An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

by Michael Smith

  The beach was named ‘Cape Wild’ after Shackleton’s deputy. ‘Cape Bloody Wild’, some called it.

  The weather immediately gave them a typically hostile Antarctic welcome, an early reminder of their continued vulnerability. A gale started to blow and when snow followed, it soon developed into a full-scale blizzard. At one point the Docker was lifted from the beach and swung round by the violent winds and the men had to take down the tents, their only shelter, because of the fear that they would blow away. Shackleton was blown off his feet. In an emergency move, the Docker was turned upside down to provide some meagre shelter.

  But, despite the savagery all around them, some of the men were forced out of their bags next day to find stocks of seal or penguin. Skinning the beasts was appalling and freezing work in the sub-zero temperatures and one man reported that only the warmth from the dead animals’ bloody carcasses had saved their hands from severe frostbite.

  The blizzard blew all night and most of the next day, confining the men to their bags for long periods and once again denting their already fragile morale. The shrieking blizzard had demonstrated that their little beach was relatively safe from the sea and not likely to be engulfed by the tides. In the circumstances, this was a major source of comfort and they were happy to clutch at such straws.

  The main topic of conversation was rescue. It was abundantly clear that they could not expect help and equally, it was obvious that some of the men would not survive a long boat journey across the Southern Ocean to safety. Many were thoroughly beaten and despondent, almost resigned to their fate. The fatigue, exposure and stress had proved too much for some and their survival was in doubt. McNeish was especially gloomy about the prospects for the men on the beach and wrote:

  ‘I don’t think there will be many survivors if they have to put in a winter here.’4

  Hurley was equally pessimistic about the ability of some to resist the elements much longer and later recalled that the first few days on Elephant Island were ‘hell’. He did not believe they would all survive. Wordie, the geologist, estimated that a total of eight men were ‘broken down and unable to work’. These would have to be rescued – they could not rescue themselves. It would mean that a party of the fittest and most capable would have to take one of the boats and sail across the ocean for rescue.

  Shackleton decided that six men would take the James Caird, the most seaworthy of the three boats, and bring a relief ship. All that had to be decided was who was to go and where they would go.

  There were three principal options for relief. The nearest was Tierra del Fuego at Cape Horn on the southern tip of South America, about 600 miles (965 km) away to the northwest. Next came Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, which lay about 550 miles (885 km) almost due north. Lastly there was South Georgia, a little over 800 miles (1,300 km) to the northeast. Each journey presented immense obstacles.

  To reach the closest points at Cape Horn or Port Stanley, the tiny boat would have to cross the fearsome Drake Passage and sail into the teeth of a strong westerly current and howling winds. Worsley observed that currents run at over 60 miles (96 km) a day and he added:

  ‘This meant we had practically no hope of making Cape Horn, the nearest point; very little of reaching the Falklands but fair gales and favouring currents to S Georgia.’5

  In theory, the prevailing winds would blow from behind the little boat and push them along towards South Georgia. The only realistic choice for rescue was South Georgia – the starting place for their journey fifteen months earlier.

  Shackleton began by calling for volunteers to man the James Caird. Shackleton himself would lead the rescuers and Worsley, a navigator who had already demonstrated supreme skill, would be indispensable. Wild, the obvious choice for the journey, was asked to remain behind on Elephant Island to hold the remaining party of 22 castaways together.

  Tom Crean was an ideal man for either staying behind with Wild or crossing the Southern Ocean with Shackleton. He would be invaluable to Wild on the spit at Elephant Island, helping to maintain morale and leading by example during what might be a long and stressful wait. Wild could not ask for a better lieutenant. Equally, his immense physical and mental strength and experience of the sea would be vital on the boat journey.

  Crean’s outstanding record on two expeditions with Scott, notably the rescue of Evans, provided the right credentials for the task facing Shackleton. Moreover, Crean carried the respect of his colleagues. There was nobody better qualified for the daunting tasks ahead, whether on the beach at Elephant Island or in the James Caird on the open seas.

  Initially Shackleton asked the Irishman to remain behind with Wild, sensing that his right-hand man would need strong support. But Crean, in Shackleton’s words, ‘begged so hard to come that, after consulting Wild, I promised to take him’.6

  The biographer, Huntford, claimed that Shackleton took Crean because he was a fellow Irishman while another writer, Alfred Lansing had a different explanation. Lansing, who wrote his book Endurance in the late 1950s after consulting many survivors of the expedition, said Shackleton was not sure that Crean’s ‘rough, tactless nature’ would lend itself well to a period of enforced and perhaps long waiting.

  Shackleton also chose another Irishman, Timothy McCarthy, a powerful and experienced seaman who was also popular with the other men. Then he picked Chips McNeish, who had blotted his copybook by a minor mutiny when under pressure on the ice floe some months earlier. Shackleton was impressed with McNeish’s work in raising the gunwales but, more pertinently, he did not want a potential troublemaker disrupting the fragile peace among the unstable castaways left on Elephant Island. The last member was Jack Vincent, another experienced sailor who was also occasionally difficult and could be kept under closer supervision in the boat.

  The party and destination now decided, the men went to work preparing the James Caird for the momentous journey. McNeish, once again, performed minor miracles. There are no trees on Elephant Island so the resourceful carpenter cut up the remaining sledge and found other bits and pieces of wood from the lids of wooden supply cases, a few planks from the Dudley Docker and the mast from the Stancomb Wills.

  The main task was to cover the deck and to protect the little craft against the constant wash from the waves of the Southern Ocean. There was only enough spare wood to construct a frame, so McNeish finished the deck-covering with canvas. Without the covering, Shackleton admitted, the James Caird would never have survived the journey. The Wills’ mast was jammed into the hull from one end to the other along the keel to prevent the boat breaking her back under the strain of the gigantic seas which would hit them in the Southern Ocean.

  The preparatory work, in keeping with their ordeal so far, was a torture for the men. With winter setting in, temperatures had dropped and the winds picked up. Work was constantly interrupted and had to be abandoned altogether on 20 April because of a furious gale which beat down upon them.

  Crean was engaged in rigging the canvas covering over the James Caird, a painful and demanding task on the exposed beach. To sew the canvas, volunteers had to hold the material foot by foot over the blubber stove until it thawed out enough to manipulate. The canvas was so tough and frozen that the men had to use a pair of pinchers to pull the sewing needle through.

  Ballast was also needed for the voyage, so several of the less fit men were employed filling bags, which were hurriedly made from old blankets, with sand and shingle from the beach. Others gathered up large stones to place in the bottom of the boat and some were deployed to melt ice for the two casks of drinking water the men would take in the boat. For good measure, they would take along some extra blocks of ice.

  The preparation took the best part of a week, interrupted frequently by the bouts of severe weather. The plan was to set sail on 24 April, weather and the ice pack permitting. The last night on Elephant Island was bitterly cold and uncomfortable, but the men rose to find the sun shining. For the 28 desperate men anxiously searching for any opti
mistic signs, this was a good omen.

  Even their departure was not straightforward. The unladen James Caird was hauled down the beach and into the sea, moving quickly about 100 yards from the shore to avoid the breakers. But the little boat was heavily buffeted by the crashing waves and came close to being overturned even before the rescue attempt could be launched. Wild recalled that only the timely intervention of Crean and Worsley saved the James Caird from being wrecked in the heavy swell.

  At the same time, the Wills ferried 30 days of food and supplies out to the boat. On the second trip, the Wills was driven against some rocks and one of the two water casks was punctured. Unknown to the men, salty sea water leaked into their drinking water.

  On another occasion, McNeish and Vincent were thrown into the sea by the heavy swell and were forced to return to shore to swap their wringing wet clothes for dry garments with the men left on the beach. It was an opportune moment to remind the six men that they would not be wearing oilskins or sea boots for crossing the most turbulent ocean in the world.

  By midday, the James Caird was ready to begin the perilous voyage. Shackleton said goodbye to the men, saving a special word of grateful thanks and good wishes for Wild, on whom a heavy burden was about to fall. The Wills came alongside for the last time and the two crews leaned across, exchanging a few feeble but well-meaning jokes to lift spirits. One crewman from the Wills told them to make sure that Crean behaved himself when they reached shore and Worsley recalled:

  ‘As for Crean, they said things that ought to have made him blush; but what would make Crean blush would make a butcher’s dog drop its bone.’7

  Finally, the men leant across the sides, shook hands for the last time and prepared to get under way. On the shoreline, the castaways were a forlorn sight, though they waved hopefully and made sure that the parting cries of ‘three hearty cheers’ rose above the constant noise of the sea breaking around their feet. Hurley said the men felt confident about the ‘six proven veterans, seasoned by the salt & experience of the sea’. He estimated that the journey to South Georgia would take fourteen days.

  Slowly the James Caird began to pull away from Elephant Island, with the men on the beach straining for a final glimpse of the vessel as she rose and fell between the heaving swell. Very soon the tiny boat disappeared from view behind the dark menacing waves.

  It was a toss-up which party faced the greatest ordeal – the 22 castaways stranded on the bleak inhospitable beach at Elephant Island, or the six men preparing to sail across the world’s most dangerous seas in a 22 ft 6 ins (7 m) long open boat without proper navigating equipment. Worsley remembered:

  ‘This was the beginning of the ordeal by water.’8

  It was shortly after noon on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and South Georgia was 800 miles (1,300 km) away. On the same day on the streets of Crean’s homeland, Irish Republicans launched the Easter Rising against British rule.

  20

  An epic journey

  Right from the start, the Southern Ocean lived up to what Shackleton said was its ‘evil winter reputation’. Although they safely navigated their way through the immediate pack ice surrounding Elephant Island, winds rose to 30 mph and the sea picked up as evening approached. The only visible light in the vast expanse of ocean came from the occasional glow of Tom Crean’s pipe.

  The party had been split neatly into two groups who took turns with four-hour watches, with Shackleton, Crean and McNeish taking one and Worsley, McCarthy and Vincent the other. The men on watch had to be particularly vigilant against the ice, since a collision with a sizeable floe would spell disaster. Darkness brought the greatest danger of collision and the men on deck strained their eyes to spot any looming danger.

  Each man took spells at the tiller while the others pumped or bailed out the floods of water which constantly entered the boat. A man could hold the brass cylinder pump under the water for only five minutes before his hands went numb with the cold. By the time their watch had finished the men were exhausted and wet through. They all longed for waterproof oilskins.

  Indeed, the men were poorly dressed for their ‘ordeal by water’. They wore a heavy suit of Jaeger underwear and a large, loose-fitting Jaeger sweater, plus a suit of Burberry overalls, woollen helmet and a Burberry over-helmet. Their hands were covered by a pair of Shetland wool mitts and a larger pair of dog-skin mitts. On their feet there were two pairs of woollen socks, felt shoes and finnesko boots made from reindeer skin. However, the Burberry outer-wear was designed for dry cold and was not waterproof – the very opposite of what they needed in the Southern Ocean.

  Those not on watch crawled into their wet reindeer sleeping bags in the hopes of snatching a few hours’ precious rest on the uncomfortable packing cases, bags of ballast and rocks. The men had to wriggle into the narrow space between the ballast-lined floor and the oarsmen’s thwart which Worsley said was like a ‘dungeon cell’. Worsley remembered that more than once he awoke in sheer panic thinking he had been buried alive.

  The jagged edges of the rocks and ballast was especially hard on the men’s worn bodies which by now had developed severe boils on the wrists, ankles and buttocks caused by the combination of salt water, cold and continual friction from their rough clothing. To add to the discomfort, the men from the next watch were usually wriggling their way out at the same time and it required one person to direct the two-way flow of bodies like a traffic policeman.

  Cooking was especially difficult in the rolling and tumbling seas which added a new soaking with every crashing wave that came pouring over the sides. The hardest task was to keep the hoosh from splashing out of the pot as the little boat pitched and rolled.

  Crean was the cook, a vital task for men who badly needed hot, warming food and drink to counter the bitter cold and constant soaking. But a simple task on dry land was beyond the capacity of one man in the heaving Southern Ocean and it soon developed into a team effort.

  The tortuous routine involved Crean bending double over the primus stove because there was not enough room to sit up straight. He sat crouched opposite Worsley, their backs jammed against the side of the boat and feet pointing towards each other. The precious stove was then stuck between the pair’s legs to avoid being tipped over by the lurching seas. Worsley said he was the ‘scullion’ to Crean’s ‘chef’ and had to hold the ‘sacred hoosh pot’ to prevent it toppling over.

  Others fished out the reindeer hairs which fell from the heavily worn sleeping bags and gathered everywhere. Every meal or drink was laced with hair from the bags. On one occasion, Worsley was idly watching Crean stir the hoosh. To his amazement, ‘a filthy black paw shot out, seized a handful of reindeer hair from the hoosh, squeezed it out so as to waste nothing and then threw it away’.1 The men could cope with a little dirt but drew the line at reindeer hair.

  McCarthy dispensed chunks of ice into the pot and Crean stirred in the dried meat, usually about half a pound per man. Worsley described the routine:

  ‘All eyes, except the helmsman’s, were fastened on the cooker. Mugs & spoons were ready. As soon as it boiled Crean shouted “Hoosh” & blew out the primus. All [mugs] were held out, Crean rapidly filling them in turn. We took it down scalding hot … The first man to finish his hoosh jumped outside & relieved the helmsman for his while still hot.’2

  Crean took special care to ensure that everyone had the same amount of hoosh but there was a price to be paid for being a cook and Worsley added:

  ‘The hands of all of us were scarred with frostbite, but Crean’s hands and mine, in addition, were marked with burns from the primus.’3

  Eating was an ordeal in itself as there was not enough space to sit upright in the confined space. Worsley said it was distressing, because ‘the chest is pressed down on the stomach, one swallows with difficulty & the food appears to have no room to go down’.

  Despite the discomfort, one small consolation on the boat journey was that the six men were generally well fed. After the hoosh, the men also ate a ch
unk of ‘nut food’, a sweet nougat which had been brought along as part of the sledging rations for the trans-continental crossing. In between meals, hot milk was served regularly and supplemented with biscuits or sugar lumps. Worsley recalled that they trained themselves to guzzle the milk at scalding heat.

  However, even hardened sea dogs like Crean and Shackleton were affected by the constant heavy swell. Everyone was seasick, except Worsley and McCarthy, as the little boat rose and fell, swayed and listed in the rolling seas.

  The Southern Ocean, Worsley wrote, rolls ‘almost unchecked’ in the vast space between Antarctica and the land masses of South America, Australasia and South Africa. The waves rise 40–50 ft (12–15 m) and sweep forward in ‘fierce and haughty majesty’ and he added: