“Many of us still regard the trip from Dover to Calais with distaste, but to the seventeenth-century passenger it was a fearsome ordeal. Take, for instance, the attempted crossing of the Queen of England, in 1644, when, after a nine-day gale, the ship was driven into a Dutch port. The unfortunate woman ‘suffered the terrors of almost certain death, tied down in a little bed, with her ladies tied down around her in theirs’. (We may note in passing that the cabins of all ships at this period were mere empty boxes which had to be furnished by the passenger.) When the unfortunate Queen got ashore, it was ‘in a state so strange that it was disagreeable to approach her’, says Mme. de Motteville, who adds a number of details better omitted.” Lewis, W.H., “The Splendid Century”, William Sloan Associates, 1953.

Sounds like a long car trip with family!