Shackleton.

“Sir Ernest had just been relieved at the helm, & we bailed together peering under the clew of the lugsail. The Island was now so close that we had to crane our necks to look up at the peak. Inch by inch we staggered & lurched drunkenly past the black fangs of the rocky point. The moments became so tense that we feared even to speak—just held our breath or baled for life.

“By [nightfall] we knew we were safe. High, almost overhead it seemed, the great peak loomed mysteriously through the darkness. Right abeam long pale fingers from the surf reached back threateningly for us, but they held no terrors then; every moment the clamorous roar of the surf on the rocky point became more faint with distance on the lee quarter.”

— Frank Worsley

“It was an infernal, awe-inspiring scene. The boat and all in her seemed doomed. What Worsley now did was this. The boat was under a reefed job on the mainmast. He got it shifted right forward. He then set a reefed lug on the mainmast, and the mizzen. The idea was to exploit every ounce of the boat’s capacity to gripe to windward. In the screaming wind, it took an hour to change the sails, while the roar of the surf against the shore grew closer.

“A larger craft would by now have been doomed, but Worsley, even in the screaming of the hurricane, knew the strength of what he had. Because the James Caird was so low in the water, the wind could get no purchase on her sides. The scraps of sail it was safe to set could do their work.

“Slowly, the boat began to claw offshore…

“Meeting each wave was like striking a stone wall…As the seams opened and closed with every wave, the James Caird started to fill with water…incessantly bailing and pumping, thirst almost forgotten, six men were fighting for their lives.”

— Roland Huntford, Shackleton

“I said to myself: What a pity. We have made this great boat journey and nobody will ever know. We might just as well have foundered immediately after leaving Elephant Island. Then I thought how annoying it was that my precious diary, which I had been at such pains to preserve, should be lost too. I don’t think that any of us were conscious of actual fear of death. I know that I did have, however, a very disagreeable, cold sort of feeling, quite different from the physical chill that I suffered. It was a sort of mental coldness. I felt, too, a sharp resentment that we should all be going in such a way, and in sight of our goal.”

— Frank Worsley

“Heavy westerly swell.
Very bad lumpy sea.
Stood off for night; wind increasing…”

— Frank Worsley

Various views on South Georgia:

“…savage and horrible… the very sides and craggy summits of the lofty Mountains were cased with snow and ice, but the quantity which lay in the Vallies is incredible.”

— James Cook, 1776

“This was inspired by the north coast. The south coast was even more savage and desolate.”

— Roland Huntford, Shackleton

“…only the steep rocks on which snow and ice cannot lie show a dark colour…An extremely heavy surf…thundered against the cliffs…To wait…for better weather…to survey the land, frozen and, so to say, dead as it was, seemed…useless…”

— Fabian Gottlieb Thaddeus von Bellingshausen, 1819

“Every sailor knows that more ships have been wrecked making a landfall than ever were lost out to sea. Heading for an imperfectly known coast, Worsley and Shackleton were now both considerably more worried about the last few miles than they had been the whole long way from Elephant Island.”

— Roland Huntford, Shackleton

“There, right ahead through a rift in the flying scud our glad but salt-rimmed eyes saw a towering black crag with a lacework of snow around its flank. One glimpse, and it was hidden again. We looked at each other with cheerful foolish grins. The thoughts uppermost were ‘We’ve done it.'”

— Frank Worsley

“I looked after dawn in vain for the sun & felt anxious, for my navigation had, perforce, been so extraordinarily crude that we might make a bad landfall. The sky was overcast & the weather misty and foggy…Heavy cross swells from N. & W. & a heavy confused lumpy sea did not make matters pleasant, but we felt happy & excited for we were ‘making the land’ & even hoped by dark to be on good solid earth once more & to have beautiful clear water gurgling down our parched throats.”

— Frank Worsley

“It was misty, the boat was jumping like a flea, shipping seas fore and aft and there was no “limb” to the sun so I had to observe the centre by guesswork. Astronomically, the limb is the edge of sun or moon. If blurred by cloud or fog it cannot be accurately “brought down” to the horizon. The centre is the spot required, so when the limb is too blurred you bring the centre of the bright spot behind the clouds down to the horizon. By practice and taking a series of “sights” you can obtain an average that has no bigger error than one minute of arc.”

— Frank Worsley