Sea shocks

“Sea shock” (also “Seaquake”) is a label used to describe blows and/or vibrations experienced on board of vessels, triggered by earthquakes. This phenomenon received little attention in scientific literature, and its physics is still largely unknown. Indeed, the physical models proposed so far were rarely built on actual testimonies and fail to explain the variety of phenomena reported by witnesses. This paper gathers a never-assembled-before list of sea shocks events, for each listing description and relevant characteristics, and presents the first statistical analysis. It is confirmed that several different mechanisms comprise the phenomenon labelled “sea shock”, and it is found that the four physical models proposed so far account only for $$\sim 85\%$$ ∼ 85 % of the phenomena experienced on board ships. Moreover, it has been found that, contrary to what is commonly believed and usually stated, sea surface perturbations are rarely coupled with sea shocks, and that these phenomena cannot be felt far from the epicentre of the triggering earthquake. Although rare, sea shocks can be quite dangerous for vessels and the lack of a solid quantitative insight into their physics is concerning for the safety of ships and floating structures.