Shackleton.

“Day passes with very little or nothing to relieve the monotony. We take constitutionals round and round the floe but no one can go further as we are to all intents and purposes on an island. There is practically nothing fresh to read and nothing to talk about, all topics being absolutely exhausted… I never know what day of the week it is except when it is Sunday as we have Adelie liver and bacon for lunch and it is the great meal of the week and soon I shall not be able to know Sunday as our bacon will soon be finished. The pack around looks very much as it did four or five months ago and with the low temperature we have been getting at night, i.e., zero and below, the open patches of water get covered with young ice which is neither fit to go over nor would allow the passage of the boats.”

— Lionel Greenstreet

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1834

[…]

And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!

At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name.

It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.’

‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?’—With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.

[…]

Full text.

“It is beginning to be an anxious time for us, for so far there is not much sign of any opening of the floe, and the broken mushy stuff is quite un-navigable for our boats. If we cannot get away very soon our position will be a very serious one, for if it comes to travelling in the autumn to Paulet by sledge, where will we get food for the dogs and food for ourselves, supposing the depot at Paulet fails us? The seals will have disappeared for the winter, and we may have to undergo some of the trials of Greely.”

— Alexander Macklin

“The present shortage of food is due simply and solely from the Boss refusing to get seals when they were to be had and even refusing to let Orde-Lees go out and look for them… His sublime optimism all the way thro being to my mind absolute foolishness. Everything right away thro was going to turn out all right and no notice was taken of things possibly turning out otherwise and here we are.”

— Lionel Greenstreet

“[The winds] tear and haul at our flimsy tent as though they would burst it to tatters. It rattles, flaps, and trembles incessantly… So thin is the material that the smoke from our pipes and cigarettes eddies, swirls and sways about with every gust of the wind outside.”

— Frank Worsley

“Shackleton, who was rather an amazing man in the way he had made himself au fait with all the latest developments… and who had [also] collected all the latest information as regards scurvy, was very enthusiastic [about] the idea of the “vitamin.” During our discussions on the Endurance, Shackleton used to say to me, surely you have here the perfect explanation for all that has been puzzling you?”
— Alexander Macklin

“The camp on the ice floe… was probably the only place in the world where the vitamin theory, as it were, had become official orthodoxy.”
— Roland Huntford, Shackleton

“Someone asked why seals and penguins did not get scurvy and suggested that as they did not and humans did there must be something in their make up which prevented it. This gave us the idea that if we ate all of the seal and the penguin including the brain, heart, liver, kidney and sweetbread… this might help to avoid scurvy.”
— Alexander Macklin

“I am absolutely obsessed with the idea of escaping… We have been over 4 months on the floe — a time of absolute and utter inutility to anyone. There is absolutely nothing to do but kill time as best one may. Even at home, with theaters and all sorts of amusements, changes of scene and people, four months idleness would be tedious: One can then imagine how much worse it is for us. One looks forward to meals, not for what one will get, but as definite breaks in the day. All around us we have day after day the same unbroken whiteness, unrelieved by anything at all.”

— Alexander Macklin