An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor

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So instead of a glorious push for the Pole, Crean, Lashly and Evans now faced the prospect of hauling their sledge on a 750 mile return trek, having already spent 9 arduous weeks on the ice. On the fourth of January they waved off the Polar Party, and watched as they slowly disappeared into the vast white distance, never to be seen alive again. At this point in the story, the news publications and history books, quite naturally, focus their attention on Scott’s failed attempt to be the first human to plant a flag at the South Pole. It was though, an accolade that would fall to the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. 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.

After leaving New Zealand in November, Terra Nova was fortunate to survive a violent hurricane, as it voyaged southwards, but by January 1911 the men were on the ice. 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.A book review, written by Peter Malone of the Irish Mail on Sunday, shortly after its release described the book as ‘a riveting labour of love’and ‘a gripping yarn and a valuable addition to the literature of Antarctic exploration.’ 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.

His subsequent display of heroism would come at a time when Crean valued his chances of becoming among the pioneers to negotiate their way to the South Pole. 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. 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. On this date, and after 5 years of intense research, the most complete biography ever written about Tom Crean was released under the highly reputable publishing house, Irish Academic Press, under its imprint, Merrion Press.

Later Life

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. Tom Crean’s penury is more easily dealt with than the complexities of political and social life in Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s. Crean was one of ten children born to impoverished hill farmers outside the small Kerry village of Annascaul on the Dingle Peninsula. Education was rudimentary, and youngsters like Crean were of more value to the family working in the fields than studying mathematics or writing essays. Crean left school with little more than the ability to read and write, a significant fact that would contribute to his later profile.