An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

by Michael Smith

  ‘Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.’4

  The following day they came across a tent erected by Amundsen which contained a record of the Norwegian’s achievement, a personal letter to Scott and a few items of surplus equipment such as a sextant and some socks. Amundsen, to safeguard news of his great achievement against accident on the return journey, had also asked Scott to deliver a letter to King Haakon VII of Norway. It was humiliating for Scott. His colleague, Raymond Priestley, would later write that Amundsen’s letter transformed Scott from ‘explorer to postman’.

  After putting up their ‘poor slighted Union Jack’ and taking a few poignant photographs, the men turned for home. It was, like the last supporting party, going to be a desperate race against time and Scott was well aware of the hazards ahead. As they began the journey, he wrote:

  ‘Well, we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition and must face our 800 [geographical] miles of solid dragging – and goodbye to most of the daydreams.’5

  The return journey began fairly late on 18 January, helped by the ground cloth from their tent which they rigged up as a makeshift sail to catch the strong wind blowing into their backs. But it was getting perceptibly colder, with the temperature down to –30 °F (–34 °C) by 23 January and Scott reporting that Evans was ‘a good deal run down’.

  Food, too, was causing a problem and on 29 January Scott conceded that the men were not eating enough to satisfy the demands of their continuous heavy labour. In short, they were hungry and getting hungrier as they pulled with increasing effort to cover the distances between supply depots. It is also likely that they were very thirsty.

  A day later the men’s worrying physical problems began to emerge, first Wilson straining a tendon in his leg and then Evans began to lose two fingernails because of severe frostbite. Scott was worried about both Evans’ physical and mental condition and wrote:

  ‘His hands are really bad, and to my surprise he shows signs of losing heart over it.’6

  The route to the pole: Amundsen and Scott’s tracks on their historic 1,800-mile journeys in 1911–2.

  On 3 February the indefatigable Bowers stopped writing his diary and on 4 February Evans fell into a shallow crevasse. Scott commented that his long-time comrade was becoming ‘rather dull and incapable’. The next day Scott recorded that Evans was ‘a good deal crocked up’ with frostbitten and suppurating fingers and a ‘very bad’ nose. On 7 February he noted that Evans was ‘going steadily downhill’.

  Evans had taken the Norwegian victory very badly, perhaps because it dealt such a severe blow to his ambitions of leaving the navy as a famous explorer and even making some money from his adventures. His demoralisation may also have stemmed from the fact that, psychologically, he was the least equipped to cope with defeat. Wilson suggested in his diary that his failure to cope was because he had never been sick before. Oates wondered how he would manage the remaining 500 miles (800 km) to base camp.

  Wilson, the doctor in the party, believed that Evans’ deteriorating health came from concussion sustained when he fell into the crevasse. More likely is the fact that Evans, like the others, was suffering from a serious loss of vitamin C and was in the initial stages of scurvy. A side-effect of scurvy is that the blood vessels became very fragile and it is probable that the fall triggered some form of brain haemorrhage. By 14 February Evans had virtually ceased to function as a full member of the team and on 16 January Scott grimly revealed:

  ‘Evans has nearly broken down in brain, we think. He is absolutely changed from his normal self-reliant self.’7

  The next day, 17 February, Petty Officer Edgar Evans died. It was ‘a very terrible day’ according to Scott. Shocked and alarmed at the loss of the party’s strongest man, the four survivors pressed on down the last leg of the Beardmore and arrived at Shambles Camp where they feasted on depoted pony meat. For once the hungry men were full.

  New life came with a full stomach but as they prepared for the 400-mile (640-km) slog across the Barrier, a new hurdle emerged as the travelling surface became almost impossible. On 19 February they exhausted themselves all day to cover only 4.6 miles on a surface which was likened to desert sand. Although the loss of the big Welshman provided them with a welcome dose of extra rations, Scott conceded that the party was missing the enormous strength of a fit, vigorous Evans.

  As they plodded defiantly onto the Barrier, the men struck another insurmountable hurdle when they discovered a shortage of oil at the depots. The leather washers had perished in the cold and oil had evaporated, leaving the men facing the unhappy prospect of eating cold food and having little spare fuel to melt snow for drinking water. Temperatures were now plummeting and on 28 February the usually calm, influential Wilson ceased keeping his diary.

  The men were over 300 miles (480 km) from safety and March began with temperatures sinking to –41.5 °F (–41 °C), or 73.5° of frost. With the rate of progress now slowed to one mile an hour, the men were obliged to march for at least ten hours per day to reach their supply depots.

  The next blow came on 2 March when Oates uncovered his feet to show severe frostbite. The pulling had become extremely hard and by now the tired, cold and hungry men were spending one and a half hours each morning simply putting on their footgear, which further slowed them down. It was becoming clear that they were not moving quickly enough and on 5 March Scott wrote:

  ‘God help us, we can’t keep up this pulling, that is certain. Amongst ourselves we are unendingly cheerful, but what each man feels in his heart I can only guess.’8

  On 7 March, Amundsen’s ship Fram sailed quietly into Hobart, capital of Tasmania, with news that he had reached the South Pole. Amundsen’s triumph was in stark contrast to the defeat staring in the face of Scott and his companions.

  Over the next few days Oates’ condition deteriorated and he was unable to get into the man-hauling harness, a humiliating moment for the once proud cavalry officer. On 10 March Scott reported ‘things steadily downhill’ and said that Oates ‘must know that he can never get through’. Oates asked Wilson if he had any chance of pulling through and Wilson lied when he said he did not know.

  By now the exhausted men were only capable of covering 6 miles a day and Scott did a dismal and disheartening sum. In his diary he calculated:

  ‘We have seven days’ food and should be about 55 miles from One Ton Camp tonight, 6 × 7 = 42, leaving us thirteen miles short of our distance, even if things get no worse.’9

  It was a forlorn hope as the winter season approached, with temperatures plunging to –43 °F (–42 °C) at midday on 14 March. Scott insisted that they could not afford to reduce the rations to give them extra marching time.

  They were now roughly at the spot where, according to his original plans, Scott had intended to place One Ton Depot. But to save the ponies from more hardship on the depot-laying journey a year earlier, he had placed One Ton about 30 miles further north. Had they reached One Ton, the men might have stood some slim chance of survival. They were in very poor condition but the massive depot contained sufficient quantities of food and fuel which might have given them time to recuperate and regain some strength. The major difficulty would have been the weather, which was deteriorating fast and would have made the 140-mile (225-km) journey to Hut Point perilous and probably impossible.

  It is hardly surprising that at this point Scott became confused and mixed up his dates. He was therefore not sure whether it was Friday 16 March or Saturday 17 March when he recorded the ultimate tragedy for Oates.

  Oates, bravely, asked to be left behind in his bag, but the three men refused to leave him. In the morning he woke up to the sound of a howling blizzard and, according to Scott, said: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ As he slowly and painfully crawled through the tent flap, the temperature outside in the raging blizzard was –40 °F (–40 °C).

  17 March 1912 was the thirty-second birthday of L
awrence Edward Grace Oates.

  Scott depoted some surplus gear to lighten their load and set out to make One Ton, some 25–30 miles (40–48 km) away. A stiff wind was blowing and the temperature was down to –35 °F (–37 °C) on 18 March and –40 °F (–40 °C) the next day. Scott’s feet were now in a terrible state and he grimly conceded that ‘amputation is the least I can hope for’.

  Scott, Wilson and Bowers stumbled forward by about 4½ miles and on 19 March came to within 11 miles (18 km) of One Ton Depot where they were laid up by another severe blizzard. The men had two days’ food and the fuel had run out, so they were even deprived of the small comfort of a hot drink. The blizzard pummelled their little green tent for the rest of the week and the end probably came on 29 March 1912, exactly 149 days after they had started out from Cape Evans. Scott made his last and most famous entry into his diary on 29 March:

  ‘Every day we have been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

  It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

  R. Scott.

  Last entry.

  For God’s sake look after our people.’10

  Robert Falcon Scott was 43, Edward Adrian Wilson, 39, and Henry Robertson Bowers, 28.

  12

  Fatal choice

  Captain Scott made a fundamental error in his polar plans when he declined to include Tom Crean in the final party which went to the South Pole. Although it is a grisly exercise to dissect events after all these years, there is nevertheless a compelling case for declaring that the Irishman should have gone to the Pole and that his powerful presence might have made the vital difference on the fateful return journey. For Scott and his companions it could have been the difference between life and death.

  Scott, it must be said, made two basic mistakes in selecting his final party to reach the Pole. First, he chose the men at the wrong time and second he chose the wrong men.

  There is little evidence to show that Scott had picked his final team when the party first marched onto the Barrier in November 1911, at the start of the long journey. At his disposal, including himself, he had some 25 men, although this can be reduced to under twenty after allowing for injuries, alternative scientific work and the need for some like Ponting to return home on Terra Nova.

  He started the trek with sixteen men, although arguably the best ice traveller, the Norwegian ski expert Gran, was left behind and consigned to a minor geological expedition. In addition, he failed to understand the strength and suitability of the dog teams and chose to employ them in a subsidiary role.

  It seems a bizarre decision all these decades later, but Scott did not pick his men for the key stage of the journey until the journey was already half done. He had the months of idleness at Cape Evans beforehand to weigh up their strengths and weaknesses, and choose the men who were best suited for the lengthy trip.

  With careful handling on the initial stages of the journey across the Barrier and up the Beardmore, he could have sheltered the final party from too much laborious man-hauling work. This would have ensured that the key personnel would be fresher and fitter to make the dash to the Pole and back. Instead the men all pulled and worked as hard as each other, so were almost equally as tired before the final lap.

  In contrast, he did precisely that with the ponies, who in any event, were doomed to execution at the foot of the Beardmore. He decided that the ponies were to carry relatively light loads on approximately 150 miles of the 400-mile trek across the Barrier, although the unexpected shortage of feed did mean that they were eventually pushed a lot harder.

  Scott’s assault on the Pole was organised like a relay race, except that the men on the final stages were also used as pacemakers and were already severely tired when they were asked to sprint the final lap.

  The first clear indication of the polar team make-up did not emerge in his otherwise frank diaries until 22 December, seven weeks after starting out and by then more than 7,000 ft (2,140 m) up the Beardmore. On that date he wrote the names of five men – Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Taff Evans – in the flyleaf of his notebook.

  But by this stage, his options had been severely reduced. The underutilised dog teams under Meares and Dimitri, who had been travelling well, had gone back and so had Day and Hooper. This left twelve and on 21 December he sent another four men back – Atkinson, Wright, Keohane and Cherry-Garrard.

  Over 60 years later in 1974, Gran would claim that Scott should have taken the strong young Canadian physicist Wright, who was also trained in navigation, to the Pole.1Gran’s view was that Taff Evans should have been jettisoned from the team. Wright himself said he was ‘quite certain’ that he and Cherry were ‘in better shape than at least one who was chosen to go on’.2 This was presumably a reference to either Taff Evans or Oates.

  Scott was down to the last eight men at the top of the Beardmore and it is apparent that his deputy Teddy Evans was not destined to go to the Pole, partly for personal reasons and partly because he was on the point of exhaustion. He was also in the early stages of scurvy. Realistically this left seven. But Lashly, an otherwise wholly suitable candidate for the final party, had already been man-hauling alongside Evans for well over 500 miles (800 km) when Scott wrote the five names into his notebook.

  Lashly, a powerful man, had been drained by the extra effort, though in different circumstances he would have been an ideal choice for the final party. Cherry-Garrard always insisted that Scott should have taken Lashly on the final lap, but this ignores the obvious weakness of the seaman after strenuous man-hauling hundreds of miles more than his companions.

  To all intents and purposes Teddy Evans and Lashly were no longer fit enough for the task. This left six possible choices – Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, Taff Evans and Tom Crean.

  Scott had given little away about his final selection and even Wilson said he fully expected to return with the last supporting party. Scott, he said, was ‘going to take the strongest fellows, perhaps three seamen’. The seamen in question were Taff Evans, Lashly and Tom Crean. But Lashly was already exhausted beyond redemption and Taff Evans was in decline, though it appears likely that Scott did not fully appreciate how badly the Welshman had deteriorated.

  Scott himself was always destined to go for the obvious reason that he was the leader. But he also earned his place on merit. He was immensely strong and capable, despite being the oldest of the eight men.

  Wilson was taken largely for personal reasons. He was by now Scott’s closest confidante, had borne his share of the work far better than expected and his overall performance made a strong case for inclusion. He was also a doctor, which might prove helpful. But he did not expect to be in the final team.

  Taff Evans was Scott’s personal favourite, a man he had stood by during the worst excesses of his drinking and was always destined to be in the final party. Evans had been loyal and had proved a stalwart on many hazardous sledge journeys in the past. Scott also nursed the patronising notion that the ‘ranks’ should be represented at the Pole. Evans represented what Scott saw as the embodiment of the finest qualities of the ordinary British seaman. But Evans was beginning to fail by the time the party reached the top of the Beardmore, partly because of the serious cut to his hand and partly because as the largest of the party, he was probably not getting enough food. Scott chose to overlook this or simply did not spot it. Wilson had privately suggested to others that Evans was not ideally suited for the final lap but, weakly, appears to have refrained from giving Scott his blunt assessment.

  There was also a sentimental touch to the choice of Oates, the cavalry captain. Scott wanted to reward Oates for getting the dilapidated ponies to the foot of the Beardmore and was also taken with the equally patronising belief that the army should be represented at the Pole. But Oates was already feel
ing the severe cold and limping because of the effects of a severe leg wound sustained in the Boer War which had made one leg slightly shorter than the other. It is also likely that he was in the early stages of scurvy. One of the early symptoms is that old scar tissue begins to weaken. Oates himself was undoubtedly surprised to be included in the final party and his friend, Atkinson, confided after the disaster than he had not wanted to go on. Scott was either not told about Oates’ condition or let sentimentality affect his judgement, much the same as he had done with Evans.

  Bowers, on the other hand, had emerged as a giant. His strength and organisational ability were astonishing and he developed an outstanding case for inclusion. Also, he could navigate, which was vital on the featureless landscapes of the Plateau and Barrier. Bowers virtually picked himself.

  The shortage of trained navigators was another important issue. Only three of the final eight – Scott, Bowers and Teddy Evans – could navigate. But since Scott had warmed to Bowers, it meant that there was no alternative to Evans leading the last supporting party back down the Beardmore and finding a path across the Barrier. Teddy Evans’ exclusion from the final party could be justified on that point alone.