Ten of the best: cases of seasickness

Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Crossing the Channel on board the Vivid, Lucy Snowe meets pretty, fashionable young Ginevra Fanshawe. Will she be seasick? "Oh, immensely! as soon as ever we get in sight of the sea: I begin, indeed, to feel it already." Ginevra leaves our dauntless heroine to enjoy fantasies of liberation on deck. "Day-dreams are delusions of the demon. Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin."

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Crossing the Atlantic in stormy weather, Charles and Julia are thrown together as almost the only passengers who are not seasick. With everyone else (including Charles's wife) vomiting in their cabins, they have long hours of uninterrupted conversation together, which soon becomes canoodling.

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Sailing to America, aristocratic Olivier is hopeful and exhilarated, but his servant Parrot is having a hard time. "I felt the first big wave break and I saw the great wash of beef and brandy erupt from the dreadful Parrot's gorge . . . I was very pleased to note I was not afraid."

"A Channel Passage" by Rupert Brooke

Surprising that such a honeyed versifier should write this. "Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me, / Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw. / Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy, / The sobs and slobber of a last year's woe." It is hard, says the poet, to choose "'twixt love and nausea".

"Don Juan" by Lord Byron

Byron's amorous hero also finds the longing heart giving way to the rebel stomach, as he sails away from his lover, Julia. "O, Julia! (this curst vessel pitches so) – Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching! (Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)"

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis

As the glorious Narnian ship sails the Southern ocean in search of the lost lords, everyone is invigorated except Eustace, whose complaints about everything on "this ghastly boat" are silenced only when he is crippled by sea-sickness. Lucy cures him with her magic cordial: cue more complaints.

Redburn by Herman Melville

Wellingborough Redburn recalls his first voyage as a sailor, from America to Liverpool. The son of a gentleman, he has a hard time: no sooner is he out of sight of land than he feels "ill at ease about the stomach, as if matters were all topsy-turvy there". As he leans over the side, a fellow mariner offers him a jug of rum. Though he is a teetotaller, Redburn drinks it and is cured.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

One of the most vivid depictions of mal de mer in all fiction. Eilis is sailing to New York to begin a new life and finds herself in a windowless cabin with glamorous Georgina, vomiting helplessly. They share a toilet with two equally ill old dears, who barricade the door to deny them access. The whole ship stinks of sick. Hell, really.

Rites of Passage by William Golding

Edmund Talbot leaves England on a ship bound for Australia and writes a journal addressed to his patron. He records his own seasickness and also the sufferings of a peculiar fellow passenger, the Rev James Colley. Colley is despised by the crew for his religiosity, and further humiliated by his nausea. His eventual fate is grim indeed.

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

Rachel Vinrace travels to South America on a ship belonging to her father. Her fellow passengers include Clarissa Dalloway, who is a martyr to seasickness. White-lipped, she lies in her elegant cabin, surrounded by basins. "Speech was again beyond Clarissa's reach. The wind laid the ship shivering on her side. Pale agonies crossed Mrs Dalloway in waves."