1998 is a year that Johnny Savage will never forget. The book that this Virginia local and long-time offshore fisherman authored, Lost in the Stream: The Miraculous Story of Two Fisherman Lost at Sea, covers his experience surviving the aftermath of one of the earliest documented rogue waves in history. Here is the story, as told by Savage, of how he and his captain, Eric Bingham, staged in Key West and set out for Cancun aboard the 58-foot Jim Smith sportfisher Anhinga, unaware they were about to miraculously overcome the unthinkable:
On April 13th, 1998, we set underway just before light to be able to be up and running as the sun came up. And we were up and running at about nine o’clock. We looked in front of us and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before; it was like a hole in the ocean, is the best way to describe it. So, we were in a two-to-three-foot following sea and it was like nothing I’d ever seen. It was just a hole. And basically, the whole boat fell off into it. It was a rogue wave. And within a couple minutes we were in the water without a distress call, EPIRB, life raft, life jackets, nothing. And she was down. A lot of people ask about the wave. And I don’t know of any boat that could have made it through there.
So as this boat went off the wave, I was standing up on the bridge next to Captain Eric at the helm. And it was steep enough that I free fell forward.
And when she hit the bottom, I just heard this terrible “boom” and basically it was the bulkheads breaking. And just the pressure, I think she broke her spine and then the pressure on the sides—so her bow deck popped. When she hit, as I was free falling forward and was able to grab ahold of the tower, the tuna tower leg and rail at the front of the bridge—I was able to see a crack running from the starboard side running into the port side where the bow deck met the house, about a foot forward of that position.
And just from that moment I knew that this wasn’t going to be good. But even though I saw
