the Agulhas.

“It shortens their wavelength and makes them steeper,” he says.

Danger at Sea

Obviously, these huge waves are able to inflict damage on oceangoing vessels.

“The waves are pretty dangerous, especially for bigger ships because they can crack their hulls ,” Washburn says.

Fornberg, the mathematician, says rogue waves may also form from eddies, currents that flow in a different direction than the main current .

“Eddies are often generated along the edges of currents , but they can survive for long times and are able to drift across oceans, forming very extensive eddy fields,” he says. “These eddy fields in fact contain far more kinetic energy than the currents do. Within, and in the immediate vicinity of currents , rogue waves tend to be somewhat predictable—and they are confined to relatively small areas. On the other hand, energy focusing due to the chaotic, irregular and widely distributed eddies is somewhat less likely, and is essentially unpredictable, as these can occur almost everywhere.”

While there are many oceanographers and other scientists who forecast rogue waves , there is a lot more to be learned.

“These waves occur everywhere, all the time,” Janssen says. “The question is how much they happen.”

“It would be interesting to learn if the frequency of rogue waves is changing over time,” says Washburn.

While rogue waves still hold scientific mysteries, Ballard has some simple advice for those who are involved in designing ocean vessels:

“Build safer ships,” he writes.

What Happens If A Cruise Ship Is Hit By A Rogue Wave?

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Rouge waves sound pretty scary. They’re seemingly random, massive walls of water. If you’re nervous about cruising then the knowledge that these mammoth waves exist might put you off.

So, let me put your mind at ease. Let’s take a look at what a rogue wave is, how common they are, and how cruise ships are able to withstand them.

By the end, I’m sure that you’ll have no fears about rogue waves on your cruise holiday.

What is a rogue wave?

A rogue wave is a wave that appears suddenly on the surface and is unusually large for that part of the ocean. While research is still being carried out into their cause, it’s believed to be a combination of high winds and strong currents causing smaller waves to merge.

Rogue waves are technically defined as “waves that are at least twice the significant wave height”.

The significant wave height is the average of the largest third of waves within a particular wave record. Put simply, rogue waves are twice as large as the average of the largest waves in a particular area.

That means that rogue waves might not always be the absolute tallest waves in the ocean, but they will be unusually large for the area and state of the sea at that time. And they can get to be pretty huge.

How big are rogue waves?

Because the rouge wave definition is relative to the sea state, the official tallest rogue wave isn’t actually the tallest wave ever. Instead, scientists have decided that the title of ‘biggest rogue wave’ belongs to the wave which is biggest in comparison to the other waves nearby.

Officially, the tallest rogue wave recorded was a 58-foot tall wave off the coast of British Columbia in Canada, identified in 2020. That height put it at almost three times the height of the other waves around it. [Source]
There have been much taller waves recorded – indeed the first-ever officially recorded rogue wave was in 1995 off the coast of Norway and measured 84 feet. However, as that was ‘only’ twice the height of the surrounding waves at the time, it isn’t considered the largest rogue wave.

While records have only been kept since 1995, retrospective anecdotal evidence suggests many waves have reached heights of up to 100-feet in the past. [Source]
Suggested read: How Big is a Cruise Ship?

If you’ve ever seen photos like this on social media, you should know that these are fake – rogue waves aren’t that big!

Where do rogue waves appear?

Because of the ongoing research into the causes of rogue waves, and their formal documentation being relatively recent, it’s hard to say where they occur the most frequently.

In the 21st century, there have been recorded rogue waves in the Gulf of Mexico, the northern Pacific, the Mediterranean near Catalonia and off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada.

They seem to be mainly caused anywhere where there is a strong current running in the opposite direction of the tidal waves. But, that doesn’t line up with all of the examples – there seem to be multiple causes.

Suggested read: The 8 Roughest Seas For Cruise Ships

Rogue Waves Vs Tsunamis Vs Tidal Waves

Sometimes, rogue waves can be confused for tsunamis or tidal waves, but in name only. All three are very distinct.

Let’s start with tidal waves – these are actually just the scientific name for the waves caused by the tide, resulting from the gravitational forces of the moon. They are therefore completely predictable since we can know when the moon is in its different phases.

Tsunamis have sometimes been called tidal waves in the past but that is incorrect. A tsunami is a distinctive, one-off wave caused by a huge shift of water, usually as the result of an earthquake beneath the surface causing the plates to move.

That huge swell of displaced water will then rush in a large movement. It will not be too noticeable out at sea because it’s just a raised water level – it doesn’t cause single large waves to form. So, tsunamis are rarely an issue to ships out at sea.

The problem is that the huge swell will continue to coastal areas, where it forms one giant wall of water which will break on the coastline.

Rogue waves are one-off, unpredictable waves and while we don’t know the full causes yet, we know they aren’t related to land movements or the normal gravitational pull. As a single wave, they’re much more of a threat to ships at sea.

Can a rogue wave sink a ship?

A tall enough rogue wave could sink a ship, although most modern ships are built to withstand them. Smaller ships are more at risk but they are also more manoeuvrable so would stand a high chance of being able to navigate out of the wave’s path.

Since rogue waves were officially recorded – beginning in 1995 – only one ship has been struck by a rogue wave and then sunk. That was the R/V Ballena, a 56-foot research vessel which capsized in 2000 and then broke apart against the rocky shore.

Some smaller boats have capsized but not sunk – a 34-foot long fishing boat in the Bahamas in 2005, and a small shark diving boat near South Africa in 2008.

Anecdotal evidence of what could be rogue waves do tell of some ships being sunk in the past:

The wooden cutter Aenid was wrecked off the coast of New South Wales in 1865

Passenger ship SS Waratah disappeared in 1909 off the coast of Durban, South Africa with no wreckage found. It’s believed that a rogue wave capsized and sank the ship

US Navy cruiser USS Memphis was wrecked by three successive large waves in 1916, attributed to nearby hurricanes

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a lake freighter, sank during a storm in 1975, believed to be a result of the waves

Fishing boat Andrea Gail sank during the 1991 ‘perfect storm’, and was the subject of the 2000 movie starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.

Check out the full list of rogue waves here.

What size of waves can a cruise ship handle?

Cruise ships are generally built to handle most waves in the ocean – they can routinely sail through 10-15 feet waves without issues, and should handle most waves up to 50 feet with minimal damage.

Waves up to 15 feet may not sound too big when compared to other rogue waves in this article, but picture standing on the shore and seeing a wave of 15 feet coming towards you. Doesn’t seem so small now, does it?

On a cruise ship though, you would be absolutely fine, unless you suffered from seasickness. With 15 feet waves you’re going to want to tap into any techniques you have for handling your sickness. This includes spending time on a low deck.

Rogue waves can be a lot higher, and cruise ships may take damage from them. But the damage will be minimal and would be very unlikely to be a safety concern for passengers. At worst, a rogue wave will just mean that passengers will be told to remain indoors, and the ship may be diverted for repairs if there is damage.

The officers on a cruise ship are very experienced sailors and will know what to do in the event of a rogue wave. They will make sure to keep passengers safe and prevent as much damage as possible to the ship.

This video shows what it could be like on board a cruise ship on the roughest seas…

As you can see from the amount of damage done to the fixtures and fittings and the potential for minor injuries from the debris, a situation like this is something that a cruise ship captain will certainly want to avoid!

Can a wave flip a cruise ship?

It is highly unlikely that a wave could flip a cruise ship. They are built to be wide and have a heavy enough ballast on lower decks that they will survive rogue waves. It would also rely on the negligence of the crew to allow the ship to hit perfectly on the side.

The only way that a cruise ship would be able to be flipped over is if it took the wave hit perpendicular on the port or starboard side, along the beam. Most of the time, ships will aim to hit a wave bow-first.

And the thing about rogue waves is that they might be unpredictable and sudden, but you can hardly miss them. The job of the navigation crew is to be on the lookout for hazards such as rogue waves and to react to them, so they wouldn’t be caught off-guard by a huge wave suddenly coming for the ship.

Modern cruise ships also have wonderfully advanced steering and propulsion methods that allow them to turn quickly. Providing the crew haven’t all fallen asleep or abandoned their posts, they will have plenty of time to react to a rogue wave and make sure the ship takes it safely.

That doesn’t mean that a rogue wave would leave a cruise ship completely untouched, though. There’s likely going to be some damage, depending on the height of the wave. But, she wouldn’t flip, and passengers would be generally safe. In the past, only a few minor injuries have resulted from cruise ships being hit by large waves.

Has a cruise ship ever hit a rogue wave?

Cruise ships have been hit by rogue waves in the past, but it is not a common event. Since official records of rogue waves began in 1995, four cruise ships have hit rogue waves. All suffered damage, and some reported injuries, but no cruise ships have had any fatalities from a rogue wave.

Two of the instances happened in the same region and in the same year, both involving small cruise ships. Both the Caledonian Star and the MS Bremen were hit by rogue waves in the South Atlantic in 2001. These were pretty huge waves, measuring almost 100-feet tall.

Both ships suffered smashed windows on the bridge, along with losses to power and navigation controls. Neither ship reported any serious injuries though, with the crew of the Bremen able to restore engine power. The Caledonian Star did have to limp back to port for repairs.

Of the larger cruise ships, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 was hit by a 90-foot tall rogue wave in 1995 caused by Hurricane Luis. Because the ship was big and built to modern standards, she suffered minimal damage. There were a handful of injuries to those on board, but nothing believed to be too serious.

QE2

Suggested read: How Big is a Cruise Ship?

The most notable and recent instance was when the Norwegian Dawn was hit by three freak waves off the coast of Georgia in 2005, one of which was around 70 feet tall.

It reached the 10th deck of the ship, breaking two windows (caused by balcony railings breaking free) and flooding over 60 cabins, along with some public areas. There were a handful of injuries but nothing serious and the ship was able to sail to port without any further trouble for repairs to be made.

Can a cruise ship survive a rogue wave?

A cruise ship will survive if hit by a rogue wave. All modern instances of cruise ships encountering rogue waves have resulted in only minor damage. Cruise ships carry experienced crew and have modern steering systems to allow ships to meet the wave bow-first, causing the least damage.

The safety of passengers is always the priority of a cruise line, which is why only highly experienced crew are hired who know exactly what to do in any situation, even one as rare as a rogue wave.

Because of this, cruise ships have so far never been capsized or wrecked by a rogue wave. Ships have always managed to navigate the wave in a way that reduces the impact on the vessel.

The fact that cruise ships are so large and so well-built means that it would be extremely difficult for a rogue wave to counter the ballast to the point of capsizing it, and they’re strong enough to not break apart as well. So, while there are never any guarantees, it would be a true freak incident if one ever was to capsize due to a rogue wave.

How many ships are lost to rogue waves?

Most ships that have encountered a rogue wave have survived with minimal damage. Since rogue waves were officially classified in 1995, only one ship has been recorded as completely lost to one – the 56-foot research vessel R/V Ballena.

Other small boats may have been lost to rogue waves, and there are a handful of anecdotal instances of ships being sunk by rogue waves prior to 1995, but it’s a rare occurrence. Most large ships take the brunt of the wave with minor damage, especially modern ships that are much tougher and able to withstand the pressure of the crashing water.

The Bottom Line

Rogue waves are intimidating if you’re on a small boat, but cruise passengers don’t have anything to worry about. The technology that cruise ships have, and the experience of their crew, mean that they can always minimise the risk of a rogue wave.

Yes, the largest waves may cause some damage, and potentially even some minor injuries, but they’re such a freak occurrence that in almost 30 years only two large ocean cruise ships have experienced them.

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