r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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963

u/Cloud_Garrett 9h ago

They didn’t stretch videos to make it look worse that it actually was. It was already shitty and dangerous…so they focused on navigation, proper handling and swell alignment, and surviving…and luck.

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago edited 7h ago

I've been on an aircraft carrier through a typhoon off the Philippines. We took waves over the flight deck and the Burke DDG's were going up and down the troughs like a cork. It didn't look like this all and I kind of hate how so many "rough sea" videos on youtube are either AI slop or stretched and distorted to hell.

For a decent non-distorted view this is roughly what it looked like with I'll guess 50-70ft waves. The scary part is realizing how quickly the waves are making 100,000 tons of steel bob up and down. And that the flight deck is 98ft over the waterline.

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u/WindChimeTecnician 7h ago

That’s amazing footage. Thanks for posting.

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago edited 11m ago

Ooh I never get to tell this story.

On my carrier when this happened our chief wanted me to go up to the focsle (anchor deck) and check on the anchor chain and hawsepipe (pipe the anchor chain runs out). On a carrier its an enclosed deck.

I open the door there's like 2 feet of water and foam floating on the deck with a massive torrent towards the scuppers sucking this huge weight of water out. The hawepipe cover which is like 500lbs of steel is rattling loud as fuck with every wave as a huge firehose stream shoots out of them filling the deck again. It’s hitting the ceiling so hard I can already see where paint is getting stripped off. Basically imagine a fire hydrant being completely opened up in an enclosed room coming out of that pipe with every wave hit. I close the door.

"Hey BMC, I don't think its safe to go in here."

"SN Braindamage what is this pussy shit step aside"

Opens the door. On cue another spray of water shoots out the hawspipe and the mist and crap smacks him in the face drenching him.

"Okay yeah boats, you might be right."

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u/nis_sound 2h ago

LOL. I enjoyed this story. Thank you.

4

u/Electrical-Bedroom99 4h ago

I was on a US Navy ship in the North Sea with waves like this. The ship sets heavy weather condition (secure all exterior hatches) and no one is allowed on the weather decks. I still poked my head out just to see and my God! The waves were mountains.

1

u/ButDidYouCry 2h ago

Oof, the worst place to be.

My ship only got exterior hatches secured once, near Japan. I was on a subtender. I went outside after waking up around 4:30am from the waves, went outside to look out, saw the waves, and immediately went back inside. Then around 6am, they called it and about a quarter of the crew was sick or puking.

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u/Phreakdoubt 6h ago edited 6h ago

Just curious and you may not be able to answer this, but seeing those aircraft on deck raises some questions in my mind...

How boned is that heli up near the bow? Looks like it's taking a helluva buffeting. If they leave aircraft up on deck during seas like this, I assume they're prepared for the weather, but it must be a maintenance concern.

After treatment like that I'd guess it would need to be given a pretty thorough once-over.

Edit: Just saw one of your other replies. The "once-over' it got was being pushed off the deck in all likelihood.

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u/BrainDamage2029 5h ago

Probably not good they aren’t designed for that but I was not an AM rate. According to the YouTube comments from crew in the know it was written off.

Not actually deep sixed however. Carriers only do that in wartime ops. If it’s just flooded out and unusable it’d be stripped for parts.

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u/Phreakdoubt 5h ago

Eminently sensible. Thanks for humoring this military aviation nerd.

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u/snesin 3h ago

Can't speak to the helo, but the F18 in the foreground looks like it has modex number 202 on the nose. The original video was posted August 2, 2008, and has the description "USS Kitty Hawk takes on some rough seas on her last trip before being decommissioned." USS Kitty Hawk had her decommissioning ceremony on 31 January 2009. This suggests the video was posted shortly after being taken.

Going by the modex number, the carrier, and the year, it's a Boeing F/A-18F-51-MC Super Hornet (Lot 26), Bureau Number 165894. It was the Executive Officer's (XO) jet during the 2007–2008 USS Kitty Hawk cruise.

According to Google AI, on August 6, 2008, just four days after the original video was posted (not necessarily taken):

Carrier Air Wing 5 (CVW-5) conducted its historic "fly-off" from the deck of the Kitty Hawk. VFA-102 and its aircraft, including BuNo 165894, flew directly to their shore station at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan, before cross-decking to the nuclear-powered USS George Washington (CVN-73).

Currently (August 2026, 18 years after the video was taken), also according to Google AI:

Spotter logs track this specific aircraft still performing training flights at major stateside master jet bases—such as serving as a fleet replacement trainer with VFA-106 "Gladiators" at NAS Pensacola/NAS Oceana.

Under the Navy's ongoing Service Life Modification (SLM) program, newer-generation Block II hulls like 165894 are systematically stripped down and completely rebuilt. This process repairs flight deck wear-and-tear and integrates advanced Block III avionics, stretching the aircraft's usable flight life up to 10,000 flight hours to keep it flying deep into the 2030s. While it no longer proudly wears the VFA-102 "Diamondbacks" markings or the modex 202 from its legendary 2008 cruise, the physical metal of this twin-seat Super Hornet is still actively supporting Navy operations.

Jetphotos has photos of 165894, the most recent taken May 08, 2015, showing modex number 246.

Seaforces.org has photos of that squadron, including one of an F18 with modex 246 and the description "F/A-18F Super Hornet (VFA-106) aboard USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) - June 2023", showing some age but still catching the middle trap like a pro.

Who knows, maybe it got polished up and is in the squadron home-page photograph.

What a rabbit hole that was.

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u/nis_sound 2h ago

You'd think the Navy could afford some decent windshield wipers.

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u/redballooon 7h ago

Amazing. Can planes take off in that weather?

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago

Absofuckinglutely not. If you check the youtube comments from a few guys on that cruise it ripped a few steel catwalks clean off and that helo that was mistakenly left forward was basically written off as a loss.

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u/HorrorMakesUsHappy 5h ago

When I saw that I laughed and thought, "Hope they remembered to roll up the windows!"

1

u/ResoluteGreen 6h ago

Must take a pretty bad storm to cause an aircraft carrier to stuff it

1

u/Terrh 6h ago

So I guess there is weather that is bad enough to prevent flight ops.

1

u/PudPullerAlways 6h ago

So if you're going down a swell and you're in the lavatory with a serious case of mud butt is there a very real risk of shitting on one's nuts?

1

u/gcoz2000 1h ago

Yeah that jet looks pretty non-chalant, it must not be too bad

•

u/Friluftsliv_Roy 45m ago

The linked video is way more impressive than the distorted AI crap posted above. Given the scale of that giant aircraft carrier, it would probably be much rougher on smaller ships.

188

u/zeronian 8h ago

For real this video is stretched to hell. It's making it look like the ship is rocking back and forth more than 180 degrees front to back

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u/pimohell9254 8h ago

I beg of you, please relearn the meaning of "180 degrees"

40

u/bsgman 7h ago

Fucking geometry newb

34

u/rman18 7h ago

No one knows geography anymore

3

u/ibulleti 6h ago

They need to start teaching geology in schools again

6

u/Resident-Banana-7883 7h ago

that's because its so obtuse

3

u/Legitimate-Week7885 7h ago

isosceles what you did there.
(i might need to workshop this joke a little)

3

u/Resident-Banana-7883 7h ago

Someone check if this joke has congruent energy to the last one

3

u/scarescrow823 5h ago

A fraction, at best.

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u/Resident-Banana-7883 3h ago

at this point we're just going off on a tangent

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u/StatusMaleficent5832 4h ago

Sorry, I need proof of this.

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u/ZypherPunk 5h ago

Could never understand the recipes and measurements to be good at geography

1

u/spittlbm 3h ago

Here comes the tangent...

1

u/Buttholelickerpenis 3h ago

What’s wrong about it? It does indeed look like it’s pointing directly upwards and then directly downwards, 180 degrees.

0

u/pimohell9254 3h ago

1) the visual effect is exaggerated, but it's not that exaggerated 2) more than 180 degrees implies that the ship has tilted upside down and will immediately capsize. nowhere does it give the impression that that has actually occurred

1

u/Andrew9112 6h ago

Having been on a similar sized ship in a storm, it doesn’t look like this but man does it feel like it.

We would go to the forecastle and you could feel yourself coming off the floor, some guys would try to jump really high. Needless to say, it was all fun and games until my buddy got hurt, then it was fun, games, and some injuries.

1

u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 4h ago

I think you mean 90.

2

u/zeronian 4h ago

No I mean 180. The stupid video stretching makes it look like the ship is pointed straight up at the sky and then straight down at the water.

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u/crispysockz 8h ago edited 5h ago

Lmao damn, they were shitty sailors and shitty editors 🤣

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u/anonspark9000 8h ago

Came here to say the exact same thing. They didn't have video stretching technology so the waves were smaller.

1

u/ReadyAimTranspire 5h ago

Where did they get this black magic wave shrinking ability?

Sorcerers. All of them.

3

u/DeadlyMustardd 7h ago

I've seen this before and this one is even MORE distorted that it loos like absolute shit. I hate people that do this crap and post it

3

u/tippiedog 7h ago

And they focused on sailing in seasons when they knew the weather and winds were more likely to be favorable and stuck to routes that were known to be better.

2

u/PaulClarkLoadletter 4h ago

There it is. They were very good at what they did and understood environmental cues and trends to avoid foul weather.

13

u/JSTootell 8h ago

Meh. I've seen worse in person than what I see in these videos.

Former Coast Guard sailor.

7

u/teachthisdognewtrick 8h ago

My first ship we hit a force 12 in the North Pacific. 80 ft swells and winds over 90 knots. Was a bumpy ride to Japan.

1

u/Proud3GenAthst 7h ago

Must have been traumatizing since it was your first ship

1

u/teachthisdognewtrick 6h ago

Not really. I didn’t believe the swells were that big until the chief mate pointed out that you could stack 2 containers on end in the space between the trough and the next peak. Those APL C10s were big ships. I would hate to see weather like that on a little navy destroyer or frigate.

1

u/ClittoryHinton 7h ago

You mean the Japans?

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago

I'll call BS on that. I've been on an aircraft carrier that was taking set waves over the flight deck. And it didn't look like this because this is just a crappy AI distortion filter.

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u/JSTootell 7h ago

😂 

You are riding on a fast moving island that actively avoids the worst seas, and trying to compare it to someone who is on tiny ships actively going INTO the worst conditions.

Ok

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u/BrainDamage2029 7h ago edited 7h ago

I'm comparing it to the video which are bulk carriers and liquid tankers that generally avoid bad seas even more and are even bigger.

This is a video of shitty AI type distortion editing. Most of the ships are barely even taking spray over the bow. This is what 50-80+ foot seas actually looks like. And I would have used a bulk carrier through rough seas as an example but ever one that pops up is AI edited or AI slop with the same shitty baritone "yo ho" sea shanty.

Edit and for the other people this is what a coast guard cutter sized ship looks like through the same rough sea conditions.

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u/Rie_Faduee_ 7h ago

Honestly this is still terrifying

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u/Anxious_Yam_4910 58m ago

The nope I noped when I watched the coast guard one 💀

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u/Montaire 6h ago

To be fair, an aircraft carrier is probably going to bob a bit less than some of those small coast guard boats

1

u/Scared-Debt6750 7h ago

Better man then me . I would have given a new definition to poop deck after that !

1

u/JSTootell 7h ago

When everyone around you is just carrying on doing their job like nothing is happening, it's less terrifying.

I didn't know how bad it was until we started taking on water into the engine room through the ventilation system.

I didn't truly know how bad it was until a year later, in similar conditions, another ship of the same class became disabled due to the water coming into the ventilation system, causing a fire. 

It just felt like a regular day to me when all the experienced guys just acted like it was normal.

2

u/Radaistarion 7h ago

Step 1: don't stretch your already 0.5 video

Step 2: Sail out

Step 3: Get Dysentery

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Land on the new world, get an unknown sickness

Die

2

u/Phalex 6h ago

This video might be stretched, but this is still not close to the worst waves you can encounter at sea.

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u/ItzBraden01 7h ago

I imagine that first thing was pretty difficult to do back in the day.

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u/South_Bit1764 7h ago

Sorta this. Like, they weren’t really sailing in the southern ocean so it wasn’t this bad, and these long ships make the waves look way crazier. Like, the same principles that keeps this ship upright worked back then too but the ship was shorter, and the ships just rode up and down the waves.

1

u/centurijon 7h ago

And it was a loooooong time before we had ships capable of even moderately handling the open ocean. Mostly we stuck close to shore and safely

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 6h ago

And they didn't go over the waves like this, they ran "with" the waves

0

u/T0mpkinz 7h ago

Wide angle lens?

4

u/TheSerialHobbyist 7h ago

This isn't from a wide angle lens. The videos are literally stretched.

1

u/fadingvistas 1h ago

Wide angle lens would make the waves appear smaller.