So what's your percentage for weather-related sinkings caused by rogue waves - zero? According to --
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php?id=257&print=1 -- "Naval architects have estimated that more than a third of the 60 super carriers that went down due to sudden flooding between 1969 and 1994 were victims of rogue waves." So, that percentage is more than three times higher than my percentage. Further, a 1/3 ratio applied to 60 super carriers sinking between 1969 and 1994 would mean that more than 20 such carriers sank due to flooding caused by rogue waves over a 25 -year period -- almost one such carrier per year.
I'm afraid this citation
detracts from your overall credibility, rather than enhances it.
First, enviroliteracy's citation of unnamed and unmentioned "naval architects" is hardly evidence; without further citation, there's no way for me to evaluate the competence of these architects, and the putative error of their conclusions strongly suggests either incompetence or mallicious editing.
But beyond that, your very numbers aren't holding together.
Rosenthal suggests that 100 "large ships" per year go down due to "bad weather."
Enviroliteracy suggests that 60 "supercarriers" sank over due to "sudden flooding" over a twenty-five year period. I assume that "supercarriers" in this context means large container ships -- if they mean aircraft carriers, then they're obviously wrong because there aren't 60 supercarriers in the combined navies of the entire world. (Th e US has about 20,everyone else is much smaller.)
That works out at less than three losses per year, which leaves 97 unaccounted for. Either most of the "bad weather" losses are not due to "sudden flooding," (which in turn implies that they weren't losses to rogue waves, because "sudden flooding" is more or less what rogue waves, by definition,
do), or the vast majority of large ship losses are not supercarriers, but tankers. (Those are basically the two kinds of large ships out there; container ships and oil tankers.)
So let's look at tankers for a moment. We can broadly divide tankers into two categories, full, and empty, and note that a rogue wave is
much more dangerous for a full tanker than for an empty one (an empty one can ride higher, is more responsive, and can if necessary adjust its balance with seawater for safety). I think it's fair, therefore to assume that of the tankers sunk by bad weather (in general) and by rogue waves in particular, at least 50% would be in cargo and result in a substantial oil spill.
The
ITOPF (see also
this site)maintains and publishes statistics on all oil spills since 1970. In no year of record keeping has there been more than 32 major
spills. That's not sinkings, and that's particularly not rogue-wave related sinkings. If you seriously suggest that there have been over 90 supertanker sinkings per year, that would imply at least 45 major spills each year, a number that has not been seen.
Furthermore, the largest spills (as we would expect from a fully-laden tanker sinking) do not happen out in the open ocean, where rogue waves occur. (Neither do the smaller ones, in point of fact.) Of the twenty major oil spills described in the cited report, only four happened in the open ocean. Similarly, of all the major spills described by cause over a nearly thirty-year reporting period -- of 312 major spills, only 44 were due to "hull failure" (which might be caused by a rogue wave), and another 38 were due to "unknown cause" which could be anything from a rogue wave,. an attack by Iraqi fighters, or alien abduction. The vast majority, as you might expect, were from "grounding" (as in the case of the Exxon
Valdez) or "collisions" -- not waves and weather.
So, what do we have. Three container ships sunk per year due to "sudden flooding." An effective maximum of three full oil tankers sunk per year
from all causes in recent years, since there have been only three major oil spills. Of course, there weren't three oil tanker sinkings per year, or anywhere near. Then add another three hypothesized empties for good measure.
That's a maximum of nine ships sunk per year. Where are the other 91?
I suppose I should accept that it's at least theoretically possible that we have, not three sinkings of unladen tanker ships per year, but 94. Given that there are only
about 3000 oil tankers in the international trade, the idea that one tanker in thirty would sink each year defies plausibility. So that's out.
So, container ships don't sink that often. Full oil tankers don't sink that often. Empty container ships don't sink that often. There aren't enough military aircraft carriers in the world to sink that often.
What's left?
Again, if you think Rosenthal and all the articles I cite are inaccurate, produce some evidence of your own to counter Rosenthal and those articles.
91 missing ships is evidence enough for me.
