Quotes from Alfred Lansing

It connects the hazardous Drake Passage with the waters of the Weddell Sea—and it is a treacherous place.

The largest items needed for the expedition were the ships that would carry the two parties to the Antarctic.

When she had been abandoned twenty-five days before, it had seemed that she would sink at any moment.

precious little had been learned about conditions in these unfrequented waters.

a ship that Christensen had ordered built to carry polar-bear hunting parties to the Arctic

and because of the shortage of blubber for fuel to melt ice into water

The animal—a sea leopard—sprang out of the water and came after him

The final selling price of $67,000 was less than Christensen had paid to have the ship built

The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck.

It was served at breakfast, along with five ounces of seal steak.

By two-thirty, the Caird was a little more than 3 miles off the coast

She was to carry the Ross Sea party, under the command of Lieutenant Aeneas Mackintosh, who had served aboard the Nimrod on Shackleton's 1907–1909 expedition.

The whole complexion of things was suddenly changed. There could be no thought of a landing, not here at least

It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped.

The sea leopard's jawbone, which measured nearly 9 inches across

Yet now that the journey was done, sanctuary was ironically denied them.

Crean hurriedly took over the helm from Worsley who spread the chart out so that he and Shackleton might study

Charles Darwin, on first seeing these waves breaking on Tierra del Fuego in 1833, wrote in his diary:

and wait for daylight.

Dudley Docker and the Stancomb Wills were cutters—heavy, square-sterned boats of solid oak.

The sight . . . is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril and shipwreck.

They were 21 feet 9 inches long, with a 6-foot-2-inch beam, and they had three seats

They also mounted stubby masts to which a sail could be secured;

It had been very nearly a year since they had last been in contact with civilization