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Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
My father was on a cruise with the USS Shreveport LPD-12 when the bridge and 3 inch thick bridge windows were shattered and several bridge staff were killed and injured by a rogue wave that was estimated at 40 to 50 feet.

In October 1989 the USS Eisenhower did a night unrep (underway replenishment) off the coast of North Carolina in very rough seas just hours before our scheduled return to Norfolk. I walked out onto the forward flight deck for a very short while and will never forget watching the AO ordnance ship's bow coming completely out of the water and then driving deep. I have no idea how the two ships didn't collide that night, and after a very short time I realized this was no place for me to be standing and went back inside.

Some time later after midnight while packing my stuff I remember hearing an odd, muffled BOOM and the ship literally shook for what seemed like a long time. Less than a minute later Man Overboard was called. I thought we'd finally collided with the other ship, but we'd taken a rogue wave from the forward starboard quarter with all the elevators in the down position. The wave washed off 3 men and a bunch of ordnance that had just been transferred to Elevator 2. The wave also went through the hanger deck where everybody's gear was being staged for the next day's Off-Load. The wave pretty much washed everything back into Hanger 3, and some gear went out with the wave as the water exited out Elevator 3. Everybody who was down there at the time said it was like a 3' wave just appeared out of nowhere pushing everything not chained down.

The helo crew that night did an amazing job of getting the alert H-3 up and running, and after takeoff they lost some type of flight control stability augmenter but continued with the rescue mission when they shouldn't have. They found two sailors and plucked them out of the dark waters alive that night. The ship delayed coming into port for 24 hours to look for the other sailor but he was lost at sea. This delay also allowed us to work through the mess in Hanger 3 and reorganize the Off Load. There were many people who lost cruise boxes of personal stuff as well as admin records, tools and other Navy gear.

Growing up I'd done plenty of salt-water fishing so I've always had a healthy respect for the sea. But I will never forget the uncomfortable feeling I had standing on the flight deck watching the ocean toss two large ships around the way it did.

Here's a news article about the incident.

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I've seen them, not at that extreme, but I certainly do not believe that they aredue to "Climate Change"