"By the time she was launched on December 17, 1912, she was the strongest wooden ship ever built in Norway-and probably anywhere else-with the possible exception of the Fram, the vessel used by Fridtjof Nansen, and later by Amundsen" (20).
This quote is an excellent example of irony. The effectiveness of this quote is that from the first chapter, you already know that it does not make the voyage for them. Even though it was the strongest ship of the kind at t he time, it did not meet the challenge of the horrible ice packs in the Weddell Sea. Although it makes it a good way and does prove its strength in some of the harshest weather and attacks from the ice, it was not made to withstand the pressure of the ice, since it was the worst conditions in a long time.
This quote can easily be related to a situation that we all know so well. Some irony in itself is that it sank not only a few years before in an ice field in the Atlantic. The Titanic was claimed to be the strongest and most durable ship to set sail on the Atlantic Sea and was even claimed to be unsinkable. Yet, both of these ships, despite how strongly built and suited they were, they both turned out to be sinkable and not as durable as everyone believed they were.
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