“The Mayflower sped across the white-tipped waves once the voyage was under way, and the passengers were quickly afflicted with seasickness. The crew took great delight in the sufferings of the landlubbers and tormented them mercilessly. "There is an insolent and very profane young man, Bradford wrote, "who was always harrassing the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with greivous execrations." He even laughed that he hoped to 'throw half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.'
The Puritans believe a just God punished the young sailor for his cruelty when, halfway through the voyage, 'it pleased God...to smite the young man with a greivous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner." He was the first to be thrown overboard.”
― Tony Williams, The Pox and the Covenant: Mather, Franklin, and the Epidemic That Changed America's Destiny

“Unable to sleep for the third night in a row, he continued to dwell obsessively on the circumstances of the ship's sinking. He could not get the creature out of his mind.”
― Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex