We hid in our rooms as the banging started. We could hear King Neptune’s enforcers – the Bears – moving from cabin to cabin, weeding out the initiates.

Crew members, officers, oceanographers, engineers, any Antarctica first-timers who had dared to cross into the circle without a licence.

Shouts, bangs, screams.

The noises were muffled, floating up to us from the crew’s cabins on the deck below.

Footsteps pounded along the staircases. The Bears were moving.

And then suddenly they were there, in our own cabins, a group of masked men with paddles and water bottles and loud voices screaming: “Get down! Get down!” and we were on the floor face-down with a foot pressed into the small of our backs.

“Keep your head down,” a voice growled.

Environmental Affairs Departmental co-ordinator Gideon van Zyl strode into the cabin wearing a large top-hat – the Herald, messenger of King Neptune.

“You dare to enter his domain, no homage did you pay,” he declared. “Now you’ll suffer the pain. Listen carefully to what I say. At 14 hundred hours in the afternoon of the morrow, King Neptune will arrive. Show and cry your sorrow – for a pardon you must strive.”

“Be there!” the Bears roared.

Just as quickly as they’d burst in, they disappeared.

“Has anybody ever died during initiation?” one of the Amys, oceanographer Amy Weber, asked during lunch.

“Oh my God, no! I don’t want to hear if people died on the boat!” blurted the other, oceanographer Amy Harding-Goodman.

“Oh, but people have definitely died on board,” said Louise Muller, a former journalist who made the voyage in the Eighties and was now returning to say goodbye to the SA Agulhas and Antarctica.

“There was a murder where the accused disappeared. They couldn’t find him anywhere on the ship, he just vanished. But that was years ago. There was also that other murder recently…”

It happened in the early hours of September 28, 2007.

The Agulhas was near the remote Gough Island, home to one of SA’s Antarctica weather stations.

Ordinary Seaman Edward Robert Hulley, 22, was found dead in his bunk, allegedly stabbed in his sleep.

There were reports of late-night drinking, of an “altercation”.

Over what? Nobody could say.

Two crew members were taken into custody and charged with murder when they arrived back in Cape Town.

But nearly two years later, all charges against the accused were dropped.

Reports from the time cited a missing docket, an elusive investigating officer.

The mystery behind Hulley’s death was never solved.

“But that wasn’t during initiation, don’t worry.”

The Antarctic summer was waiting for us the next day.

We’d sailed into a low-pressure system, sending the temperature plummeting to -5ºC.

The initiates huddled in groups, bouncing up and down in a frenzied dance to stave off the cold of the 15-knot wind swiping over the helideck.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

We screamed and dropped to our bellies as the helicopter hangar door opened and the Bears came striding out, spilling buckets of ice cold water down our backs and legs.

Flight engineer John Britton sat before us, robed and crowned. This was his 11th voyage to Antarctica. He was our King Neptune.

“Tell me from your hearts, how dare you offenders question my powers and try to defy me?” crackled the King’s voice through the loudspeaker. “Let the sport begin! So bold new men and women may join our class, initiate to let them in.”

They called us one by one.

Eyes to the ground, all we did was listen: feeble cries of resistance, splashing, a vague gagging sound. What was going on around us?

And then it was my name being called and I was pulled from the ground and led past a large plastic bath in which it looked like someone was being drowned, arms and legs and feet and hands flying.

And I realised it was exactly where I was headed and I thought, “Not a chance” as I tried pulling away, but four pairs of hands grabbed my limbs and I was rising up, up, up in the air before falling down towards the bath.

Time stopped.

The cold enveloped me.

Above me, distorted faces, warped sky, and the only thought running through my mind as the freezing water of the Southern Ocean entered my mouth and flooded my lungs was: “Hm. Salty.”

I broke the surface, gasping for air and time sped up again.

I crashed to my knees in front of King Neptune.

Eggs and flour in my hair, my face smeared with an oatey, vomit-like mix, a syringe forced into my mouth, and a concoction of burning sauces squirted down the back of my throat.

By the time I reached the end of the line, I was choking and gagging and stumbling.

The hose water was warm, invigorating, and it slowly brought me back to life as I coughed and gasped for air.

We were reborn. We were what only a few thousand people in the world would ever be.

We were members of the Order of Antarctica Fellows.