Erebus: The Story of a Ship

by Michael Palin

Aboriginal inhabitants knew the island, and had done for a thousand years or more. It was now redundant. As the convicts were brought in, the indigenous population was booted out.

when now it seems almost everywhere to be shrinking.

As I picture the sailors capering about, dancing waltzes and eightsome reels, the only human beings in the whole southern end of the earth, it seems a stunningly surreal image: ice, so often portrayed as a grim adversary, transformed briefly into a shining white dance-floor.

disgorge

Before the expedition left, a suit of clothes had been found for each of them.

Never again in the annals of the sea would a ship, under sail alone, come close to matching what she and Terror had achieved.