I've been reading William Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine in my free time. His explanations of physics are... arcane and amusing, to put it mildly. He even explains constructive interference:
"We are not to suppose, from this calculation [that no single wave is over six feet high], that no wave of the sea can rise more than six feet above its natural level in open and deep water; for some immensely higher than these are formed in violent tempests, in the great seas. These, however, are not to be accounted waves in their natural state; but they are single waves composed of many others: for in these wide plains of water, when one wave is raised by the wind, and would elevate itself up to the exact heighth of six feet, and no more, the motion of the water is so great, and the succession of the waves so quick, that during the time wherein this rises, it receives into it several other waves, each of which would have been of the same heighth with itself. These accordingly run into the first wave, one after another as it rises: by this means its rise is continued much longer than it would naturally have been, and it becomes accumulated to an enormous size. A number of these complicated waves arising together, and being continued in a long succession by the duration of the storm, make the waves so dangerous to shipping, which the lailors, in their phrase, call mountains high."
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