Go ahead and laugh - soon you'll have your share of your own
moments to share with us and smile about.
If you use the external camera and watch some ships in really nasty weather, you will actually see them taking damage. Some will start to list sometimes, or get low by the bow or stern, or slow down to a crawl. Even, fires will break out on their own!
Of course, then you'll also see some little coastie, or a narrow beamed small warship, plowing along beam-on to monstrous waves, and think, what the... Since any ship not taking such waves bow on would surely be in BIG trouble.
There's a show on the Discovery channel here, "Deadliest Catch" that's been running for a fair number of years now. It follows the Alaskan crab fisheries in the Bering Sea. The various crab species are fished in the late fall, winter and early spring months, so the weather is, predicably, often unbelievably bad. Watching 90ft to 150ft ships, in seas that may reach 40ft (or one rogue wave caught on tape that had to be 60ft or more - rolled one of the ships clean onto her side, busted the captains ribs, shut off the engines when they lost oil pressure - she righted herself though and they got back without aid). Anyhow, it makes you appreciate how important a skilled helmsman is in heavy seas, and how much the sea can dictate what direction you WILL be steaming in for awhile. That aspect of sea conditons and navigation is not modeled in SHIII or SHIV.
I was once in the NE Pacific in a 210ft ship in 35-40ft seas - I cannot imagine hanging out in a storm on a u-boat conning tower - that must almost qualify as insane by some standards I'd suppose.
P.S. google for a web site with the key words "Heavy Seas" - amazing images!
examples:
