“This is not a pleasant job. We have to dig a hole down through the coal while the beams and the timbers groan and crack all around us like pistol shots. The darkness is almost complete, and we mess about in the wet with half-frozen hands and try to keep the coal from slipping back into the bilges. The men on deck pour buckets of boiling water from the galley down the pipe as well prod and hammer from below, and at last we get the pipe clear, cover up the bilges to keep the coal out, and rush on deck, very thankful to find ourselves safe again in the open air.”

— Frank Worsley, quoted in South