The significant wave height, an average of the largest 33 percent of the waves, was sixty-one feet, with frequent spikes far beyond that. Months later, long after Avery had returned everyone safely to the Southampton docks, when Holliday began to analyze these figures, she would discover that the waves they had experienced were the largest ever scientifically recorded in the open ocean. The ship was ringed with instruments everything that happened out there was being precisely measured, the sea's fury captured in tight graphs and unassailable numbers. During the endless trains of massive waves, Discovery itself was collecting data that would lead to a chilling revelation. Above all, Avery had to position Discovery so that it rode over these crests and wasn't crushed beneath them. A breaking hundred-foot wave packs one hundred tons of force per square meter and can tear a ship in half. It takes thirty tons per square meter of force to dent a ship. Turning around was too risky if one of these waves caught Discovery broadside, there would be long odds on survival. No one wanted to be out here right now, but Avery knew their only hope was to remain where they were, with their bow pointed into the waves. Flanking all sides of the 295-foot ship, the crew kept a constant watch to make sure they weren't about to be sucker punched by a wave that was sneaking up from behind, or from the sides. And worse, they kept rearing up from different directions.

While weather like this was common in the cranky North Atlantic, these giant waves were unlike anything he'd encountered in his thirty years of experience. Captain Keith Avery steered his vessel directly into the onslaught, just as he'd been doing for the past five days.

The Wave by Susan Casey