---
title: "Furious Orcas Throw Around Yacht “Like a Ragdoll”"
description: "British sailors off the Iberian coast eventually found themselves completely rudderless, as \"playful\" orcas overwhelmed their yacht."
date: "2023-06-07"
modified: "2023-06-07"
authors:
  - name: "Frank Landymore"
    job_title: "Contributing Writer"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/orcas-yacht-ragdoll"
categories:
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "killer whales"
  - "oceans"
  - "orcas"
  - "the digest"
---

# Furious Orcas Throw Around Yacht “Like a Ragdoll”

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/orcas-yacht-ragdoll.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Getty / Futurism\</em\>*

## Dun Dun...

A pod of orcas — or killer whales, if you will — ganged up on an unsuspecting yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, toyed with the vessel, and completely stripped it of its rudders.

The close encounter marks only the latest in a string of seemingly calculated orca attacks on human vessels off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. [According to *Insider*](<https://news.yahoo.com/orcas-threw-yacht-around-rag-105525147.html>), there have been 20 incidents in the Strait in the past month alone.

In decidedly "Jaws"-esque fashion, Iain Hamilton, a British sailor captaining the yacht, recalled that he first noticed a fin, and then… a large bump.

"\[I\] looked around and there was a very large whale pushing along the back of the boat, trying to bite the rudder," Hamilton [told *BBC Radio 4*](<https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fsb7c9>) on Monday.

To make matters worse, the big orca was not acting alone and was joined by four other smaller orcas.

Eventually, the orcas removed not one, but *both* of the yacht's rudders, leaving Hamilton without a means of steering it.

"The whales were in charge of the boat," he described, adding that they "pushed us around like a ragdoll."

## Just Playin'

Hamilton's assessment was that luckily for those onboard, the orcas apparently only wanted to mess around.

"The sense was it wasn't aggressive," he told *BBC Radio 4*, "it was almost playful."

Hamilton added that because of their sheer strength and size, the orcas could've easily broken the boat if they wanted to. But instead, they simply wanted to "play with the rudder."

That sounds par for the course for orcas, who are known to [cruelly toy with their prey](<https://youtu.be/bk1VdQxeTn4>) before killing them.

Another sailor aboard the yacht [told *LiveScience*](<https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-rip-rudder-off-boat-and-follow-it-all-the-way-to-port-in-1st-known-attack-of-its-kind>) that the orcas kept up their assault for over an hour.

When the Spanish coastguard finally began to tug the vessel back to shore, the sailor observed that the orcas even followed them most of the way back.

## Getting Revenge

As [*LiveScience* reported](<https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why>) last month, a recent [study](<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12947>) in the journal *Marine Mammal Science* found an uptick in aggressive orca encounters since at least 2020, which only recently escalated to [actually sinking boats](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/killer-whales-attack-boats>).

"In more than 500 interaction events recorded since 2020 there are three sunken ships," co-author Alfredo López Fernandez, a biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, told *LiveScience* last month.

In other words**,** Hamilton's brush with the killer whales may soon only be one of many. Scientists believe the behavior originated with a female orca nicknamed White Gladis, who was traumatized by an encounter with a human sailboat and began to lash out at other ships. The theory goes that other adult orcas learned from her behavior, and are teaching it to their pods.

For now, the orca attacks appear limited to around the Iberian coast, but it remains unclear if the behavior will become even more aggressive or spread further.

**More on:** *[Experts Say Killer Whales Are Teaching Each Other to Attack Boats](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/killer-whales-attack-boats>)*

## Author
At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/f-w-l.bsky.social>)