The Actual Height of Sea Waves
Average in Different Oceans—Fifty-Two Feet the Height of the Tallest Billow Yet
Measured—Not More Than Thirty Feet in North Atlantic.
Waves are the agents of tremendous force, as the batterings received by the big ocean liners in the winter storms tend to prove. But in spite of the stories told by timid or imaginative passengers on the Europe-America ferry, the surges of the North Atlantic are not the highest waves nor the most forcible. The most tremendous of seas are those that form south of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, where the oceanic belt is unbroken by land.
How high those southern waves rise has not been accurately measured, so far as can be discovered; but probably they are not very much higher than the waves farther north. Says the New York Sun:
Sailors in modern times have never seen such waves as those which the early navigators declared attained heights of one hundred to one hundred and thirty feet. La Perouse asserted that he saw waves towering in the Pacific to a height of nearly two hundred feet. In these more scientific days we may say that the highest wave yet measured had an altitude of about fifty-two feet.
This was in the southern ocean, a little north of the Antarctic regions; and it is quite certain that the highest waves ever seen in that region did not surpass fifty-eight feet in altitude. A wave of that height would certainly be a formidable looking object, and its crest would wash the windows of the fifth story of many New York buildings.
The average height of the waves in different oceans has been ascertained with some approach to accuracy as the result of a great many measurements. The highest waves observed in the Indian Ocean, for example, are about forty feet. The highest waves in the North Atlantic are from twenty-five to twenty-nine feet, and in the Mediterranean from sixteen to nineteen feet.
Even the smallest of these great waves has considerable destructive power. Some of them travel along at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A wave about thirty feet high contains thousands of tons of water, and when this immense force is dashed against any structure the ruin wrought is likely to be impressive.