Sea-Sickness by W. Clark Russell — Read

Many will remember the terrible description of Mr. Aaron Bang's pangs of sea-sickness in "Tom Cringle. " It is fortunate that everybody whilst suffering from nausea is not so demonstrative as the West Indian planter. The horrors of a rough passage between Calais and Dover would be fearfully increased were the prostrate passengers to bewail amid their throes the wines and dishes which old Neptune exacts from them. And yet one has only to consider what kind of heaving sea it was that set the West Indian howling for brandy-and-water to commiserate the poor old epicure's noisy anguish. Sailors will appreciate the affect upon a passenger's stomach of a heavy gale of wind dropping as if by magic and leaving the sailing vessel -- for Tom Cringle flourished before the days of steam -- rolling upon a tremendous swell. A steamer whose screw or paddles are revolving and driving the hull through the water will not, amidst the heaviest sea, give you the same sensation you get from a vessel tumbling about on a strong, fine-weather swell, not a breath of air to steady her or give her way. The steamer in a measure escapes the worst of the seas by sliding out of them; her bows are lifting clear of the washing coil whilst her lee sponsons are buried, and she half jumps the intervening hollow as her paddles thrust her from the summit of the surge. Often have I watched this behaviour in swift steamers, and seen them take a bow or beam sea as a horse takes a hurdle.

But the motion of a vessel becalmed amid a heavy swell is one of the most uncomfortable of all sea-experiences. Let the merest relic of nausea linger in the human breast, and this movement shall make a full-blown anguish of it. I have heard of stewards, men who have made a dozen voyages round the world -- whose stomachs were as immovable in a gale of wind as the ship's figurehead; -- I have heard of such men, I say, in a heavy breathless swell, tumbling down among their dishes too sick to stand, rolling about among the crockery and echoing with their groans the spasmodic gurgling of the water as it sobbed in the scupper-holes or washed up full, green, and sickening over the glass of the scuttles or the cabin windows.