5 Monster Waves Caught On Camera 

Former US Navy officer here. I took an Arleigh Burke destroyer through a category 3 hurricane. It was simultaneously the most memorable and least pleasant experience of my life.

Spent 20 years in the Navy. Most of the swells in this video are pretty common fare in storms at sea. I've seen far bigger. We went thru a class 5 super-typhoon between Hong Kong & Singapore once. The bow of the ship dipped under the water so frequently we felt like a submarine. I remember being on the bridge and hitting one swell so hard (or it hit us so hard) that part of the metal railing broke off and went flying past the bridge wing. But the REAL scary part of a storm happens below-decks, under the waterline, where most of the berthing & engineering spaces are. Some waves hit so hard you'd swear a whale ran into the side of the ship, right next to your bed (rack). You learn to sleep thru it. Sort of. Fun times. Glad to be retired :)

Let's applaud the engineers designing these ships that don't break when repeatedly slamming down from the crests of 4-story high waves!

I rarely add any comments but I have to say, as a sailor, this video is very well done. Thank you for leaving the videos in-tact and for NOT adding stupid music or annoying "trying to act cool" narration. Makes me want to go check out your other videos too! And thank you to the guys who have shared their stories in the comments below. Brings back a lot of memories for me. I SO wish we had these fancy camera phones when I was out there... Imagine all the great stuff we could have captured on film, "back in the day", before the lawyers, bankers, etc, made us less likely to say 'screw the weather' [report] and just go for it. When I was young, I just assumed I would die out there. Again, great work and thank you for sharing these clips!

It also makes you realise how tough & strong the Vikings were to have sailed so many times from Scandinavia to Northumberland across the North Sea in their longboats Its a tribute to their magnificent boat making skills & craftsmanship along with expert navigating & sailing too. Id be terrified to meet those waves & the sheer freezing conditions in just a Longship They must have been mighty Men indeed.

Very good narration, no silly music and no excessive talk, just the facts clearly told. Excellent video.

It's absolutely amazing that humans back in the 1400's were able to sail a little wooden ship across the Atlantic Ocean!

Vikings sailed the North Sea and Atlantic in wooden longboats. Pretty impressive once you think about it.

It's incredible too me that these super long tankers can withstand the stresses of being tossed around without breaking in half. The engineering that can design something that big without it failing in these conditions is amazing.

One of my biggest disaster fears is being on a boat/ship during bad weather with massive waves. The thought of it is so frightening to me I almost consider it a phobia

It's truly amazing that these oil rigs are just out there in the oceans, subjected to salt water, storms, and waves, yet they still rarely cause any trouble. Sure, every once in a while you hear about an oil spill, but given the number of oil rigs around the world, I really applaude the engineers and scientists who made them so reliable and sturdy.

Can’t imagine how older ships back in medieval times had to go through

Is anyone else just so mesmerized by waves. Idk if it’s just me but I could watch them for hours

Its amazing how prehistoric people traveled across oceans and reached new continents with just simple boats

The ocean is so beautiful yet so terrifying🌊🌊🌊

I have a massive fear of open water, just watching these clips give me so much anxiety

The ocean is absolutely terrifying. I dont care what anyone says lol. I have nightmares about this exact stuff happening.

The last ship, Was the only one that was in the most DANGER. I know this for a fact. I’m a retired US Merchant Marine Captain. Graduated from the United States Merchant Marine Academy, class of 74. This ship was taking easily, 40 to 48 degree rolls. Which is damn well dangerous of going over to far, and not coming back, from the roll. Going right on over!!!

I was in the US Navy in the early 70s. We went through a category 5 typhoon that was one of the largest storms in history outside of Hong Kong. It took four days to ride out this storm. The waves were enormous. The waves in this video are not nearly as large or scary. I wish I had video footage of it.

Spent 6 years on a small destroyer and went through several typhoons. Plowed through the Bering Sea around the Aleutians in winter. I'm here to tell you only a few shown in this video come close. It's difficult to put into words the misery and fear that goes on for days when the sea turns the minutes to hours.

That tsunami one was a bit haunting. Just seeing it on the horizon, going over it like it was nothing, knowing that if it hit the coast it'd cause untold amounts of damage, spooky.

Seeing that tsunami wave and how it approached that ship was one of the most surreal and incredible pieces of footage I have ever seen.. to see that devastating force of nature and how it looks out in open water was incredible. I must've watched it for or five times. That is something truly rare and special to capture on film and makes me grasp just how devastating something like that can be. Imagine how many gallons of water are being forcibly pushed in that clip. Absolutely unreal.

I worked on Cruise ships for 9 years, faced a lot of rough seas, but the ships were so advanced that they mostly avoided stormy seas.

The cruise ship people were terrified and feared for their life. In the Navy we called it Tuesday. I have pictures of 60 ft waves that we hit on the USS Grand Canyon in the North Atlantic in late March before we went to condition zebra and shut everything down as it was getting worse. There was a tiny minesweeper next to us that would actually disappear when the waves hit. Excellent ride.

Cooper: "Those aren't mountains, they're waves."

The North Sea is unbelievably rough, being on board a ship sailing these routes can be a unpleasant experience if you don't have good sea legs. I've done a few city breaks from England to Holland, Denmark and Germany and I can confirm that the waves are chuffing enormous!

I was in one (more than one) worse than this in the USN in the 90s. I believe it was '97 we were near Australia's east coast but still considerably out to sea... and going through a hurricane (Georgez? sp). The flight deck was 70' above the water line and the waves were routinely going 30 or 40 feet over it. One night about midnight we caught a sideways wave that tipped us beyond 45 degrees. Luckily almost everyone was in the bunks or secured because only one guy got hurt (broken arm). Two helos came loose in the hangar bay and rolled round a while. Somewhat humorously (in retrospect) the journalists had a brand new large printer capable of producing books and stuff automated. They were very proud of it... but none one welded it to the deck or bolted it soo... it goes crashing through false bulkhead and got smashed up. It was so crazy. You could time it right and just fly up like 30 stairs in a second because of pitch changes.

Anyone else just feel overwhelmed even just watching this?

I've been through this a few times, and I don't ever want to go through them again... 45deg leaning ships either going up or down the waves is not fun. Other than your stomach felt like doing somersault, the floor is doing see-saw, puking air since you already lost everything you've eaten before, and you got your life jacket strap-in. All the open sea training goes out of your mind and you feel completely blank. Normally when working on an oil rig, when bad weather is forecasted, no travelling back and forth between rigs and FPSO will be done. But sometimes, weather just turn a nasty trick on you, and you're caught in the middle of such transportation.

A rogue wave sunk my grandfather's minesweeper (YMS-421) off Okinawa in 1945. I cannot imagine what it must have been like fighting a storm like that, and even more so, the terror of having your ship go down...

I was on an old Fraiter on the west coast of North America off Vancouver Island BC the pilot boat could not get out to us for almost 24 hours because of a big storm and high seas. Rolling side to side 65 to 70 degrees, it was like being on a slow-motion rollercoaster, ya you had to hold on and net up on your bunk to sleep if you can sleep. Up in the pilot house, it was one min all you saw was water then cresting a wave you would see nothing but the cloudy sky then bam the bow would crash down and the whole ship would shudder.

I don’t know man…. I’ve seen 40-50+ footers crashing on shore and over a barrier island…. I can only say it’s absolutely horrifying. Even knowing your completely safe from it, just witnessing it gives you ENORMOUS RESPECT for the power of wind and water….

What I learned? Stay away from the north sea 😂

the north Sea is very shallow, sometimes as much as 30 feet deep, so the waves can be extraordinarily high and for long distances . 100ft waves are common out there, and it shows how the Vikings and later North sea nations managed to conquer the world

I don’t know how I found my way to this video, youtube recommended, I decided to watch. As someone who hardly ever travels off land I still feel a bit seasick just from watching this video. A couple of years back I took an overnight sailing from Southampton to France in December, the main thing I remember is trying to sleep with the ship rocking from side to side, one moment my head was pointed up to the night sky, the next my feet were… it took me a full day to recover and stop feeling sick.

And this, dear friends, is why I love to stay on land 😁

So cool that we’ve built ships to withstand these waves and conditions.

7:45 "Towards the mountains" "Those arent mountains" "they're waves"

Eerie doesn’t begin to describe that silent thing just rolling in knowing what toll was to come.

Seeing such waves only lets you think to yourself and have massive respect for sailors, trying to get out of there as safe as possible. Many of these ships bring our goods and food from point A to point B, trying to stay alive while leaving their loved ones at home.

"The sea was angry that day, my friends. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli." - George Costanza

Having been an RNLI volunteer crewman for years and based at a North Sea facing station, going out in very heavy seas is both exhilarating and scary in equal measures! Although the conditions are not always like that, sometimes its just beautiful. If anyone is thinking of joining us as lifeboat crew, shore crew or anything else, I would absolutely say go for it, it is the best thing I have ever done and love it! Also, and much more importantly, you get to help people and save lives. There's not much better than that.

As a Swedish native myself I always love hearing stories from the North Sea as I know how absolutely brutal that ocean can be. it’s absolutely ridiculous how cold and unforgiving that ocean and it sits so close to my country of sweden Greetings from Sweden

I've sailed the north sea with a rescue ship when i was younger. I remember how i was often totally exhausted from just trying to stand up or walk around to do my work. Being thrown around for days takes a lot of you physically and mentally.

The images of the oil rig (#4) reminded me of what my father went through back in 1965. Dad (Don Gillespie) was under contract with Shell Oil and was a diesel engineer. He was stationed in The Netherlands while a drilling rig (Transworld 58) was being built and helped in its construction. It was a large, semi-submersible rig and upon completion, the rig was connected to the world's largest ocean-going tug boat (a Dutch ship) for it's voyage to Angola, Africa (where it would eventually drill for oil off the coast of Province of Cabinda). Dad was on the rig from the time it left Rotterdam along with a small crew to make sure everything stayed lashed down and tight for the voyage. He was an old US Navy man that served in the So. Pacific in WWII on a mine sweeper so he was not unfamiliar with bobbing around in the water like a top but they hit one of those big storms in the North Sea and he said it almost tore the drilling rig in half. At one point, he was going between buildings on the deck and was almost washed overboard, fell and broke his arm but he stayed on deck. After a few days, they finally made it out of the North Sea and had a fairly uneventful cruise down to Dakar, Senegal where they had to put in for repairs which took a few weeks. They eventually made it to Angola (at the time it was a colony of Portugal) where the Dutch were in a hurry to disconnect from the rig and get out of Angolan waters. This was because there were about 400 years of bad blood between the Dutch and the Portuguese over the possession of Angola. Dad thought it was amusing how the Dutch were behaving in their haste to get out of there. A side note, my mother and I eventually joined my father in Angola and lived in Luanda for a year, a great experience for a 15 year old.

Imagine going through this in a wooden ship in old times.

The tsunami video is SO surreal! I lived in Japan and my family and I were at home during the tsunami- it didn’t hit the part of the island we lived on but the earthquakes were horrifying and I remember every second. We moved to the states only days after.

Bravo to the men and women that risk their lives to sail in these seas to save others, not a job for the faint hearted.

Mother Nature. So gorgeous. Hurricanes, tornados, ocean waves, fire....they're all just mesmerizing.

Rogue waves are the scariest part of sailing. I was serving on an aircraft carrier back in 04. And we got hit by a rogue wave. Killed a sailor and did some structural damage to the ship. It just came out of nowhere.

I live him Hawai’i so I’ve seen some impressive waves, especially during hurricanes. But some of the waves in this video are just insane. Can’t imagine seeing them in person.

I came back across the North Atlantic in November, on a flat bottom tank carriers (LST) It was very strange looking up at 40ft waves.

Going straight toward the wave seems scary, yet if it hits your side, it would probably be a much worse situation.

Gotta love the attitudes of the search and rescue guys. At 5:44 (ish) they go over the top of a huge wave with a massive splash over. The only reaction seems to be the captain casually hitting the "mist" button for the wipers a few seconds later. Legendary.

Human ingenuity is so underrated at times.....The engineering of these vessels and rigs is absolutely stunning.

The Great Lakes are ponds compared to the world's oceans, but they still sank many a ship & freighter over a couple of centuries. I spent my summers as a child/teen nearby the shore of northern Lake Michigan, and often watched as many storms would appear on the horizon as a widening black line of a front from Wisconsin, even when the mornings and early afternoons had been sunny, warm, and clear sky. You cannot see all of the way across the horizontally narrow big lake, even with powerful binoculars. A nearby resort town celebrated the 4th of July every year by staging a fireworks display over their bay btw breakwalls, but one year a sudden storm on the lake hit just as the volunteer fire crew launched the first firework...lol. The storm front looked JUST like a monster wave in the evening sky, and even curled like a bigly breaker as it approached the shoreline. Everyone in attendance RAN for their lives, but lost much of what they brought along to the huge beach to watch the fireworks, from the gale+ force winds. Further inland a couple of F2 tornados touched down but fortunately only in forested and farmland areas.

Imagine the Vikings crossing the North Sea [or German Sea as it was called] in these storms.Also the Murmansk convoys in WW2 as portrayed in the excellent book "HMS Ulysses" by Alasdair MacLean.

Spent 30 years in Merchant Marine on tankers primarily in the Gulf of Alaska. Largest waves I were well over a hundred feet with swells from numerous directions in Cat 5 winds near 160 mph. Some in loaded conditions and some in ballast in ships from 700' to 1000' length. Not fun at the time but I have to admit, I sometimes miss those days.

Imagine being employed to a rescue ship who only has to go out in storms. They are so brave ! Salute !

This seems like it should be on the discovery channel! Very professional, phenomenal video footage of each wave, great narrating. Well done!

Tsunami while at sea aren’t dangerous, and usually go unnoticed. They ramp up toward the shore, they have plenty of depth at sea to keep them subtle.

"5 monster waves!!" *#1 isn't about waves, but cargo* gimme a break lol

cant imagine how vikings survived this type of stuff

Will never forget staring out at the North Sea from the lighthouse in Berwick Upon Tweed, and seeing the tiny lights of ships in the distance. You can absolutely sense how terrifying it can be out there, and the comments from all these naval officers and fishermen saying "meh, I've seen worse" confirms it. Good lord!

My dad said that when on a ship crossing the English Channel during WWll, he was alone on deck watching the storm, which he always liked to do, saw a wave was going to crash over the whole ship, made it to the door, and barely got in and shut the door.

"billions of dollars of damage, not to mention thousands of lives" I love how loss of life is subtext to the loss of currency

Sailing in the ocean is terrifyingly beautiful. It’s one of my biggest fears that I’m most curious about. Ocean makes you realize how insignificant and minor you are. I love it.

that japanese ship going over the Tsunami, they must have had an idea of what it will do when it reaches land

This is the most terrifying experience ever!!! The ocean is sooooooo huge and waves are extremely dangerous!!!! Any brave soul that goes out and deals with this has my respect because I can’t! I don’t see the thrill of being out there! There’s not enough money in the world that would make me face this experience lol but I do appreciate them taking these risk so that we can experience them some kind of way! I do love the ocean and it’s very beautiful and terrifying and very interesting!

Just go around Cape Horn, pretty much any time of year for massive waves! I was on the USS TEXAS CGN-39 back in 1983 when we transited below southern Australia in the Roaring Forties and had the worst seas I ever experienced. We literally had to use the walls to walk the ship was rolling so much. One foot on the floor the next one on the wall, another step on the floor the next one on the other wall, it was crazy. At one point we did a 53 degree roll, which was marked on the inclinometer and was never beaten. Every now and then we would maneuver to be in following seas so we could go topside. It was an amazing thing to see as the ship was surrounded by WATER higher than our bridge. The waves around us were huge some I believe were taller than the ship. Get some videos of that!

I was in the Coast Guard for many years and have seen waves larger than these! Rode out several hurricanes, mostly in the North Atlantic and once on Lake Michigan.

Good review of just how massive and unpredictable ocean waves can be. The only thing I find disappointing was that the #1 "wave" was just a "weight distribution on ships is important" warning.

We experienced ‘moderate’ seas last year in the Bay of Biscay onboard a cruise ship, but it was nothing in comparison to some of these clips - absolutely remarkable!

Those emergency teams are just out there helping randoms? Hero/Legend Status 🙏🙏🙏👏

i love that the sailors just out the camera there and glue it but in reality the sailors are having a tornado in the cabin changing what direction gravity goes in every second.

News flash, if I even saw a 100 foot wave on land I know I'd be doomed.

The tsunami footage was unreal. I took a class on pacific rim natural disasters in college and tsunamis were one of the things we covered. It was the coolest class and I learned so much valuable info about volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. I’ve never seen a tsunami at sea coming in like that. Holy smokes how scary!! The entire horizon is elevated and coming at you….and you know wherever it hits landfall it’s gonna destroy everything. That was incredible and terrifying.

Water is such a fascinating element! It can be soothing and gentle, but it can also gather an incredibly fierce and destructive power

In the Japanese section, one man said:”It’s about 9 meters high.” 27 feet that is…

Just imagine how people used to sail through this on wooden ships.

The islands I come from we deal with the Warm sea currents and the artic currents, it can make pretty messed up waves at shore. When you as a kid see the ocean drag boulders that weight a house into the shore you know it's something not to mess with.

Ok, now you KNOW that those waves pounding that oil rig have to be insanely powerful. Those oil rigs usually weigh thousands of tons, and for it to be bouncing around like that, that's just insane. No way in hell could you get me to be on one of those during an intense storm like that, and all this time I thought oil rigs were stationary, and that they didn't move, wow!

Because living at the southern point of Africa can also provide some unexpected rough seas and with harbours close to our city we often see stuff wash up. In the few years I've been here we have seen a few oil spills, oranges - thousands and thousands and thousands of oranges (apparently a few containers went swimming), flip flops and all kinds of stuff from ships that pass in the night like foreign juice bottles etc.

My heart was pounding watching these natural disasters unfold. It's a cinematic experience like no other!

I was on the Queen Elizabeth 2 back in the day. And in the Irish Sea there were almost 30 ft swells and I have never been on a ship that got thrown around as bad as that! The ship was locked down and everyone was sick. I'll never forget that

I'll repeat what I've read on another similar video, the biggest ones haven't been caught on camera.... Yet. Good vid👍

Very interesting observing the waves, but would have been interesting to hear how high the swells and waves were.

Even these videos don't do it justice. The waves hitting that oil rig were massive, but in the video it's hard to see the true scope of it, without having a good sense of just how big those rigs are.

The energy to make these waves is unfathomable to me..

Brings me back to my days as a master helmsman in the US Navy. Yes it is correct the North Sea is very rough i remember sailing through a storm on a flat bottomed amphib It was a challenge to even stand behind the Helm without falling.

It’s insane to think how big and deep the ocean is that swells, even bigger than in this video, can happen out there. It’s terrifying. I give so much credit to these EMS vessels because id never be able to do that.

The display of the power of waves was like a nightmare, to say the least. Had I been on board on any of the ships, I would certainly have had a cardiac arrest. Men who work in such conditions must be having titanium nerves. Some waves really made my heart skip a beat or two.

Great footage. The oil rig situation would really freak me out. Unlike a ship, wherein you might be able to execute some sort of a maneuver to avoid disaster, the oil rig platform is strictly at the whim of the waves! As for the rescue ships; I can’t imagine how they could actually help or rescue any other ship in peril, as both ships would be being tossed by those huge waves! Thanks for this video!

Brings back many memories seeing this video. I work for 10years in the north sea, even did 5 tours on the Dolphin rig you see in here😅

Number 2 holy crap scary sod that 😳 but beautiful aswell

The north sea can really get very rough . When ferry services between the UK and the Netherlands and Germany (Hamburg ) were quite common , north sea storms were relatively common and the aftermath of the sea sickness by many people was not pleasant lol

Spent a few years at Sea when I was young, 16-19 as a fisherman saw some large waves probably nothing like what the Navy lads see, waves are relative to the size of the ship you are in. Big waves like that in a 50ft fishing boat yeah not a fun time. You get moved like you are surfing them rather then sailing on them. We went deep sea in the Indian Ocean and I’ve experienced moderately rough in Bass strait and the Pacific. The sea has my respect. She can be a beast.

Watching the show Deadliest Catch has been terrifying at times, since the Bering sea is so violent but most especially because of the ROGUE Waves that come out of nowhere and can threaten vessels that would otherwise be okay. We've seen ships get broadsided by up to 60 foot high rogue waves even while they are already contending with 40 foot waves over the bow. Perhaps you can find Rogue wave video from other sources...

my cousin was in the navy, and they worked 16-18 hour days at the time (not sure if they still do. during his time in the navy, he was just on ships and eventually went awol , abandoning the military and running. anyway. constantly tells stories about the horrible storms he had to work in , and the waves they went over

I work in the gulf, I’m an engineer on a crew boat and I’m a captain in training. We once were passing the Mississippi delta area heading to an are south of Alabama and he fell off rouge wave during a storm, the water came thru our anchor holes and hit our rope locker so hard that the lid to the locker tore completely off, it literally tore the welds at the seams and the 120 pound lid flew up and landed on the bridge catwalk. Fucking terrifying yet awesome.