THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996 TAG: 9608260308
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 51 lines
A Navy warship steaming in the Chesapeake Bay has been blamed by some Ocean View residents for an unusually high wave that crashed onto the beach Friday, sending picnic lunches and chairs into the water.
``We're very lucky no one was killed,'' said Judy Brown, who said she saw the wave cross over the top of a sand dune in front of her house about 1:30 p.m. She estimated its height at 18 to 20 feet. She lives on West Ocean View Avenue near 6th View on Willoughby Spit.
Navy officials dispute that the ship's wake could form a wave as high as 20 feet. However, they said it would be impossible to determine exactly how high it could have been.
Brown said she and friends were sitting on the beach, eating lunch next to a glassy Bay, when people started screaming and running from what she described as a tidal wave.
``My house is 12 feet above low mean water, and the sand dune in front of my house sits eight feet higher than that,'' Brown said. The first, largest wave was followed by several smaller ones, she said.
``We lost everything,'' Brown said. ``Beach chairs went, our towels, our sandwiches. Everything went into the Bay.''
Navy officials confirmed that the incident might have been prompted by a mechanical problem aboard the cruiser San Jacinto. The ship was returning to the Norfolk Naval Station at about that time from a cruise for family members of its crew and World War II veterans.
The Ticonderoga-class warship, 567 feet long, had just overtaken a tanker in the shipping channel outside Norfolk harbor when it momentarily lost power in one of its engines, said Cmdr. John Tull, a Navy spokesman.
Once power was restored, the cruiser's crew realized the tanker it had just passed was now bearing down upon it.
``So what they had to do was to speed up to avoid a problem with this oncoming tanker,'' Tull said. ``That may have been what caused this wake.''
He couldn't say how fast the cruiser was going at that point. The ship's top speed is more than 30 knots.
``Once they had gotten a safe distance from the tanker again,'' Tull said, ``they cut back their speed.''
The ship had returned to its normal speed by the time it reached the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, where Navy ships routinely travel at 12 knots, Tull said.
``We're sorry for any problems that may have resulted from this.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color illustration
Drawing by John Earle
KEYWORDS: TIDAL WAVE OCEAN VIEW U.S. NAVY by CNB