“Temperature —5deg. Still blowing hard from S (force 9). Overcast with drift. Until further orders each member takes an hour’s watch on deck and this is kept up continuously, day and night. The tramp of the watchman along the deck and the hourly relief makes this an unaccustomed disturbance which will take some getting used to.

“The gale continued to rage with undiminished force throughout the night. There wre a few creaks and groans accompanied by some vibration but the ship has not righted herself, still remaining heeled over at an angle of 6deg. This is not very much of a list certainly, but when one feels the ship suddenly lifted up bodily, heeled over 8deg to starboard, and as rapidly thrown over to port again by a solid force, in every way different to the rolling of the open sea, the person who is not filled with a certain amount of apprehension hardly exists. It reminded me exactly of the great earthquake on the Riviera which I experienced as a child: the movements, the sound and the sense of potential disaster were almost precisely the same.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees