Shackleton.

“I am not very susceptible to emotion, but this happy reunion with our comrades, whom we had almost given up as lost and our unhappy release, with the lonely peaks like mute sentinels witnessing our departure has left an indelible impression… Oh! the bliss of once more feeling the motion of the sea, the music of fresh though foreign voices and to sense at last that our anxieties and privations are ended.”

“I lay on the floor wrapped in a blanket meditating and thinking how ineffably more pleasing to be kept awake by the throb of the engines that are hurrying us back to life, than like smoldering logs on Elephant Isle, harking to the stentorious snores that ebbed away our existence.”

— Frank Hurley

“He put his glasses back in their case and turned to me, his face showing more emotion than I had ever known it show before. Crean had joined us, and we were all unable to speak… It sounds trite, but years literally seemed to drop from him as he stood before us.”

— Frank Worsley

“We had the fear that those on board… might not have seen us. The terrible thought crept into our minds that we would then be left on Elephant Island to die, for by this time we could not have held out for more than a few days.”

—Leonard Hussey

“Whilst the party were in [the hut] at lunch Marston & I were without shelling limpets, when I called Marston’s attention to a curious piece of ice on the horizon, which bore a striking resemblance to a ship. Whilst we were so engaged a ship rounded the [point]! We immediately called out Ship O, which was instantly followed by a general exodus of cheering & semi hysterical… inmates.”

— Frank Hurley

“Before there was time for a reply, there was a rush of members tumbling over one another, all mixed up with mugs of seal hoosh, making a simultaneous dive for the door-hole which was immediately torn to shreds so that those members who could not pass through it, on account of the crush, made their exits through the ‘wall,’ or what remained of it.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees

“Wild has it all nicely cut and dried, and has revealed his plans to the favoured few. He and four other members are to go in the Dudley Docker, and will make their way carefully along under the lee of the land from island to island of the South Shetlands… until they reach Deception Island about 150 miles away to our S.W.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees