An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

by Michael Smith

  Then there was Tom Crean, whose case for inclusion in the final party has been poorly considered by historians. Crean was among the toughest of all the men at Cape Evans and, more by luck than judgement, had emerged at the top of the Beardmore Glacier physically fitter than most. Indeed, Crean may well have been the strongest of all the eight men who stood on the Polar Plateau as Scott prepared his final selections.

  Crean had been saved from much of the heavy labour of man-hauling because he walked the 400 miles (640 km) across the Barrier leading his pony, Bones, which was in the final batch of animals to be shot. His man-hauling, the most arduous back-breaking work of all, did not start until the Beardmore. It meant, for example, that he had man-hauled at least 350 miles (560 km) fewer than Lashly or Teddy Evans. More important, he did not have a nagging problem like Oates’ weeping war wound or Evans’ severely cut hand.

  While the diaries and writings of the men on the Polar Plateau were already beginning to pick up indications of weakness here and there among the individuals, there is not a single reference to Crean showing any signs of deterioration.

  Atkinson and Wilson, the two doctors, had a revealing conversation near the top of the Beardmore about the physical and mental fitness of the three seamen. Atkinson’s choice was Lashly and Wilson readily agreed.3 But, as has been demonstrated, Lashly was already seriously drained and would have been a liability. Atkinson then said he would take Crean, although Wilson did not altogether agree. But, significantly, neither Atkinson nor Wilson proposed taking Taff Evans – Scott’s first choice.

  Scott greatly complicated matters when, at the last moment, he decided to take an extra man to the Pole. The decision to raise the final party to five was a mistake, given that the entire expedition had been planned around units of four. But by then, halfway across the plateau and 150 miles from the Pole, Scott was probably worried about the pulling power of the weakening men. He felt the need for more strength on the final lap. He appears to have been aware of the collective weakness, but not all the individual deficiencies.

  With hindsight, it is arguable that Scott should have made his final selection of the polar party at Cape Evans in October 1911, well before the cavalcade set out. The four – or even five – men could then have undertaken the lightest possible work over the Barrier and up the Beardmore, pacing themselves and leaving them fresher and fitter for the final dash.

  In the circumstances, the best equipped four-man team to start from Cape Evans would have been Scott, Bowers, Lashly and Tom Crean. For back-up reserve strength he could have nominated Taff Evans and Wright.

  But, on the freezing Polar Plateau, after weeks of strenuous man-hauling and niggling little injuries, the options open to Scott were strictly limited. In terms of health and strength, Scott and Bowers were fine, Wilson a marginal case and Taff Evans and Oates in decline. Teddy Evans and Lashly were too run-down even to be considered.

  Crean, by contrast, was noticeably fitter than Taff Evans, Oates, Lashly and Teddy Evans, and more naturally stronger than Wilson.

  Cherry-Garrard, some years after the tragedy, wrote that if Scott had stuck to his original four-man party the men would have survived every misfortune. Cherry’s suggestion was a final team of Scott, Wilson, Bowers and Lashly, though Lashly was obviously in no fit state for the journey when the final choice was being taken after the haul up the Beardmore.

  The final party, chosen from the eight men left on the Plateau, should have been Scott, Bowers, Wilson and Tom Crean. If Scott had wanted the extra pulling power of a fifth man, the choice would probably fall between Lashly and Taff Evans, though neither was in ideal condition.

  Under both scenarios, Tom Crean should have gone to the South Pole and those who doubt his qualifications need only read about his remarkable contribution to the last supporting party. Crean was a colossus and even after an exhausting journey of 1,500 miles (2,420 km), still had the strength and resourcefulness to walk 35 miles (56 km) alone across appalling terrain, without food and shelter, to save Teddy Evans’ life. The irony is that the day before his remarkable solo march, his friend Taff Evans died at the foot of the Beardmore and the Polar party had begun to disintegrate.

  Crean’s endurance and immense strength of character was to prove the difference between life and death for Teddy Evans. While it is generally accepted that Scott’s final party were doomed to die, it is difficult to ignore the argument that the big Irishman might possibly have made the crucial difference. His outstanding performance on the last supporting party demonstrates that he would not have cracked coming down the Beardmore as Taff Evans did. Indeed, Scott noticed the loss of Evans’ pulling power with the sledge immediately after his death and Crean’s extra strength at this stage would have been critically important in covering vital mileage before the terrible weather engulfed the party just short of One Ton Depot.

  It has been calculated that the Polar party would have reached One Ton Depot if the men had managed to travel a paltry 280 yards further each day between 4 January, when the last supporting party turned back, and when they camped for the last time on 19 March. Once there the men could have rebuilt their strength, weather permitting, for the final slog to Hut Point, 140 miles (225 km) away. A slim hope, but hope nonetheless.

  The case against Crean is that, if he had gone with Scott, he would have needed to cover about 300 miles (480 km) more than he did with Evans and Lashly on the last supporting party. Scurvy, in this case, may certainly have struck. Nor was there any realistic chance of survival, even if the party had reached One Ton Depot. A trip of 140 miles (225 km) to the safety of Hut Point in temperatures down to –40 °F (–40 °C) as the season closed in would have been a massive test for fit, well-fed men.

  But what cannot be denied is that Tom Crean was the difference between life and death for Teddy Evans.

  13

  A grim search

  The mood at Cape Evans and Hut Point in the early months of 1912 was initially optimistic. The first returning party – Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane – had averaged over 14 miles a day on the way to the safety of One Ton Depot and there was a general belief that Scott would probably reach the Pole. Although everyone knew it would be a close-run thing because of the late start, the party was confidently expected to make it back to base.

  However, Crean’s dramatic return to Hut Point was a bolt from the blue which shook everyone from their complacency. His heroics in saving the life of Evans could not disguise the realisation that Scott, too, was probably in trouble out on the Barrier with the season closing in. The appalling state of Evans and the sight of hard men like Crean and Lashly on the brink of collapse had shattered any illusions that the Pole had been lightly won. Crean’s arrival was the harbinger of doom.

  Despite his punishing ordeal, Crean made an astonishing recovery, travelling with a dog team to Cape Evans on 23 February – only four days after he had staggered into Hut Point delirious with hunger and fatigue after his eighteen-hour walk across the ice. He was carrying vital news about the polar party from Atkinson, the doctor, who was now the most senior able-bodied man at base camp.

  Atkinson had elected to remain at Hut Point with the sick man, Evans, and suggested that either Wright or Cherry-Garrard should take a dog team south to meet Scott’s party on the return from the Pole. However, Wright was needed for other scientific work and with no other fit men available, Cherry-Garrard was placed in charge of the mission.

  Cherry-Garrard was hopelessly ill-suited for the crucial task. He had never driven dogs before so he took along the Russian, Dimitri. But neither could navigate and Cherry’s glasses, which he needed to combat serious short-sightedness, were a serious impediment to polar travelling because they frequently became misted.

  Although Scott was relying heavily on the dogs to come out to meet him on the Barrier, he had contributed to his own downfall with a series of muddled and contradictory orders for the dog drivers. His specific order was that the dogs were not to be risked because
they would be needed for other field trips. This was interpreted as meaning that the dogs were not to be taken too far south to meet the in-coming party, so Atkinson was not proposing an outright rescue mission for the polar party. Atkinson, acting on earlier orders from Scott, insisted that the polar party was ‘not in any way dependent’ on the dogs.

  Cherry-Garrard, with deep misgivings, set out on 25 February and reached One Ton, some 150 miles (240 km) away from Cape Evans, late on 3 March. There was no sign of Scott. Cherry-Garrard, inexperienced and unused to command, was unsure what to do. In addition, the weather was so bad that it was impossible to see anything at a distance, which meant that he might easily miss Scott in the swirling snow if he travelled further south.

  More important, there was a lack of dog food for a long journey. Nor was Cherry-Garrard equipped to improvise by exploiting the dogs Norwegian-style. He possessed the typical British mawkishness towards dogs and could not stomach the notion of copying Amundsen’s brutally efficient method of killing dogs to feed the others as they travelled. And, of course, at the back of his mind was Scott’s order not to risk the dogs.

  He waited until 10 March and with no sign of Scott, departed back to Cape Evans with temperatures down to –33 °F (–36 °C) or 65° of frost. There was, he wrote some years later, ‘little anxiety’ for the polar party.

  On the same day, about 70 miles (112 km) to the south, Scott’s party were struggling to Mount Hooper Depot and Oates was on the verge of collapsing.

  Cherry-Garrard, sadly, never forgave himself for not driving south and felt great responsibility for the death of his friends. However, he was not equipped for such a journey and there was no guarantee he would have spotted the party in the awful swirling weather on the Barrier. It is quite possible that the names of Cherry-Garrard and Dimitri would have been added to the casualty list if he had driven south, though it was no consolation for the sensitive, emotional Cherry-Garrard who brooded over the tragedy until his own death in 1959.

  It was readily apparent that Cherry-Garrard and Dimitri had been weakened by their brief, three-week journey onto the Barrier in search of Scott. But Cherry and Dimitri had been fit, rested and well fed before they started. By contrast, the polar party was now seriously undernourished and had endured a terrible four and a half months’ slog over more than 1,600 miles across the worst terrain in the world in rapidly falling temperatures.

  The men at Cape Evans kept a constant lookout on the horizon to the south, half-hoping to see a flare in the distance from Hut Point which would signal that the polar party had finally come in. On 17 March, the day that Oates committed suicide, Cherry-Garrard calculated that Scott’s return would be five weeks after the arrival of Crean at Hut Point, namely 26 March. He wrote:

  ‘We feel anxious now, but I do not think there is need for alarm until then, and they might get in well after that and be all right.’1

  By 25 March, the day before Cherry-Garrard expected the party’s arrival, concern was beginning to mount among the men at Cape Evans. Gran’s diary read:

  ‘We have begun to worry a little about the fate of the polar party. No one says anything but you can see it in most of their faces. When the watchman comes down from Vane Hill each night to report, everything comes to a standstill in the hut and every eye is fixed on him.’2

  Atkinson and Keohane went on a short man-hauling excursion to Corner Camp but were hampered by the poor weather which was by then engulfing Scott further to the south. On 30 March, the day after the polar party is likely to have perished, Atkinson said he was ‘morally certain’ that they were dead. Slowly, but with greater certainty, the grim reality began to sink in and each man began to come to terms with the loss.

  Despite the tragedy, the men had little option but to buckle down and prepare for a second Antarctic winter. The Terra Nova had already left for New Zealand, taking the seriously ill Teddy Evans and others who for various reasons wanted to serve only one year in the South. Evans, still on the brink of death, had to be carried on a sledge to the waiting ship at the beginning of March. He was placed in a bunk and was unable to move until the Terra Nova reached New Zealand on 2 April.

  Two others – the new cook Archer and the ex-Discovery seaman Thomas Williamson – had joined the shore party, which now numbered fifteen. Atkinson, now installed as leader of the expedition, reorganised things and placed Crean in charge of all the sledging stores and equipment. This was an important role because it was clear that at least two very substantial journeys would have to be undertaken in the Antarctic spring and summer of 1912 and Crean’s extensive experience on the ice would be invaluable.

  Crean’s heroic march and the 750-mile haul with the final supporting party had earned the Irishman even greater respect among his colleagues and his was undoubtedly a voice to be heard in any discussion about future plans. Few, if any, of the men at Cape Evans could match Crean’s experience of ice travel.

  Many years later, Gran would fondly recall the Irishman’s substantial presence and stature at that time in the hut at Cape Evans. Crean clearly left a big impression on the Norwegian and in an interview in 1973 he said:

  ‘… [Crean was] a man who wouldn’t have cared if he’d got to the Pole and God Almighty was standing there, or the Devil. He called himself the “Wild Man from Borneo” and he was.’3

  Crean was also a popular member of the party and Wright described him as ‘very good natured’. Debenham remembered that his ‘quips and brogue kept the mess-deck part of the hut merry’ and added:

  ‘In the winter it was once more Crean who was the mainstay for cheerfulness in the now depleted mess deck part of the hut …’4

  The first priority for the men at Cape Evans in the winter of 1912 was to locate Lt Campbell’s six-man northern party which was long overdue, and unknown to anyone, was still stranded in the Cape Adare region. A rescue party, it was assumed, would be needed in September or October.

  The second priority was the sorrowful task of searching for the bodies of their dead companions in the Polar party, although some felt this would be largely a waste of time. It was felt that the men had probably fallen down a crevasse on the descent of the treacherous Beardmore and were lost forever. However, the men felt a duty to try to locate the bodies, if only to establish that the men had indeed reached the Pole.

  Atkinson, although a naval officer, was far less rigid and secretive than Scott in his approach and one innovation was that he openly discussed the spring travel plans with the entire wintering party. There was a lengthy discussion about the two options – either to look for Campbell or hunt for the bodies of the polar party. After an open discussion, they elected to search first for the polar party. To paraphrase Cherry-Garrard’s assessment, they would be leaving live men to search for dead men.

  The sun soon disappeared and the winter routine began, though the weather was noticeably worse than the previous year. Temperatures were frequently recorded as low as –50 °F (–45 °C) and winds were logged at up to 89 mph. One blizzard raged unbroken for eight days and the hut literally shook under the strain of the constant onslaught.

  Conditions inside the hut were far more comfortable than in the previous winter. The fifteen men occupied the space reserved for 25 and they endured none of the food shortages which had characterised the polar journeys. But it was an altogether more low-key and subdued atmosphere than the previous year. In the grim circumstances, there was little to look forward to. They passed a fairly comfortable winter, peppered with the regular business of scientific readings, lectures, eating, and making preparations for the coming southern journey.

  The men took as much outdoor exercise as the violent weather allowed and inside the hut, they played endless games of cards, draughts and bagatelle. Crean managed to win a billiards tournament in May, a game which Gran said was the ‘very best medicine against low spirits’. The midwinter celebration was held on 22 June in the now customary fashion of any wintering group in the ice, with a lavish meal, elaborate party
games and the obligatory mock Christmas tree.

  A month later Crean celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday by shaving off his beard and discovering that there was to be an important change to the diet for the coming sledging season. After Evans’ dreadful scurvy on the final supporting party and the likelihood that the polar team had succumbed to the same ailment, Atkinson now ordered the men to eat an onion every day. Gran remembered:

  ‘I think this is a good idea, not only as a prophylactic against scurvy but also a foodstuff. At any rate, the men will get the impression that they’re not just on a slimming course. At the moment the whole hut smells of onions.’5

  The sun returned in late August and preparations for the southern journey gathered pace, with food and equipment being arranged and packed onto the sledges and the men getting a little more exercise as the weather improved. In mid-October they began to take horse fodder out to Corner Camp, near to where Crean had started his brave solo march to save Evans. Terra Nova had brought down seven mules from the British army in India, which Scott had ordered as insurance for a second assault on the Pole if his first attempt failed. The mules would now be needed for a different reason.