An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

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Lieutenant Teddy Evans, who by the time of Crean’s death had been promoted to Admiral Mountevans, owed his life to the Kerryman and he never forgot the historic solo march Crean undertook to save his life, expressing a love for the Irish giant. It was Tom Crean who sprang into action, as the men were circled by a group of killer whales, leaping from floe to floe, until he got near enough to the towering icy face of the Barrier, which he somehow managed to scale. No doubt exhausted by such an arduous and dangerous ascent, he still managed to trek across the Barrier and raise the alarm, leading to the rescue of Garrard and Bowers. Tom Crean in 1915 on board Endurance, ice-bound in the Weddel Sea. (Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge) Tom Crean continued life in the Navy and in 1906 Scott, whom he had made such an impression upon, invited Tom to serve with him on the Victorious, an invitation he duly accepted. On the Discovery expedition, Tom Crean also experienced being caught out in temperatures as low as -54 C, falling through thin ice into frigid waters, twice almost losing his life as a result and of course living on a ship that is completely entrapped by ice, for almost two years. When Discovery finally slipped from its icy hold and returned to Portsmouth in September 1904, Tom had firmly established himself as one of the most reliable and valuable crew members aboard, so much so that Scott singled him out for special mention for his ‘ meritorious service throughout‘ and promoted him to Petty Officer 1st Class.

The Discovery expedition was famed as one that laid the marker for future attempts to break the records for reaching farthest South yet it was also noted for being the one that was to divide the two leaders.

Discovery

In 18 hours and after an arduous march in ever worsening conditions, an exhausted Tom Crean summoned the help required to save his commander. His feat was to earn him and his colleague Lashly, who’d stayed behind to nurse the critical patient, the Albert Medal for their remarkable display of bravery.

RV Tom Crean, commissioned at ceremony in Dingle, expected to put Ireland at forefront of marine science ]In the land-grabbing days of empire, tensions were high between French and British ships sailing to the outlying islands around Australia, as each sought sovereignty of territory as yet unclaimed by either nation. The particular mission of Ringarooma over the course of the southern hemisphere’s winter period was described as a “punitive mission”. The aim was to subjugate warring tribes of the region. The following report of a correspondence sent by an officer of Ringarooma during the mission does not detail how certain tribal customs impacted on the minds of crew members who encountered evidence of them. The mental wellbeing of such witnesses was, in the Victorian era, of little concern. Of the final eight men that reached within 170 miles of the pole after an arduous trek across Antarctica’s unforgiving terrain, five would be chosen to basque in the glory of being the first to reach the South Pole. Scott chose to disappoint his second in command Lieutenant Evans, William Lashly, another hardy polar veteran and a tearful Tom Crean. As Crean waved goodbye to his colleagues little was he to know that it would be the last time he would see them alive again. The Terra Nova expedition was to become the first of Tom Crean’s three journeys to Antarctica that would document his heroism. It was whilst returning from a mission to establish stores at One Ton Depot that would prove vital for Scotts attempt to reach the Pole, that Crean’s disregard for his own safety led him to summon help for two colleagues who were left stranded on an ice floe. Crean, Garrard and Bowers decided to pitch tents for the night, and unwittingly, they did so on very unstable ice. They awoke during the night to discover the ice was breaking up beneath them. The men were soon adrift on an ice floe, separated from their sledge and equipment, and one of their horses was lost to the dark icy water.

Pulling up near the RRS Discovery in New Zealand in 1901 changed the course of Tom Crean's life. Photograph: Matt Loughrey Fearing Evans would die unless something drastic was done, Tom Crean decided to strike for Hut Point himself, leaving Lashly to care for Evans in a hastily erected tent. Crean took no sleeping bag with him as he did not intend stopping until he had reached help, and the only sustenance he carried were a couple of biscuits and some chocolate. Yet, amazingly after 18 hours Crean arrived at Hut Point, just ahead of a ferocious blizzard, and raised the alarm. It was February 19th and Tom Crean had just completed an act which has been widely hailed as the single most, greatest act of bravery, in the history of exploration. When the blizzard had passed a rescue team set off to find Evans and Lashly, and politely refused Crean’s plea to join them. No doctor capable of undertaking the operation was available in the Tralee hospital he attended and so he was transferred, via ambulance, in a 70-mile journey to Cork’s Bon Secour hospital where finally his appendix was removed. The visual design of the newly published biography is a radical departure from the self-published editions that preceded it and further information has been added to Tom Crean’s storyboard. After a hard apprenticeship training under a strict naval regime, one of Tom Crean’s earliest naval assignments was to the Pacific Station in South America. There, whilst serving aboard the ships, HMS Royal Arthur and later, HMS Wild Swan, he was thrust into an international incident that, for a time, threatened to escalate into a wider conflict. Fortunately, the incident, in Corinto, Nicaragua, ended peacefully. After his initial years of service in the Americas was up, Tom Crean returned to England where he would continue to build up his arsenal of naval skills at shore training establishments.His funeral was the largest Annascaul had ever witnessed as his family, neighbours, friends and no doubt, a number of former colleagues bade farewell to the Irish Giant. Antarctica cruise: We have seen whales – their spouts and breaches, their mournful wails – in abundance ] Over the following three years, Crean would repeatedly find himself thrust into international incidents in an era when rebellions and battles for territory were commonplace across the countries and islands in an area that stretched from the Arctic to the Antarctic Circles. Tom and Ellen would go on to have three children, Mary, Eileen and Kate, the middle child, Kate, suffered from ailments throughout her short life and passed away aged 3 in 1924 soon after she had returned with her parents from a trip to Lourdes as part of the Irish National Pilgrimage.

Tom Crean is one of the most iconic figures in Irish history. Born in 1877 in County Kerry, he enlisted in the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen, the start of a career that would bring him to the most extreme environments on Earth. Having spent his early career in the building trade, Tim began writing via his own online consumer advice forum in 1999. As a result, he was signed up by ITV to act as Project Consultant on popular television DIY shows such as ITV’s Better Homes, followed by Granada’s 60 Minute Makeover. Tim was then commissioned to take a lead role in a two-part special for ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald. In a sociopolitical experiment that subsequently rendered the project a great success, transforming a derelict Liverpool terraced house into a fully refurbished home at a fraction of the cost of its proposed demolition and the rehousing of its neighbourhood community. In the early hours of May 19th the men roped themselves together and climbed into the unknown interior of the island. They faced peaks, glaciers, crevasses and freezing temperatures, all of which they overcame on a continuous 37 hour march, which ended with their miraculous arrival at the Stromness whaling station on the islands eastern coast.

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Tom probably left school around the age of 12, with little more than the ability to read and write, and he would have done so to help out on the family farm. It is thought that one day while at work on the farm, and tending to cattle, Tom allowed them to stray into a field of potatoes, much to his father’s annoyance, and during the resulting argument, Tom vowed to run away to sea. Tom Crean never spoke of his exploits, never gave interviews and sadly left no memoirs of his exploits. Born into poverty, the son of a tenant farmer, Crean anticipated further hardships but took comfort from the idea that friends who had made this same journey might be there to greet him when he began his training at Devonport on the south coast of England. He was in for a rude awakening. No such welcomes awaited him.