Nimrod Expedition
The polar historian Roland Huntford sums up Joyce as a "strange mixture of fraud, flamboyance and ability". This mixed assessment is endorsed in the assortment of views expressed by those associated with him. Dick Richards of the Ross Sea party described him as "a kindly soul and a good pal", and others shared the favourable opinions expressed by Scott and Markham, confirming Joyce as a "jolly good sort", though unsuited for command. On the other hand, Eric Marshall of the Nimrod Expedition had found him "of limited intelligence, resentful and incompatible", while John King Davis, when refusing to join the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, told Shackleton: "I absolutely decline to be associated with any enterprise with which people of the Joyce type are connected".