The metaphorical constructions used by Shakespeare to portray political chaos in his History Plays depict England as a sick and mutilated kingdom, as a threatening and nurturing mother or as an unattended garden. This paper shows how Shakespeare also uses metaphors related to a dangerous sea or a violent storm in order to present political and also emotional confusion. At the same time, we also point out how such images were already used by Latin authors such as Horace, Ovid or Seneca. Tears in Shakespeare turn into "incessant showers" (Henry VI III I, iv, 145), tempests, storms and floods that "drown the world" (Richard III, II, ii, 70); the state is portrayed as a drifting ship sailed by a monarch who fights against a dangerous, frightening and devastating tempest; England is also compared to a vast sea that the king, sometimes also described as a ship, cannot ply. Political and personal decline will follow treason, political confrontations, usurpation, ambition and ruling incompetence. The image of the ruler and the state being swallowed, engulfed and devoured by the "fatal bowels of the deep" (Richard III, III, iv, 101) figuratively represents such decay.