“[McNeish was] neither sweet-tempered nor tolerant and his Scots voice could rasp like frayed wire cable. He had no use whatever for a gangling first-tripper who spoke, as he expressed it, “like a pimp at a whore’s tea-party”… I loved him not… Yet in the course of [a] few weeks I discovered [McNeish] to be one of the most courageous and skilfil men I have ever met. My enthusiastic loathing of him gave way to respect. Finally… I found in place of a tormentor a good shipmate with a shrewd wit and a power of describing men and high adventure that was admirable.”

— Gerald Bowman, Men of Antarctica, quoted in Roland Huntford, Shackleton