“Very slow progress, having re-entered fields of enormous floes. Many over a square mile in area, and with very little open water. All day we have been utilising the ship as a battering-ram. Backing and then full speed ahead at the barring floes. We admire our sturdy little ship which seems to take a delight in combating our common enemy, shattering the floes in grand style. When the ship comes in contact with the ice, she stops dead, shivering from truck to kelson; then almost immediately a long crack starts from our bows into which we steam, and like a wedge, slowly force the crack sufficiently to enable a passage to be made; and so it has been all day, and I suppose shall be for many days to come. Secure an Emperor Penguin for the larder.”

— Frank Hurley, Diaries