“A wretched day. Blowing a blizzard—wind and snow. Unable to move. We are very much stuck in the pack. There is ice all round us, even under the stern, and no open water alongside the ship at all, as there usually is, but as the temperature is high, 29deg, there is no fear at present of our getting frozen in.”

“Sir Ernest seems to know just what the ice is going to do every time and so far he has been infallible. He is ready to attempt anything and yet if the ship gets into a position involving the remotest possibility of peril, he is unremitting in his attention to her navigation until she is removed from every vestige of prospective danger.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees, 20 January 1915