I have no idea how sailors traversed the world in the time before steel ships. Even The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald showed us that even steel ships aren't immune.
I served 12 years in the Navy, and there were more than a few times where we had some very powerful waves that knocked my ships around like they were toys in a kid's bathtub.
On May 14th 1999 just after 10 p.m. my ship was steaming back to Norfolk after a 5 month deployment. It started raining, so I decided to take a raincoat to one of my friends, Gino, was on aft lookout (the lookout on the rear of the ship).
I opened the hatch leading to the flight deck, walked through a torrential rain pour, and when I got to the very rear of the ship, I didn't see my friend, but it was dark.
I went to where they plug in the headphones they used to contact the bridge and there was no connection.
It was then I realized that they had secured the watch (sent the watch inside) because of the weather, and that was verified by a lightning strike that lit Up the flight deck momentarily lighting up my world.
I turned to face Forward, standing at the very rear end of a 445 foot US Navy frigate, the USS Estocin FFG-15. l turned toward port side over my left shoulder and looked up and I thought, "Wow. As bad as it is out here there is still a white cloud in the sky..."
I realized, almost like a movie, where the camera zooms in on the crisis the character is in, that what I was looking at was not a white cloud, but the White Cap of a huge wave. The biggest, tallest wave I had ever seen.
Imagine how high that wave must have been if I thought it was a freaking cloud.
Frozen in place for a moment, I screamed out loud. That was all I could do until I could pull myself together.
I broke out of my trance, put my head down and ran as fast as I could toward the hatch leading to the safety of the inside of the ship that I couldn't even see at that point. I didn't look over my shoulder. I acted as if it was a T-Rex chasing me on Jurassic Park.
I didn't want to know how close it was.
I knew that if that wave hit with me outside I was going overboard, and with the aft lookout secured, no one would be there to see me fall overboard. Again, it was after 10:00 p.m. everyone on board was happy that we were hitting Port the following day. They were either packing or sleeping or celebrating or working or watching a movie
I was off work for the night. No one would even know I was missing until 7:00 a.m. the following morning.
Even if they realized I was missing at the 7:00 a.m. muster, they wouldn't have a clue where or when they lost me.
I ran as fast as I had ever running my life. Even with the hatch seemingly getting closer with every step, I didn't look back. This hatch that I couldn't see was out there somewhere in the only blackness.
We were likely somewhere probably off the coast of South Carolina, but I wasn't thinking about that then. What I was thinking about was the closed hatch.
US Navy ship hatch handles when closed point in the direction of 4 or 5 o'clock mark. I would have to lift the handle to 12 o'clock and then pull the hatch open, all while hoping the humunga cowabunga from Down Under (old school reference) didn't catch up to me before I could do all that.
I couldn't hear myself think, as the wave, wind and rain roared in my ears. I could barely see. I was running blindly knowing only that I was going forward toward the hatch that I prayed was still out there.
I began to see the haze gray hatch in the darkness, and I had some hope, just a slight glimmer of hope
I kept running. Kept not looking. Kept running. Kept hoping.
I reached the hatch, and threw the handle open in one movement, then yanked the hatch open in another and did a commando roll dive into the passageway of the ship as the wave crashed down on the flight deck milliseconds after I was inside.
It crashed down so hard it sounded as if it nearly ripped the hatch off its hinges. The AFT end (rear) of the ship was pushed hard to starboard (right) due to the sheer force of it.
Several bathtubs worth of water from the wave did get inside the passageway soaking me from head to toe even more than I already was.
I turned over, sat on my butt with both boots planted on the floor, my hands behind me, looking at what I'd just escaped, almost certain death. With all my energy spent on saving this young sailor's life, I collapsed onto the deck for at least 10 minutes, not even having the energy to get up, reach outside to close the hatch.
The cool air chilled my bones in my water-logged clothes, but I was spent.
There would have been no Wilson volleyball. There wouldn't have been a cool story told by Quint, "One man went into the water, 124 sailers reach port, May 15th 1999..."
None of that. There would have been just one man who didn't make it back to port, with no cool story about how he almost certainly died. I narrowly escaped King Neptune's clutches that day.
Ladies and gentlemen, water is not to be played with.
