Into a Gale’s Full Fury

Nearing the Grand Banks while I was on watch, a fleet of fishing boats appeared ahead. Although I could easily change course to avoid them, I feared the captain’s reaction. I called him when the boats were still ten miles ahead. Captain Hyde raced to the bridge and screamed at me that he had standing orders to call him whenever any vessel was within three miles. I told the captain the fishing boats were still ten miles away, but he ignored the fact and kept swearing at me. He then noticed the bosun climbing the mast on the bow of the ship, hundreds of feet from the bridge, probably to check the running light. The bosun hadn’t called the bridge before he began his climb, so the ship’s two radars were still transmitting. The captain screamed at me, “Shut off the radars, you damn idiot! You’ll burn him alive.” He shoved me into a corner and began swearing that his mates and engineers were completely incompetent and he had to stay awake 24 hours a day to protect the ship. He expected me to agree with him, but I remained silent, which sent him into an even more violent rant. Later that same watch, the electrician came to the bridge and asked me about the searchlight; the captain had apparently told him to check it out. “Where is the switch?” he asked. As I proceeded toward the infamous searchlight control to show the electrician, the captain, who’d been in the chart room, ran out yelling, “Keep your goddamn hands off that box! It says, ‘Master Only,’ on it.” He then proceeded to berate me. Puzzled, the electrician began walking away, but the captain yelled out, “You check out my searchlight and make sure it is working!” As the Authenticity continued north of the Grand Banks, the weather deteriorated substantially—as the mates expected. Gale-force winds buffeted the vessel for days, with the ship rolling and pitching easily. At times, the captain was forced to slow the ship down to avoid pounding in the heavy seas. As the days went by, the weather worsened, and the winds reached storm force, blowing over 50 knots, with substantially higher gusts. The seas rose from 35 to 40 feet, their tops blown off in the stiff winds. The chief mate told the bosun that under no circumstance should any of the crew go on deck. A boarding sea would kill anyone who attempted to do so. The worst of the storm reached the ship a night later, with the winds blowing over 60 knots, with substantially higher gusts approaching 80 knots or more. The seas were mountainous. I came on watch at midnight for my four-hour shift. The captain had been drinking as usual and was particularly gassy, so the stench on the bridge was noxious. The bridgewing doors had to be kept closed because of the salt spray and rain, but the captain wouldn’t have allowed them to be open in any case. The ship was hove to in the heavy seas, with barely enough power to keep the ship pointed so that the seas were just on the port bow. Because of the storm-force winds and heavy seas, the ship was actually going backward. At times, the ship pitched violently, and there were eerie sounds as green water crashed over the bow, followed by the creaking sounds of bending steel and the containers on deck tugging hard against their wire lashings. Visibility was very poor, hardly a quarter mile. Despite the darkness and heavy rain, at one point something caught my eye, just off the starboard bow, a large, dark object on the surface of the sea perhaps 200 feet from the ship. I opened the starboard bridgewing door and gasped. Within the huge seas, I saw what looked like a huge whirlpool, winding and twisting into the depths of the sea. It looked to be about a hundred feet across. As it slowly moved astern of the ship, I yelled to the captain, but he was passed out in his chair and never saw it. He didn’t even stir from his slumber. This hellacious weather continued through the wee hours of the morning, and by the change of the watch about 0400, I was exhausted. I was explaining everything to the second mate who was about to relieve me when the captain yelled out, “Jesus Christ!” The second mate and I looked up and felt the ship diving deep into the sea. All that could be seen through the bridge windows was a huge mountainous sea. The wave crashed over the tops of the containers, slamming into the bridge windows. Soon the ship rose higher and higher, then descended once again into the trough of the sea as a second monstrous wave crashed over the top of the ship. This was accompanied by grinding and cracking noises coming from both the ship and the containers. The entire crew was awakened, and many were thrown from their bunks. Sitting in his chair, the captain shit in his pants, adding another dimension to the smell and chaos on the bridge. After the second huge wave passed by, the seas returned to the “normal” 35 to 45 feet. Shortly, the sound-powered phone rang, and the second engineer coming on watch reported that the ship was taking on water in number five hold. The engineers started the bilge pumps. Clearly the ship had been damaged by the two huge waves, but there was nothing that could be done to assess the damage until daylight. Just then, the chief mate came to the bridge, followed by the chief engineer. The chief mate stated that the Authenticity had obviously been hit by two rogue waves.