“I do not wish to belittle our success with the pride that apes humility. Under Providence we had overcome great difficulties and dangers, and it was pleasant to tell the tale to men who knew those sullen and treacherous southern seas.”
— Ernest Shackleton, South
“One spoke in Norse, and the manager translated. He said that he had been at sea over forty years; that he knew this stormy Southern Ocean intimately… and that never had he heard of such a wonderful feat of daring seamanship as bringing the 22-foot open boat from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and then to crown it, tramping across the ice and snow and rocky heights of the interior, and that he felt it an honour to meet and shake hands with Sir Ernest and his comrades. He finished with a dramatic gesture:
“These are Men!
“Coming from brother seamen, men of our own cloth and members of a great seafaring race like the Norwegians, this was a wonderful tribute.”
— Frank Worsley
“I don’t think I ever appreciated anything as much as that hot bath…it was worth all that we had been through to get it. Before bathing, I saw myself in the mirror…three days before…living under the boat—I had attempted to wash my face with snow but had merely rubbed soot and blubber into a sort of polished paste. The result was awful.”
— Frank Worsley
“Manager say, ‘Who the hell are you?’ and terrible bearded man in the centre of the three say very quietly: ‘My name is Shackleton.’ Me—I turn away and weep. I think manager weep too.”
— Mansell, a Norwegian whaler who observed the encounter
“We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had “suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.” We had seen God in his splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of men.”
— Ernest Shackleton, South
“I suppose our desires were giving wings to our fancies, for we pointed out joyfully various landmarks revealed by the now vagrant light of the moon, whose friendly face was cloud-swept. Our high hopes were soon shattered. Crevasses warned us that we were on another glacier… I knew there was no glacier in Stromness and realized this must be Fortuna Glacier.”
- Ernest Shackleton, South
