Ernest Joyce |
Ernest Edward Mills Joyce
Joyce came from a humble seafaring background and began his naval career as a boy seaman in 1891. His Antarctic experiences began 10 years later, when he joined Scott's
Throughout his career Joyce was known as an abrasive personality who attracted adverse as well as positive comments. His effectiveness in the field was widely acknowledged by many of his colleagues, but other aspects of his character were less appreciated – his capacity for bearing grudges, his boastfulness and his distortions of the truth. Joyce's diaries, and the book he wrote based on them, have been condemned as self-serving and the work of a fabulist. He made no significant material gains from his expeditions, living out his post-Antarctic life in humble circumstances before dying in 1940.
Details of Joyce's early life are uncertain. The exact date and place of his birth have not been verified, but Kelly Tyler-Lewis, in her account of the
No detailed records of his naval service between 1891 and 1901 appear to have survived. The last-named year saw him serving on