AROUND 6 P.M. ON MONDAY, October 28, Tyne told the skipper of a Gloucester boat named the Allison that he was 130 miles north-northeast of Sable Island and experiencing 80-knot winds. "She's comin' on, boys, and she's comin' on strong," he said. According to Tyne, the conditions had gone from flat calm to 50 knots almost without warning. The rest of the fleet was farther east and in relative safety, but the Andrea Gail was all alone in the path of the fast-developing storm. She was probably running with the waves and slightly angled toward them--"quartering down-sea," as it's called--which is a stable position for a boat; she'll neither plow her nose into the sea nor roll over broadside. A wave must be bigger than a boat to flip her end-over-end, and the Andrea Gail was 70 feet long. But by this point, data buoys off Nova Scotia were measuring waves as high as 100 feet--among the highest readings ever recorded. Near Sable Island the troughs of such monsters would have reached the ocean floor.

Tyne would have radioed for help if trouble had come on slowly--a leak or a gradual foundering, for example. "Whatever happened, happened quick," a former crew member from the Hannah Boden later said. Tyne didn't even have time to grab the radio and shout.

WAVES OF UNIMAGINABLE PROPORTIONS HAVE BEEN RECORDED over the years. When Sir Ernest Shackleton skippered an open sailboat off the South Georgian Islands in May 1916, he saw a wave so big that he mistook the foaming crest for a break in the clouds. "It's clearing, boys!" he yelled to his crew, and then, moments later: "For God's sake, hold on, it's got us!" By some miracle they managed to survive. In 1933 in the South Pacific an officer on the USS Ramapo looked to stern and saw a wave that was later calculated to be 112 feet high. In 1984 a three-masted schooner named the Marques was struck by a single wave that sent her down in less than a minute, taking 19 people with her. Nine survived, including a strapping young Virginian who managed to force his way up through a rising column of water and out an open hatch.

Oceanographers call these "extreme waves" or "rogues." Old-time Maine fishermen call them "queer ones." They have roared down the stacks of navy destroyers, torn the bows off container ships, and broken cargo vessels in two.

When the rogue hit the Andrea Gail, sometime between midnight and dawn on October 29, Tyne would probably have been alone in the wheelhouse and already exhausted after 24 hours at the helm. Captains, unwilling to relinquish the wheel to inexperienced crew, have been known to drive for two or even three days straight. The crew would have been below deck, either in the kitchen or in their staterooms. Once in a while one of the men would have come up to keep Tyne company. In the privacy of the wheelhouse he might have admitted his fears: This is bad, this is the worst I've ever seen. There's no way we could inflate a life raft in these conditions. If a hatch breaks open, if anything lets go...

Tyne must have looked back and seen an exceptionally big wave rising up behind him. It would have been at least 70 feet high, maybe 100 feet. The stern of the boat would have risen up sickeningly and hurled the men from their bunks. The Andrea Gail would have flipped end-over-end and landed hull-up, exploding the wheelhouse windows. Tyne, upside-down in his steel cage, would have drowned without a word. The five men below deck would have landed on the ceiling. The ones who remained conscious would have known that it was impossible to escape through an open hatch and swim out from under the boat. And even if they could-what then? How would they have found their survival suits, the life raft?

The Andrea Gail would have rolled drunkenly and started to fill. Water would have sprayed through bursting gaskets and risen in a column from the wheelhouse stairway. It would have reached the men in their staterooms and it would have been cold enough to take their breath away. At least the end would have come fast.