How many times a year do ships sink?

Two large ships sink each week, about 100 per year, according to Wolfgang Rosenthal - Senior Scientist with the GKSS Forschungszentrum GmbH research.

It has often been claimed that "severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades", and that rogue waves are believed to be the major cause in many such cases. That claim was made by the MaxWave project in 2001 (without any evidence) and was repeated in a press release by the European Space Agency in 2004.

According to the casualty statistics held by Lloyd's Register, only 142 vessels of that size (of any type, not just tankers and containerships) were lost during the two decades to 2001. The losses were mostly due to the usual causes: fire, collisions, groundings and structural failure, plus losses due to military action during the Iran-Iraq war. None were attributed to rogue waves.