As chance would have it, one of the books I read on the family holiday was Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, his account of a trip to Europe in 1867. Like us, Twain travelled to France by ship. And like us, he experienced a rough voyage, his indifference to which led him to claim: "If there is one thing that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seasick."
Twain was right, I can confirm. Not that anyone was sick on our first day at sea: the outbound leg was calm and uneventful. But as we approached the Breton port of Roscoff for the return journey, and the weather forecast on the car radio predicted westerly winds "gusting to gale force", we knew we were in for a lively night. My wife groaned, something she would be doing regularly and with more feeling once we were aboard the ferry.
No more than Twain, I wasn't confident of my own sailing abilities beforehand. But sea-sickness is a gregarious travelling companion and tends to introduce itself at the earliest opportunity. After the first few lurches of the boat, which turned many passengers pale green, I realised that the feeling in my stomach was nothing worse than smugness. It grew with every swell. Soon I was having to restrain myself from using nautical terms like "fore" and "aft" in conversation, and not always succeeding.
"Avast, shipmates!" I told my older children after they described once too often how their stomachs felt.
I wouldn't go so far as Twain in claiming to have experienced "joy" at the other passengers' misery. He was a sceptic travelling with religious puritans - their ultimate destination was the Holy Land - and he probably thought suffering would be good for them. My own brand of smugness was suffused with pity for the landlubbers so ill-suited to life at sea: none more unfortunate than my wife, who in retiring to her cabin for the night had to bring the baby with her. Breast-fed children are very inconsiderate, demanding to be nursed whether you're sick or not.
My task was to distract our other kids, somehow, from their nausea. What they needed, I realised, was a rollicking session in the play-room, where the lurches of the ship would surely only add to the fun. They lasted a full two minutes there before emerging to declare in stereo that they now felt even sicker. Knowing how vulnerable children are to auto-suggestion, I urged them to stop saying they felt sick because that would make them sick. And in fairness to Patrick (6), he stopped saying it immediately, illustrating his point instead by throwing up on my shoes.
There was nothing for it after that but to pack them off to bed and catch up with some reading. Another book I brought on the trip was John Gribbin's brilliant Science: A History, and I was delighted to discover that even this had evidence of the thrill that landsmen experience in finding they can sail.
The great astronomer Edmund Halley is unusual among scientists in that he was once given actual command of a ship for an expedition to investigate variations in terrestrial magnetism. This so outraged his first lieutenant, a career naval officer, that the latter eventually took to his cabin in protest, hoping the scientist would make a mess of sailing the vessel alone. Instead, Halley thrived in the role, to the extent that when he returned to England, an appalled fellow astronomer complained that he "now talks, swears and drinks brandy like a sea captain".
Damn it to hell, I thought, as our ferry ploughed northwards to Cork, I feel like a drink. So I went to the bar and later, brandy in hand, wondered out on deck (starboard) to survey the swell. A man clung to the rail beside me, apparently enjoying the air. But when I remarked cheerfully that the night was "fresh", he gave me a grim, watery look. I left him to his misery and strolled back inside, even smugger.
Early next morning, Patrick declared he felt better. Then he drank some water and said that, on second thoughts, he felt sick again. I got my shoes out of the way just in time, and took the baby, the only other member of the family who wasn't groaning, off to breakfast. The self-service cafe was full, but not with diners. The most popular items on the menu were open paper bags, which many children held on standby at their parents' urging. We opted for the sparsely populated waiter restaurant instead, where my infant son agreed with the suggestion that we might manage a full Irish between us.
Far from being sick, he was in flying form. At 16 months and still getting the hang of walking, he seemed not to notice the movement of the ship. It's the movement of the earth he has problems with. Maybe the competing motions cancelled each other out, I thought, or maybe he was a sailor too. "Ahoy there, matey!" I quipped. "Har!" he replied (more or less). Then we toasted each other with ship's grog (actually orange juice) and tucked into a hearty breakfast, one of the many pleasures of life on the ocean wave.