I woke up to the creaks and groans of the cabin this first morning on the ship, the sound of each roll straining everything around me. My backpack, which was propped against the wall, falls with a thump. My room-mate’s ipad clatters onto the floor. Just as predicted the night before, the ocean swell was beginning to act with more strength. Our ship the Ushuaia is bobbing around on these seas like a cork. Helplessly so when confronted with the enormity of these oceans. We’re within the Drake passage. The section of open water between Cape horn (the southern most tip of South America) and the the northern tip of the Antarctica peninsula. It will take us two days to cross. It’s a section of water from which you can turn east or west, and then sail uninterrupted around the globe as many times as you want. Or perhaps I should say, as many times as your madness will desire. Here, the wind will never cease, and the oceans never have time to be benign. There is no land to dull the ferocity of the elements.

Moving out of my cabin, the scene had a certain comedy. I decided not to shower. Not yet accustomed to the ships motion, I didn’t like the idea of tumbling nakedly into injury. It would be an embarrassed way to have to call upon the ships no nonsense South African doctor. So instead, straight out of bed I left the cabin. Still half asleep and into the world of men with outstretched arms to reach the safety of handrails. Ungainly limbs; tiny baby steps interspersed with running gaits. Learning to walk again, even if it’s the motion of our surroundings, and not our own bodies that has led to this confusion. This was all magnified further around the breakfast buffet, as we filled cups of coffee or added small piles of bacon and eggs to plates. It was just the staff that had more control. Pacing through and setting tables with comparative ease, and a demonstration that anything can be learnt (or as someone else suggested: better masked with the aid of more expensive medication). And in the hidden sections of the ship the cooks would be doing wonders to create this buffet. It’s one that wouldn’t be out of place in a business hotel: cereals, fresh fruits, streaky bacon, cold meats, and more types of juices than you could wish for. It’s only the baked beans that I’ve recently been craving that are missing. After six months away from home, it’s the simplest foods that you start to miss the most.

In the Ushuaia’s lounge, it’s a quiet scene. Fellow passengers snoozing, nursing hot drinks, or simply gazing out to the grey clouds and mist. I don’t feel like talking much either. But I comfort myself that I do not have to be outside on deck. I do not have to work against the wind and the waves. Like many before me, I put faith in this ship that has seen perhaps hundreds of crossings to Antarctica. And I have the luxury or being able to relax, to write, to listen to lectures, or to chat over bottomless cups of coffee. Visibility is low right now. Occasionally the sky is lit up to a brighter shade of grey by a lightning strike. I talk to the exhibition leader and he tells me that conditions are rougher than average. The frequency of the waves is causing the ship to roll often and deeply. Our movements in the ship are subject to a tilt of about 35 degrees to the left and right. It’s no wonder that that bodies are sluggish. Just sitting still is enough to go through 70 degrees of motion every couple of seconds. And it’s worth notice that it could have felt much worse. Our entry into the passage was delayed by a few hours in the early hours. We hid for a time, in the relative shelter of Cape Horn. 12 meter waves had been sweeping the ocean.

I’d begun to read as we rocked. The first hand accounts from the Antarctica pioneers of the heroic age. I’m British, and naturally it’s the stories of Shackleton’s and Scott’s voyages that sit at the top of my pile of books. Apsley Cherry-Garrad, one of the party of Scott’s ultimately ill-fated expedition, has written perhaps the most comprehensive account of early life on the most unforgiven of continents, aptly titled The Worst Journey In the World (Antarctica 1910 – 1913). It’s always puts it into perspective when you know that someone else had a worse time of things. And for this, I can thank Cherry-Garrad. It was with a crew of 60 that he took to the ship the Terra Firma. Their’s was a wooden sailing ship, reinforced to break through the ice on the journey south – yet it was a ship that leaked considerably. He wrote that all hands had to be roused daily before 6am to pump water. This remained a constant task, alongside the hard work of shifting coal, hauling ropes, and detailed scientific observations. And all of these were never carried out in conditions far from the horizontal. Through high seas the ship rolled a constant 50 degrees each way, and sometimes more. In comparison, watching the horizon more gently disappear above and below the window from the comfort of a sofa felt a bearable experience.

It was the same for Shakleton’s most iconic voyage in the ship the Endurance, documented in his biographical account ‘South’ and numerous authors since – all captivated by his mad tale of survival against the elements. His was another wooden boat that was buffeted relentlessly on the high seas, built as it was to withstand Antarctic waters, rather than for smooth sailing on the great oceans. And it was a ship that was put to the task. In attempts to negotiate the heavy pack ice in the most southern of seas on the way to the continents edge, the ship became frozen fast within the ice shelf. For nine months they lived like this. Good old British sing songs in -30° celsius temperatures to raise the spirits, hockey games and dog racing on the snow, catching hapless penguins and seals to supplement the diet. But eventually, the ship was subjected to a pressure ridge, millions of tones of force closing in like a vice. The ship was buckled, and sunk, leaving a crew stranded with no hope of the comforts that I was enjoying. I’ll come back to this epic tale of survival later.

On Journey was to be shorter (and given the numerous safety briefings, much safer). A 10 day round trip from the port city of Ushuaia – after which the ship is named – in Argentina, which would skirt some of the rugged and icy landscape of the Antarctic peninsula. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I’d been promised snow, glaciers, penguins, and an all round unforgettable experience. But at this point in time, with most of the Drake’s passage still to cross, I simple settled a little lower into the sofa. We had a further few hundred miles of rough seas ahead.