Again, this isnt exactly a ship sinking, but it does show how people can be put in danger while the ship is sailing happily and normally.
Onboard a Louis Cruise ship named the Majesty, the ship was on a 12 day cruise throughout the Mediterranean, when three rogue waves reaching in above 33 feet high (ten metres) and smashing the windows at the front and side of the ship.
A 69 year old German man and a 52 year old Italian man were both killed by the incident, Louis Cruises’ not giving away information about how they died however one was apparently struck by a large piece of glass and were both dead before any form of emergency treatment could have been issued. An elderly woman also suffered with two fractured legs, and many other people with broken bones.
All this damage was inflicted whilst the liner was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, off the north eastern coast of Spain, on an apparently calm day. There were no storm warnings and the shipping forecast showed nothing abnormal. Marine scientists have, up until recently, dismissed stories of freak or rogue waves, as they had little evidence to back these claims.However, in 1995, an oil rig in the North Sea recorded rogue waves measuring 84 foot high, in an otherwise calm sea. Since that date, the European Space Agency have embarked on a project called MaxWave, using satellite data to confirm that these waves happen more frequently than we are led to believe.
The vessel, Louis Majesty, is seven hundred foot long and has ten passenger decks. The freak waves reached six deck heights and caused excessive damage, forcing the liner to dock at Marseilles. There were around two thousand passengers on board at the time.
Other incidents of freak waves being reported have been dwarfted by a press release by the European Space Agency in 2004 which claims that “over 200 large vessels of six hundred feet or more have sunk without trace due to freak waves in the last two decades. An alarming figure, though not all confirmed, leads one to believe that incidents of rogue waves are not all that uncommon. .