When I saw the killer wave from the bridge of the Cape Horn, I took it for a natural peril; it was only much later that I realized that I might be one of the very few people to have observed a rare marine phenomenon – a monster seiche wave – at close quarters and survived.

When I joined her in 1930, the Cape Horn was an almost new, standard ‘three island’ ship of the period. The man in charge, Captain ES Wilkie, had commanded the last active square-rigged ship on the British register, and he and I were the only sailing ship men aboard.

The incident happened during a Force 9 or 10 gale in the Pacific, sometime between April and June 1935.