The divergences in aspirations between masters and men, combined with the suffering and danger that were the inherent characteristics of Antarctic maritime labour, presented captains and officers with a perpetual problem. In many respects this was the same problem confronted by employers in more regular settings – the question of how labour was to be extracted from a workforce with its own ideas, rules about work, physical limits and capacities for agency. In the sealing industry the lay generally solved this problem, because it generated the internal motivation – ‘self-discipline’ – that drove sealers to work. But wherever workers were paid by the wage, getting the work of Antarctic exploration done was a more complex matter that depended on the tension-laden relationship between workers and masters. This was one of the most fundamental and problematic underpinnings of Antarctic exploration, and yet it has been generally ignored in Antarctic historiography. The main reason for this is because Antarctic sailors are usually seen as intrinsically passive and compliant, the occasional recalcitrant and alcoholic being kept in check by the lash.

This is almost completely a caricature of the sailors who worked on the ships that explored Antarctica. While we would not want to replace it with an equally caricatured view of sailors as always engaged in actively resisting their masters, it was nonetheless the case that the sailors who were the backbone of the Antarctic exploration process brought with them onto the ships well-established methods of self-assertion and a well-justified reputation for resistance.