Thing was, nobody knew where they were.
They thought things and they said things and they repeated maritime horror tales, but not a one of them could truly guess the severity of their situation or how far it was they were from home.
Yet, each man hoped against hope. Each one carried a vision of the gleaming ship that would whisk them away to civilization. They would be given dry clothes. Beds. There would be mugs of coffee and cool water. Tables piled abundantly with eggs and pancakes, ham and bacon, bread and fruit, steak and potatoes, pie and cake.
They hoped, but none of them really expected it to happen.
They expected torment and death. They expected thirst and drowning. They expected starvation. They expected suffering in all its guises and, yes, they expected things to come at them out of the mist, the sort of things that had crawled alive and breathing from nightmares and cellars and dank, dark places.
And on this matter, they were right.