An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

by Michael Smith

  ‘I am so very pleased that you have thought of Crean and Lashly [Evans’ rescuers]. They are both magnificent fellows. Both are old Discovery men and Crean has been with my husband in all his ships ever since. I know him well and in a personal letter to me … my husband says Crean is profoundly happy and ready to do anything and go anywhere.

  ‘We shall all be very grateful to you if you have them suitably rewarded for indeed they are fine fellows and both of them very quiet and modest.’5

  The surviving members of the party congregated at the expedition’s offices in London’s Victoria Street on 26 July 1913, and marched the short distance to Buckingham Palace. The men were presented to King George and Prince Louis Battenberg and were decorated with their Antarctic medals. It was a proud moment, though inevitably touched with great sadness at the loss of their five colleagues.

  Kathleen Scott stood alongside Mrs Wilson and Lois Evans. Bowers’ mother, Emily, collected her son’s medal and clasp and Mrs Caroline Oates, the devastated mother of the tragic hero, specifically asked Teddy Evans to collect the honours on behalf of her dead son. Each man was awarded the King’s Medal and the Polar Medal from the Royal Geographical Society.

  Crean was awarded a silver clasp to go with his earlier Polar Medal. But there was a very special separate ceremony for Crean and Lashly, who were awarded the Albert Medal, the highest recognition for gallantry, for saving the life of Teddy Evans.

  The Albert Medal, first issued in 1866 in memory of Queen Victoria’s husband, was a rare honour, awarded on very few occasions. Only 568 were issued in its 105-year history, the medal being withdrawn in 1971 and replaced by the George Cross.

  The citation gave only a brief summary of the last supporting party’s ordeal and concluded with an almost casual description of Crean’s heroics on the solo walk across the Barrier to fetch help for the stricken Evans. It read:

  ‘After a march of eighteen hours in soft snow Crean made his way to the hut, arriving completely exhausted. Fortunately, Surgeon Edward L. Atkinson RN was at the hut with two dog teams and the dog attendant. His party, on the 20th of February, effected the rescue of Lashly and Lieutenant Evans, who but for the gallant conduct throughout of his two companions would undoubtedly have lost his life.’6

  Ponting, the photographer, was somewhat more fulsome in his praise and said Crean’s march had been ‘one of the finest feats in an adventure that is an epic of splendid episodes’.

  There was also praise for Crean from polar experts who, perhaps more than most, appreciated the full scale of his achievements. Louis Bernacchi, who had been with Crean on Discovery, said the Irishman made ‘one of the greatest polar marches alone’ and Dr Hugh Mill, a close associate of many famous characters during the Heroic Age and a later biographer of Shackleton, was equally struck by his deeds. While Crean was sitting out the Antarctic winter at Cape Evans in May 1912, Mill had written about the Evans rescue in the Geographic Journal:

  ‘This is certainly one of the smartest pieces of work ever done in the Polar regions.’7

  Teddy Evans, who was later to have a distinguished naval career and become Lord Mountevans, never forgot those who had saved his life and he perpetuated their memory by ‘affectionately’ dedicating his book on the expedition, South With Scott, to Crean and Lashly. A little earlier, at a gathering of the Royal Geographical Society at London’s Albert Hall on 21 May 1913, Evans addressed the members and reserved a special appreciation for Crean and Lashly. Remembering their monumental struggle and life-saving feat, he concluded:

  ‘No tribute could be too great.’8

  There was another personal tribute and heartfelt thanks from Evans’ parents who, after learning about the Crean–Lashly rescue and the death of the five-man Polar party, were fully aware of just how close they were to losing their son to the Antarctic. Mere words are often inadequate to express the gratitude which any parent feels when someone saves the life of their child and the Evans were brief and to the point. Frank Evans and his wife, Eliza, each sent Crean and Lashly a signed photograph of themselves with a simple inscription which needed no further elaboration to convey the sincerity of the message. Eliza’s inscription to Tom Crean reads:

  ‘In grateful remembrance of a mother for the saving of the life of Commander ERGR Evans, RN by Lashly and Crean in the Antarctic, in 1912.’

  Crean also arrived back to civilisation to receive a warm letter from Oriana Wilson, wife of Dr Wilson, thanking the Irishman for his role in the party which eventually found her husband’s body alongside Scott and Bowers on the Barrier. Mrs Wilson, writing from Christchurch, New Zealand, only two weeks after learning about her husband’s tragic death, told Crean:

  ‘I shall always be grateful to you all, that you persevered in looking for the tent. For as a result of your search I have had the comfort and help of receiving the last words Dr Wilson wrote to me, and I am more thankful to you all than I can say.

  You were also one of the last to see him alive and I know from his letters how much he thought of you.

  His friends shall be my friends and I shall always take an interest in your future. If it is ever within my power to do anything for you and yours at any time, I hope you will tell me.’9

  After the medals ceremony at Buckingham Palace, the men walked back to nearby Caxton Hall for a farewell drink and the final partings. In the slightly austere central London setting, Scott’s Last Expedition was quietly disbanded.

  Crean, meanwhile, had been promoted to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in recognition of his extraordinary exploits in the Antarctic, his promotion dating back to 9 September 1910, when the Terra Nova had been ploughing her way across the oceans to New Zealand. It was a welcome gesture and meant a useful bonus from almost three years of back-pay.

  However, there was one final piece of irony before the expedition drew to a close in the summer of 1913. According to Crean’s official military record, the Irishman was listed as having died in the Antarctic on 17 February 1912, the day before he set out on his remarkable march to save Evans. The irony is that 17 February was the day that Crean’s friend, Edgar ‘Taff’ Evans died at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier.

  15

  The ice beckons

  Crean, now 36 and a veteran of two famous voyages of exploration to Antarctica, formally returned to the Royal Navy on 6 October 1913 and was assigned to the familiar barracks at Chatham.1 He had been away from the navy for three and a half years.

  For the second time in nine years, Crean now faced the job of reintegrating himself into the routine of naval life, a difficult task after the adventurous and high-profile years in the Antarctic. He had spent six of the previous eleven years on journeys to the south. Chatham, with its stiff formality and navy drill, must have seemed unutterably dull compared with life on the edge on the Barrier.

  It was probably the unappetising prospect of a return to the pedestrian naval routine which at this point prompted Crean to take a momentous decision. After precisely twenty years in the Royal Navy, Crean now prepared to make his exit.

  At the age of 36, he knew his formal naval career was approaching an end and it appears that the obvious alternative of a life in the merchant service held little attraction. Instead, his thoughts were of returning to his Irish homeland and settling down.

  Shortly after returning from Scott’s last expedition in the summer of 1913, Crean returned to his native Kerry and bought a public house in his home town of Anascaul. The old pub, with its decrepit thatched roof, was run down and hardly a thriving concern. As an investment it was a dubious prospect. But Crean, looking beyond his time in the naval ranks, wanted the pub premises primarily for its liquor licence. He was planning ahead.

  It seems likely that Crean’s ambition of retiring from the navy and opening a pub had been fostered during his time in the South. Taff Evans had been planning a similar move. It is thought that Evans, who had the responsibility of three small children, had set his sights on returning to his native south Wales whe
re he would open a pub and perhaps enjoy something of a local celebrity status. He had also acquired first-hand experience of the pub trade. His wife, Lois, was the daughter of a pub landlord in Rhosili at the tip of the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea.

  It is reasonable to assume that Evans helped influence Crean’s decision to enter the pub trade, particularly as the pair had ample time to talk over their dwindling longer-term prospects in the navy during the many long days and nights together at Cape Evans.

  But, unknown to Crean, momentous plans were being put together which would delay the Irishman’s proposed smooth passage into the licensed trade. While Crean was weighing up his investment in the old thatched pub at Anascaul and settling back into naval routine, events elsewhere were beckoning him back to Antarctica.

  A new expedition, the most ambitious ever contemplated, was being planned by his old Discovery colleague, the now famous Sir Ernest Shackleton. Although he did not know it at the time, Shackleton’s bold plan would take Crean back to the South for the most remarkable story of all in the Heroic Age of polar exploration.

  Shackleton in 1913 was a man without a mission. Amundsen had reached the South Pole and the lasting glory of the era had gone to Scott for the heroic and tragic failure of his last expedition. Shackleton’s own achievement – the ‘furthest south’ of 1909, when he struggled to within 97 miles of the Pole – was largely forgotten by the general public which was now consumed with the Scott tragedy. But the lure of the South was too great for Shackleton to ignore and in response, he came up with the ultimate challenge, what he called the ‘last great journey on earth’.

  Shackleton’s hugely ambitious plan, which began to take shape in mid-1913, was to walk 1,800 miles (3,000 km) across the Antarctic Continent from coast to coast. It was a task which no one had accomplished before and was a massive undertaking, even for someone with the imagination and flamboyance of Shackleton.

  It involved taking a ship’s party through the frozen and largely unknown Weddell Sea and landing a small group of specially selected men on the opposite side to Scott’s base in the Ross Sea. The men would first march about 900 miles (1,500 km) across unexplored wilderness to the South Pole. They would then travel the same route taken by Scott, across the Polar Plateau, down the Beardmore Glacier and finally over the Barrier to Cape Evans in the McMurdo Sound – another 900 miles. The key to the bold plan was that the men at Scott’s old base would lay down a supply line of food and fuel depots on the Barrier and up the Beardmore for Shackleton’s party to pick up after leaving the Pole.

  By the autumn of 1913, Shackleton was sounding out his many acquaintances for the princely sum of £50,000 (today: £4,000,000) to finance the expedition. He hoped to find a single backer to sponsor the journey in return for the now customary newspaper and publishing rights, scientific collections and the single honour of having the expedition named after him, or her. Helped by the additional promise of £10,000 (today: £800,000) from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, he broke the first official news of the expedition in a letter to The Times on 29 December. With typical flourish, he called it the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

  Initially Shackleton planned to take only one ship, dropping off men and supplies on the Weddell Sea side of the continent. The ship would then circumnavigate the frozen land mass to Cape Evans at McMurdo Sound and drop off the depot-laying party. But he later amended the plans and opted to take one ship into the Weddell and despatch another, the Aurora, to Cape Evans.

  Shackleton decided to take six men on the epic journey. Mindful of Amundsen’s almost leisurely stroll to the South Pole, he planned to take about 120 Alaskan and Siberian dogs, who would pull the heavy loads and save the men from the dreadful ordeal of man-hauling.

  Early indications were that Shackleton proposed leading the march and would take along Frank Wild as his deputy. Wild, who virtually devoted his life to serving Shackleton, had already been on three expeditions to the South. He had been on Discovery with Scott in 1901–4, Nimrod with Shackleton in 1907–9 and with the Australian Douglas Mawson in Antarctica around the time of Scott’s last expedition. He was by now a toughened polar veteran, hard as nails and thoroughly reliable.

  Shackleton had also selected Bernard Day, the mechanic who had struggled in vain to get Scott’s two motorised tractors to cross the Barrier with tons of supplies in 1911. Two others initially chosen for the journey were Aeneas Mackintosh and George Marston, both old Nimrod hands.

  The unnamed sixth was to be ‘one of two men who have had experience with me and Scott’, Shackleton recorded.2 This obviously fits the description of Crean but it is not clear whether he could not name him at the time because of his naval commitments or indeed that he had someone else in mind. In the event only Wild, Marston and Crean would go with Shackleton, while Mackintosh went with the depot-laying team in the Ross Sea party.

  Shackleton knew Crean well from Discovery and had heard even more about the Irishman’s powerful presence from Teddy Evans, who had become a regular acquaintance of Shackleton after his return from the South in 1913. Few knew more about Crean’s strength and reliability than Evans who was alive only because of those very qualities. Crean’s rescue was full testament to his endurance and courage and Shackleton could not fail but to be impressed with the story Evans told.

  In addition, Shackleton knew that Crean was trustworthy and no sycophantic yes-man. Crean had a particularly forthright manner and was not afraid to speak his mind. Although this may have been less easy to accommodate within the strict regime of the navy, on the unforgiving polar landscape there was no room for half-truths and idle flattery. Shackleton, who came from the merchant navy, was far less of a disciplinarian than the strict Royal Navy types of the late Victorian era which characterised Scott’s men and did not see the need to surround himself with servile characters. Also, he was fond of Crean.

  For Crean the opportunity to venture South again was too much to turn down. There was one potential difficulty, however, which was the intense rivalry between Scott and Shackleton and their respective supporters. This antagonism had begun when Shackleton was sent home from Discovery in 1903 after the near disaster on the ‘furthest south’ journey. A dislike had grown up between the men and it erupted again in 1907 in a dispute over whether Shackleton could use Cape Evans as the base for his Nimrod expedition. Scott claimed priority over the area and Shackleton was eventually forced to winter there because he could not find a suitable alternative. Scott was furious and the rivalry intensified in 1911 and 1912 in the Antarctic as Scott became almost obsessive about beating Shackleton’s best distance to the Pole.

  But Tom Crean wanted no part of the simmering feud. He held both in high regard and in his simple, straightforward reasoning, the dispute was none of his business. Crean was loyal to his chosen leader. But equally he was always his own man.

  Shackleton opened an office at 4 New Burlington Street in central London and invited volunteers to sign up. He was swamped with 5,000 applications to join the expedition, mostly from wholly unsuitable characters. The deluge of applications was put into three large drawers cheerfully labelled ‘Mad’, ‘Hopeless’ and ‘Possible’.

  One particularly hopeful application came from ‘three sporty girls’ who promised to wear male clothing if ‘our feminine garb is inconvenient’. Shackleton’s biographers, Margery and James Fisher, said it was the only time in his life that he refused a challenge.

  There is the apocryphal story that Shackleton opened the floodgates of applications by placing an extraordinary advertisement in newspapers which reportedly read:

  ‘Men wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.’

  Apocryphal or not, the ‘advertisement’ is a reasonable summary of Polar exploration at the time and gives some indication of the types of people needed to undertake such journeys. Shackleton, in particular, was a sh
rewd judge of character and knew the type of men he wanted for his ‘Hazardous Journey’. Tom Crean was one of those men, a true stalwart whose polar record was now second to none.

  The precise circumstances of Crean’s appointment to the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition are unknown. Scott’s biographer, Elspeth Huxley, claimed that Crean had bought himself out of the navy in 1912, which was erroneous on two counts. First, he spent the whole of 1912 out of touch with civilisation in Antarctica and, second, his service record shows that he had an unbroken career in the navy, apart from secondment to three polar expeditions.

  Crean officially joined Shackleton’s expedition as second officer on 25 May 1914, at a salary of £166 a year, the equivalent of £13,800 at today’s values.3 The formal contract signed away all Crean’s rights to publish articles or books, hold onto scientific material or even speak about the expedition to a third party without first gaining Shackleton’s permission. It was a strict agreement designed to give Shackleton full control of the profits from sales of literary and artistic works which, in turn, would help finance the expedition itself. But Crean did not care too much since he did not keep diaries on any of his three expeditions and was not a prolific letter writer.