Of his different plans, this and his published programme of proceeding eastwards and making an attempt to penetrate the pack ice as near to Enderby Land as possible, and from there to push south, were the only two which I could consider.
As to the first, for the carrying out of this I should require a large quantity of stores, sledging equipment and good winter clothing. As before stated, these were at Cape Town, and unless I could obtain them in South Georgia this scheme must fall through.
Sir Ernest’s last message home had been that all was well with the ship and the expedition, and he had never had a chance to announce publicly the final situation. Mr. Rowett might therefore wonder at any change of plan occurring after his death. On this score, however, I was not greatly concerned, for I felt that in anything I should undertake I would have his support and carry his trust.
With regard to the original published programme, I realized that to enter an area which had hitherto proved impenetrable to every ship which had made the attempt, would with the Quest be a hazardous undertaking even under the most favourable circumstances. Any ship entering heavy pack ice runs a risk of being beset and frozen in, and when that has occurred her fate lies absolutely with the gods. Should the ship be crushed, the chances of escape from the area in which we should be working could only be regarded as remote, for even if we succeeded in escaping from the pack with our boats, the nearest point we could make for would be Cape Town, a distance of over two thousand miles, through stormy seas, dependent for water supply upon what we could collect in the way of rain.
Any fool can push a ship into the ice and lose her—my job was to bring her back again.
On careful weighing of the two alternatives the Graham Land proposition appealed to me more strongly, for it offered the prospect of good work; and in case of accident we should be within measurable reach of whalers, which in their search for whales penetrate deeply amongst the islands of the Palmer Archipelago.
Though I was faced with an innumerable number of smaller considerations, the above represents roughly the situation at the time.
Therefore with these points of view in mind before coming to any decision at all, I gave instructions to Kerr to examine thoroughly and overhaul the engines and boilers and report to me his considered opinion. This he did. The work done at Rio had been good and sound, and he considered the condition of the engines to be fit for proceeding. The boiler presented a difficult problem. On looking up the record of the Quest (or the Foca I as she was previously named) in the Norwegian Veritas, I discovered that though the ship was comparatively new, the boiler had been built in 1890, and was thus thirty-one years old.
Kerr made an examination from inside, and I had also the second opinion, by courtesy of Captain Jacobsen, of the chief engineer of the Professor Gruvel.
The report showed that the condition was not reparable, but at the same time was not likely to develop further and become serious.