Kennelling

Close quarters for man and beast en route.

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Puttin’ on ‘The Ritz’

Belowdecks, converted to winter quarters.

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Winter Quarters

The abandonment of the attack was a great disappointment to all hands. The men had worked long hours without thought of rest, and they deserved success. But the task was beyond our powers. I had not abandoned hope of getting clear, but was counting now on the possibility of having to spend a winter in the inhospitable arms of the pack. The sun, which had been above the horizon for two months, set at midnight on the 17th, and, although it would not disappear until April, its slanting rays warned us of the approach of winter.

— Ernest Shackleton, South

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It is now seven weeks…

“It is now seven weeks since we first entered the pack ice & since then it has been almost an incessant battle. It is gratifying to feel we are only 80 miles from… Vahsel Bay. We are all keen to reach it as the monotony is telling on some of us.”

— Frank Hurley

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Ice cliffs, Coats Land

[The ice cliffs of Coats Land ("the barrier"), Antarctica, eastern edge of the Weddell Sea. Named by William S. Bruce, Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, 1902.]

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On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
  Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
  That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
  Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
  When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
  He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats, 1816

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A glow of crimson and gold

[George Marston, illustration of the Antarctic midnight sun from our last expedition, the Nimrod, 1907-09]

An examination of the horizon disclosed considerable breaks in the vast circle of pack-ice, interspersed with bergs of different sizes. Leads could be traced in various directions, but I looked in vain for an indication of open water. The sun did not set that night, and as it was concealed behind a bank of clouds we had a glow of crimson and gold to the southward, with delicate pale green reflections in the water of the lanes to the southeast.

— Ernest Shackleton, 30 December 1914, South

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