wife telling her that his men were a ‘real good lot of fellows’ and it was a ‘treat’ to be with them. On 16 January 1915, the shore party landed at McMurdo Sound, where Mackintosh established a base camp at Captain Robert Falcon Scott's old headquarters at Cape Evans. Believing that Shackleton might have already begun his march from the Weddell Sea, he was determined to begin depot-laying at once. Joyce, the expedition's most seasoned Antarctic traveller—he had been with Scott's Discovery Expedition in 1901–1904, and with the Nimrod expedition—protested that the party needed time for acclimatisation and training, but was overruled. Joyce was shocked by the rebuff; he had expected that Mackintosh would defer to him on sledging matters: "If I had Shacks here I would make him see my way of arguing", he wrote in his diary. The depot-laying journey which followed began with a series of mishaps. A blizzard delayed their start, a motor sledge broke down after a few miles, and Mackintosh and his group lost their way on the sea ice between Cape Evans and Hut Point. Conditions on the Barrier were harsh for the untrained and inexperienced men. Many of the stores taken on to the Barrier were dumped on the ice to reduce loads and did not reach the depots. After Mackintosh insisted, over Joyce's urgent protests, on taking the dogs all the way to 80°S, all died on the journey. A Joyce diary note at this time reveals his displeasure with Mackintosh. "I don’t know how I refrain from giving Mack a bit of my mind, will have to keep that in until we get back. We will have enough to think about before we get to Hut Point." The men, frostbitten and exhausted, returned to the old Discovery expedition hut at Hut Point on 24 March, but were cut off from the ship and from their Cape Evans base by unsafe sea ice and had to wait, idle, for nearly three months. After this experience, confidence in Mackintosh's leadership was low, and bickering rife. This statement is questionable. During the months of June, July and August at Cape Evans Mackintosh noted: "All is working smoothly here, and everyone is taking the situation very philosophically." In relation to Mackintosh's plans one of the men wrote in June: "Spent most of the morning discussing the sledging problem ... and it’s a pretty big