That evening a sort of crude reception was held in what Worsley described as a “large room, full of captains and mates and sailors, and hazy with tobacco smoke.” Four white-haired, veteran Norwegian skippers came forward. Their spokesman, speaking in Norse with Sørlle translating, said that they had sailed the Antarctic seas for forty years, and that they wanted to shake the hands of the men who could bring an open 22-foot boat from Elephant Island through the Drake Passage to South Georgia.
