He and Macklin were my right and left bowers as stroke-oars throughout.  McLeod and Cheetham were two good sailors and oars, the former a typical old deep-sea salt and growler, the latter a pirate to his finger-tips.  In the height of the gale that night Cheetham was buying matches from me for bottles of champagne, one bottle per match (too cheap; I should have charged him two bottles).  The champagne is to be paid when he opens his pub in Hull and I am able to call that way....  We had now had one hundred and eight hours of toil, tumbling, freezing, and soaking, with little or no sleep.  I think Sir Ernest, Wild, Greenstreet, and I could say that we had no sleep at all.  Although it was sixteen months since we had been in a rough sea, only four men were actually seasick, but several others were off colour.

“The temperature was 20° below freezing-point; fortunately, we were spared the bitterly low temperature of the previous night.  Greenstreet’s right foot got badly frost-bitten, but Lees restored it by holding it in his sweater against his stomach.  Other men had minor frost-bites, due principally to the fact that their clothes were soaked through with salt water....  We were close to the land as the morning approached, but could see nothing of it through the snow and spindrift.  My eyes began to fail me.  Constant peering to windward, watching for seas to strike us, appeared to have given me a cold in the eyes.  I could not see or judge distance properly, and found myself falling asleep momentarily at the tiller.  At 3 a.m.  Greenstreet relieved me there.  I was so cramped from long hours, cold, and wet, in the constrained position one was forced to assume on top of the gear and stores at the tiller, that the other men had to pull me amidships and straighten me out like a jack-knife, first rubbing my thighs, groin, and stomach.

“At daylight we found ourselves close alongside the land, but the weather was so thick that we could not see where to make for a landing.  Having taken the tiller again after an hour’s rest under the shelter (save the mark!) of the dripping tent, I ran the ‘Dudley Docker’ off before the gale, following the coast around to the north.  This course for the first hour was fairly risky, the heavy sea before which we were running threatening to swamp the boat, but by 8 a.m. we had obtained a slight lee from the land.  Then I was able to keep her very close in, along a glacier front, with the object of picking up lumps of fresh-water ice as we sailed through them.  Our thirst was intense.  We soon had some ice aboard, and for the next hour and a half we sucked and chewed fragments of ice with greedy relish.

“All this time we were coasting along beneath towering rocky cliffs and sheer glacier-faces, which offered not the slightest possibility of landing anywhere.  At 9.30 a.m. we spied a narrow, rocky beach at the base of some very high crags and cliff, and made for it.  To our joy, we sighted the ‘James Caird’ and the ‘Stancomb Wills’ sailing into the same haven just ahead of us.  We were so delighted that we gave three cheers, which were not heard aboard the other boats owing to the roar of the surf.  However, we soon joined them and were able to exchange experiences on the beach.”