But debate rages as to which matters more in the ocean. Each can describe how large waves form in laboratory wave pools. Researchers have since come up with two main theories. The Draupner wave spurred physicists to understand exactly how these solitary behemoths might arise. Researchers have since determined that rogue waves probably claimed 22 supercarriers and more than 500 lives in the second half of the 20th century alone. This hard evidence turned maritime myth into fact. Equipped with a downward-pointing laser, the platform recorded a 26-meter wave spiking out of a sea filled with 11.8-meter waves - a nautical Bigfoot caught in a high-resolution snapshot.

That skepticism changed on New YearвЂ™s Day in 1995, when a rogue wave struck the Draupner oil installation in the Norwegian North Sea. Sure, you might get a wave twice as tall as its neighbors in theory, but youвЂ™d have to watch the seas for a long time. Data-driven researchers long struggled to square sailorsвЂ™ tales of monstrous вЂњrogueвЂќ waves with the expectation that wave heights vary like human heights - clustering around an average with a few outliers dotting the thin tails of a bell curve. Mariners have known for centuries what researchers have documented only in recent decades: The ocean is a far more dangerous place than common sense would suggest. West GermanyвЂ™s Maritime Board of Inquiry eventually declared it вЂњimpossible to explain the cause of the sinking.вЂќ Rumors circulated that a monstrous wave had crashed onto the deck from above, but such a swell was, at the time, unthinkable. A recovered lifeboat - originally bolted to the MГјnchen about 20 meters above the water - appeared to have been ripped from its perch by a tremendous force hurtling toward the shipвЂ™s stern. One clue in particular stumped investigators. The West German vessel and its 28-person crew vanished, leaving behind just four lifeboats, three shipping containers, and a handful of flotation devices.

At midnight, just three hours earlier, an operator had radioed out to a cruise ship, вЂњHave a good trip and see you soon.вЂќ Now came a distress call from the MГјnchen - then silence. Although the captain couldnвЂ™t evade it, the forecasted waves and winds should have posed no threat to the 261-meter-long ship.

Two weeks before Christmas in 1978, the cargo ship MS MГјnchen encountered a fierce storm in the North Atlantic.

Sinking ship simulator