I watched a video that was on the front page today of a guy sailing through twenty foot seas on a cargo ship of some sort. I am wondering if there are any good sources on what it was like for naval or merchant vessels during the era of wooden sailing ships to go through massive ocean storms. It's hard to believe the scale of the storms and waves even seeing them in comparison to large tankers. I can't imagine what it would have been like on a smaller wooden ship.

Edit: Here is a link to the aforementioned video if anyone was curious http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1yppe6/i_work_at_sea_this_is_a_video_of_a_storm_we_were/