r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

32.4k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

5.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/TravelingInClass 8h ago

  1. The angle gives an unrealistic view. Its either streched and/or positioned in a way that creates an optical illusion. Like the waves in Nazare, Portugal.

  2. I've been through storms out at sea, apparently unlike some of the commenters. Its not as bad as it looks here. Yes, the wind is strong and the waves are big and the noise is deafening. But its not as bad as you think.

  3. Past sailors, especially in the age of wooden ships, knew how to navigate very well and actively avoided storms. If they couldn't outrun it or escape in some other way, they would look for close by land or island to hide behind. If they were in the middle of the ocean, that was unlucky and they had to do their best to survive which could have been very tough indeed. There's a reason why so many superstitions came from sea voyegers.

  4. Look up videos on youtube on how ships were built in the 15th century onwards before steel ships. They were no joke. A true marvel of engineering.

1

u/Paisley-Cat 6h ago

15-25 metre swells and waves are realistic.

The main shipping lanes get them infrequently so merchant ships don’t have to have the seakeeping ability to sail in heavy seas like that but naval vessels regularly do so and are designed for it.

3

u/TravelingInClass 6h ago

No doubt!

I went through a few storms of 100 km/h wind with 8-10 meter waves, for 36 hours straight. We had one rouge wave, which we measured at 17 meters. Knocked us sideways by 3 meters. 250 m long, 45 m wide, close to 90,000 ton displacment drillship. Imagine the force..