I know exactly what you mean. I went through a Class 4 Hurricane onboard a destroyer. We had come out of the English Channel after a visit to Portsmouth, and were taking a Northern route home when we got a call telling is to turn around and take the Southern route due to avoid a storm. So we did......
We got about 24 hours out of the Channel, and caught another storm that was following the first. In the middle of it, we were taking 45 degree rolls, and who knows what the fwd to aft pitch was. I do know it was enough that if you didn't slide your feet the deck would drop out from under your foot if you took an actual step. They had us steaming a flank bell to keep the ship in motion and lined up to catch the waves head on as opposed as abeam.
It was one heck of a wild ride. I know guys on the bridge said we were taking waves high enough that they were almost in the forward stack.
When we got up the next morning, very little outside the ship that wasn't attached was anywhere to be found. The majority of the treads on the ladders were missing, fire hoses were hanging over the side, or strung out along the decks. The J-bar davit for the A-com ladder, which weighed about 600 lbs, was found laying on the fantail....it was typically stored midship. No clue how it got picked up and put where it did.
All in all it was an experience I will never forget, and those folks on the cruise ship simply don't know how good they had it. They'd probably all had coronaries if they had gone through a storm worse than they did on a ship half, or less in size.
The only issue I can see that would make things bad on them was the height of the ship above the water line. As anyone who has been to sea knows, the higher up you are, the more movement/distance your going to move for any given degree of pitch or roll of the ship.
That said, I was on a carrier, the USS America during what I was later told was the storm/s that was the basis of the movie "The Perfect Storm". It was the first time in my two years aboard I ever felt that ship really move. It was bad enough we had the picnic tables on the mess decks were sliding around. What was really funny was the one idiot in the berthing compartment who's rack wasn't secured like it should have been. I told him as I walked by he needed to lash it down, but got a smart rely in return.........About an hour later, as I lay in my rack, I heard a crash and a curse......... I walked over, looked down at him, laughed, and said something akin to, "told you dumb a--", and continued to stand there and laugh. He never said a word.....LOL
Ultimately, ships are designed to handle weather like this. Was the Captain negligent, I doubt it, as his career would have been on the line if he was. Was he unlucky, YES, I believe he was. Anyone who has spent any time at sea knows she is a fickle creature. I've seen it go from calm to storm in a few minutes, and vice-a-versa, in amount of same time. In other words, it can happen. As we all know, if it can happen, it eventually will.........
The real issue here was the people, dumbed down and wussified as most now days are, got scared and started whining, From there, the media jumped on it, as they always do when they smell blood in the water, and the whole thing has gotten blown WAY OUT OR PROPORTION......
That's modern civilization for you. Personally I'd have found the whole incident sort of stimulating, and possibly even fun. Then again, I've already been there once....
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