The behavior of disturbances propagating with supercritical speed ahead of a plate in a channel is analyzed on the basis of the experimental results obtained by the authors and data taken from the literature. In particular, the transition from smooth to breaking waves has been found to occur at higher propagation speeds than follows from the first approximation of shallow water theory. It has also been found that for waves widely encountered in practice the value of the propagation speed agrees well with the limiting propagation speed of solitary waves obtained on the basis of the complete equations of potential fluid flow.