THE WEATHER REPORT on the morning of the China's departure from Taiwan wasn't auspicious, but it wasn't ominous either, calling for winds registering 6 or 7 on the Beaufort scale, which ranges from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane force). Developed in 1805 by Sir Francis Beaufort, an Irish admiral, the Beaufort scale includes descriptions of sea conditions that read like found poetry. This is how Sir Beaufort describes seas in light air, level 1: "scaly ripples, no foam crests." This is seas in a strong breeze, level 6: "Larger waves 8-13 ft, whitecaps common, more spray." In near gale, level 7, the "sea heaps up, waves 13-20 ft, white foam streaks off breakers."

Four days out, 600 miles east of Tokyo, the China's weather-routing service recommended an easterly change of course. Two low-pressure systems following in the ship's wake had unexpectedly merged, developing into what climatologists used to call a "meteorological bomb" but now call a "rapidly intensifying low." Also unexpectedly, this weather bomb had moved in an easterly, rather than northeasterly, direction, toward the China instead of away from it.

Two days later, on October 26, by noon local time, the storm had drawn to within 120 nautical miles. The China once again changed course, veering farther south. Nine hours later it veered south yet again, onto an almost due-easterly bearing. Weirdly, instead of continuing on its track, the storm veered too, as if in pursuit, and the China suddenly found itself in what climatologists call "the most dangerous quarter" of the storm. If the master had ignored the weather service and stayed on his original course, he might have escaped. Instead, in perfect darkness, at 3 A.M. on October 27, disaster struck.

The winds were now Beaufort Force 11: "exceptionally high (30-45 ft) waves, foam patches cover sea, visibility more reduced." Analysis of the historical weather data would eventually reveal that the conditions were even worse than Beaufort had described. The tallest of the normal, unfreakish waves likely attained heights of 70 or 80 feet. Rogue waves are by definition unlikely, but if one had arisen under these conditions, it would have been, wave-height-distribution statistics suggest, 105.5 feet tall. It was an hour and a half before the fury of the storm began to subside. The sun rose on a ruin.

One of the lawyers deposing the mariners in Seattle ten years ago was Bill France, of Healy & Baillee, a once venerable, now defunct New York firm hired to represent APL and its underwriters. France, who grew up miles from the sea, on a mink farm in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, is not your typical maritime lawyer. When I called him to ask about the APL China, the deep-voiced person who answered agreed to meet with me but, before hanging up, said there were two things I should know: First, in honor of attorney-client confidentiality, we could discuss only what was already in the public record; second, the 58-year-old person I'd be meeting was no longer a man named Bill but a tall, transgendered, "somewhat mannish woman" called Willa.

Not only is Willa France transgendered; she is a poet, a student of Jewish theology, and a certified naval architect. She knows about the mysticism of Buber and the prosody of Frost. She knows about the physics of waves and the applied science of engineering. I asked whether she wanted me to identify her as Willa, and she said yes and, in a characteristically eloquent e-mail, compared her transgendering to the mysterious change the China had undergone on its fateful ocean crossing. Not that it had been for her a personal disaster; quite the opposite. But it had been overwhelming, "not unlike the consequence of an elemental and unpredictable force." Although no actual detectives were assigned to the case of the APL China, of all the lawyers involved, France, with her expertise in naval architecture, came closest to playing the part. She is this mystery's Sherlock.

Like the lawyers representing the cargo owners and their underwriters, France was at first skeptical about the story recounted by the China's crew. The details didn't make scientific sense. The ship's anemometer, which measures wind speed, had been on the fritz, so the sea conditions recorded in the logbook were estimates made in darkness, in wildly "confused seas," by sleep-deprived, tempest-tossed mortals, and the ship had been yawing hard, off her intended course. (Naval architects call the six different motions ships make "the six degrees of freedom": rolling, pitching, yawing, heaving, swaying, and surging.) In confused seas, the waves move every which way, and the prevailing direction is difficult to determine. It would be understandable if the officers had been wildly confused, too.

"It was only after listening to four or five guys that I began to take them seriously," France told me. Their stories all matched, and France discovered forensic evidence confirming some of the details—green water inside a running light up on the bridge, wave damage to the outermost containers in stacks still standing, a dent on the bow's protective steel bulwark. But what finally made France a believer was the testimony of the China's master, Parvez Guard.

A seasoned mariner from India who'd been captaining container ships for 15 years, Guard was an exceptionally expert witness, France said. In a deposition lasting three of the six days that the China spent in Seattle, Guard reconstructed the voyage day by day, then, as the time of the disaster neared, hour by hour, then minute by minute, corroborating his testimony with entries in the logbook. While that testimony isn't in the public record, one very telling quote from it is. Just before the containers began to fall, the ship had suddenly become "uncontrollable," Guard testified, "as if there were a devil in it."