“The last day of 1915… tomorrow 1916 begins: I wonder what it will bring forth for us. This time last year we prophesied that just now we would be well across the Continent.”
— Alexander Macklin

“New Year’s Eve, the second in the pack & in much the same latitude. Few people are having a stranger one…”
— Reginald James

“New Year’s Eve and all well but it is snowing intermittently, foggy and overcast. Nothing doing.”
— Thomas Orde-Lees

“Hogmany & a bitter one too, being adrift on the ice instead of enjoying the pleasures of life like most people. But as the saying is, there must be some fools in this world.”
— Chippy McNeish

“Many sweet memories crowd on me as I lay in my bag, meditating the last day of the year. Home, faces, and our present position that one cannot altogether regard as sweet. Drifting about on the ice floe, 189 miles from the nearest known land. Still to apply an old sledging motto, ‘It might be much worse.’ Inside the tents all are comfortable. Sir Ernest is thinking and solving magic squares. We have plenty of food, and with the coming warm season and subsequent dissipation of the ice, are able to greet with cheery aspect the New Year 1916! New Year resolutions. We have none to make as there is nothing to make them for, unless it be to resolve to keep our hoosh pots cleaner — and faces too!”
— Frank Hurley

“The last day of the old year: May the new one bring us good fortune, a safe deliverance from this anxious time & all good things to those we love so far away.”
— Ernest Shackleton