An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Page 8

  Crean’s first appointment after Discovery was something of an anticlimax after the adventures in the South. He was sent to the naval base at Chatham, Kent, where for accounting purposes, he was assigned to HMS Pembroke on 1 October 1904. The naval routine may have been somewhat drab and unexciting after the more colourful two and a half years in Antarctica and he was doubtless keen for a return to more active duties. However, he did not have to wait very long before he was reunited with Scott, a relationship which would continue almost unbroken until the explorer’s death in 1912.

  Initially, he transferred to the torpedo school of HMS Vernon at Portsmouth and the following February he ran into an old Discovery friend, Taff Evans, now PO 1st Class at the gunnery school. Doubtless they shared a drink or two and talked over old times, plus the prospects of going South again. They made a formidable pairing, both tall and broad shouldered, seasoned and respected naval men in their late twenties with the proud record of having served in the famous Discovery expedition.

  Scott wanted Crean back under his wing. Scott, not an easy man to get close to, was evidently much impressed with the work of Crean on their first visit to Antarctica and had earmarked the Irishman as a prime candidate for his inevitable return to the South. However, for much of 1905, Scott was immersed in the arduous task of writing his book, The Voyage of the Discovery, which finally appeared on 12 October 1905.

  Shortly before publication, he sent a copy of the book to all members of the Discovery crew. But inserted in Tom Crean’s copy was a personal request that Crean rejoin his former leader as coxswain as soon as Scott managed to get back to sea. Crean was delighted and eager to team up with Scott again. On 10 October, the day before he was transferred to duties at the Harwich naval base, Crean wrote back to Scott:

  ‘I am very thankful for you being so good as to let me have your well written book on the Voyage of the Discovery. It will remind me of being on the Veldt again. I am very glad to have the chance of becoming your Cox. Thanking you very much sir for all you have done for me.’5

  In September 1906, precisely two years after Discovery had returned to England, he was duly reunited with Scott and the prospects of returning to the South had suddenly brightened. Scott had requested that the Irishman join him on board the battleship HMS Victorious in the Atlantic Fleet.6

  Although Tom Crean was never a close friend to Scott, it is clear that the Irishman was held in particularly high regard. In-built class distinction and social barriers ensured that a personal friendship was unlikely, and they were also two entirely different characters. Scott was an introverted, moody man who did not make friends easily, whereas Crean was a large, outgoing, gregarious, self-confident character at home in the company of others.

  Scott was attracted by the Irishman’s unshakeable loyalty and reliability, particularly in the forbidding Antarctic climate where these qualities were even more important. Crean, Scott felt, could be trusted and wanted him alongside for the return to the South.

  Scott, a navy man through and through, saw great strengths in the ordinary seaman and regarded Crean and the two other Discovery veterans, Taff Evans and Bill Lashly, with particular affection. The three men represented what Scott saw as the finest qualities of the navy ranks and he came to trust and rely upon them, giving them considerable responsibilities and influence. Indeed, he saw them almost as talismanic.

  After the near disaster of his ‘furthest south’ journey in 1902–3, Scott never again went on a major polar sledging journey without at least one member of the Crean–Evans– Lashly triumvirate in the harness alongside him.

  By the beginning of 1907, Crean and Scott had joined HMS Albermarle, also in the Atlantic Fleet. Crean was coxswain and Scott flag captain of the battleship, which had a full complement of 700 men. He was already planning a second voyage to Antarctica and in the light of his work on Discovery, had already pencilled in the Irishman’s name as a member of the next team. There was little doubt Crean would be asked to go and little doubt that he would say yes.

  Their relationship – overwhelmingly a working relationship – continued to grow and expand. Crean also followed Scott to HMS Essex and HMS Bulwark in 1908. One of the naval surgeons on board was George Murray Levick, who would later find himself alongside Crean on Scott’s fateful last expedition to the Antarctic.

  By spring 1909 Crean was back at the Chatham naval barracks, assigned to HMS Pembroke. This was the defining moment for Scott, when after much personal debate and deliberation, he finally decided to go South again. And, with fortunate timing, Crean was present when the historic and, for Scott, fateful, decision was taken to seek the South Pole.

  The occasion was March 1909, when the news broke that Shackleton had returned from the Antarctic in Nimrod after smashing Scott’s ‘furthest south’ record and coming within striking distance of the Pole. Shackleton and three companions – Jameson Adams, Eric Marshall and Crean’s former Discovery colleague, Frank Wild – had suffered terrible hardship and overcome dreadful travelling conditions to reach 88° 23′ south. It was a tantalising 97 miles (155 km) from the Pole but it might as well have been 97,000,000 miles.

  Shackleton could have made it over those remaining few miles and achieved lifelong fame by becoming the first man to reach the South Pole. But the four-man party would almost certainly have died on the appalling journey home, struck down by a combination of scurvy and starvation. Shackleton had to make the heartbreaking and very brave decision to turn his back on fame and glory and struggle back to base camp with the prize within his grasp. As it was, the four men survived by the narrowest of margins.

  Shackleton was deeply disappointed and knew that, with Scott’s own plans coming to fruition, the glory of being the first to reach the South Pole would inevitably be snatched from him. But in a memorable remark to his wife, Emily, he said that ‘a live donkey is better than a dead lion’.

  Scott learned about Shackleton’s achievement when he and Crean, then coxswain on HMS Bulwark, were travelling by train to London in spring 1909. Scott bought a newspaper at the station with news of the remarkable journey and ran along the platform to tell Crean: ‘I think we’d better have a shot next’.7 Some years later, Dr Edward Atkinson, who was to become a key figure in the subsequent expedition, would declare that this unheralded and insignificant event ‘… settled the moment of the commencement …’ of Scott’s last expedition.8

  Crean was barely four months away from his thirty-second birthday.

  News of Shackleton’s near-miss in the South came in the same year as the Americans Robert Peary and Dr Frederick Cook had each claimed to have reached the North Pole. It helped ignite a growing international interest in conquering the South Pole, by now the last unexplored spot on the globe.

  The lurid stories of Shackleton’s memorable journey and his penchant for publicity had effectively turned the South Pole challenge into a race. The Americans were rumoured to be interested in a dash to the Pole; so, too, the Germans and Japanese. But little was heard about any interest from Norway, the most seasoned and highly respected of polar travellers.

  Scott took up the challenge and set about what for him was the uncomfortable task of raising funds for the British Antarctic Expedition, as it was formally called. Scott disliked the fund-raising element of his expeditions, which was a combination of begging and cajoling from governments, institutions, private companies, wealthy benefactors and public subscriptions.

  Scott was no rabble-rouser and he lacked the charm and wit of Shackleton to handle an audience at fund-raising events. Shackleton, in turn, did not possess the administrative ability of Scott.

  But throughout his life Shackleton enjoyed good fortune at important moments, whereas Scott did not. For example, Shackleton returned home from his Nimrod expedition saddled with debts of £20,000 (equivalent to over £1,700,000 in today’s money) and no obvious method of redeeming them. It was typical of his luck that the Government came to his rescue, awarding him a knighthood and wiping out his debts
.

  In the event, Scott struggled to raise the £40,000 (today: £3,400,000) he needed. It eventually came from a mixture of government grants, donations from wealthy private individuals and earnings from the sale of publishing rights, plus public subscriptions. The Liberal Government of Herbert Asquith donated £20,000 but, disappointingly, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society, who had sponsored the Discovery expedition, contributed only £750 (today: £63,000) between them for Scott’s bid to conquer the Pole.

  Scott went on a whirlwind tour of the country, drumming up money from public subscriptions, sometimes without much success. At one gathering in Wolverhampton he raised the tiny sum of £25 (today: £2,000). Some members of the expedition also chipped in with personal contributions, either with direct donations or by accepting nominal sums in wages. The cavalry captain, Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates, donated £1,000 (today: £85,000) to the enterprise which was to cost him his life.

  The ship presented a further problem, partly because the natural choice, Discovery, was unavailable. It had been chartered to the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada, so Scott turned to the Dundee whaler, Terra Nova, which had been on the 1904 relief expedition and was fairly well known to him. It was bought with a down-payment of £5,000 (today: £425,000) and the promise of a further £7,500 when funds became available.

  Terra Nova was eminently suitable, a veteran of the whaling fleet and the trip to McMurdo Sound some years earlier to rescue Discovery had proven her worth. Built in the Dundee shipyard of Alexander Stephens in 1884, Terra Nova was 187 ft long and registered at 749 tons. Experienced sailors said she was ‘an easy ship’.

  But while the money-raising campaign plodded along very slowly, there was no problem raising a party of men to go South. Scott set up an office in London’s Victoria Street and was promptly deluged with applications from 8,000 willing volunteers drawn from all walks of Edwardian life. Scott’s Discovery expedition a few years earlier had alerted the public to Antarctica, but Shackleton’s heroic failure had aroused a more popular response and the public now wanted the South Pole to be conquered.

  Scott wanted to surround himself with tried and trusted people, including a few carefully chosen men from the Discovery years such as Tom Crean. He was helped by the Admiralty’s slightly unusual decision to allow him to choose his own team, although unlike Discovery, this was not to be a Royal Navy-dominated expedition.

  Crean, after spending the past two and a half years working alongside Scott, had been selected even before the expedition had been formally launched. From places like the Chatham barracks and in the Atlantic fleet, Scott had confirmed what he had initially found on the Discovery – that Crean was the type of reliable, trusted character who would be invaluable to the venture.

  Although no record exists of earlier conversations, it is safe to assume that the matter was discussed at considerable length during the years Crean and Scott spent together in uniform. The appointment was made official when he wrote to the Irishman at Chatham from the offices of the British Antarctic Expedition in Victoria Street on 23 March 1910:

  ‘Dear Crean

  I have applied for your services for the Expedition and I think the Admiralty will let you come. I expect you will be appointed in about a fortnight’s time and I shall want you at the ship to help fitting her out. Come to this office when you are appointed and I will tell you all the rest.’9

  Crean, now approaching his thirty-third birthday, joined the Terra Nova on 14 April 1910, as a Petty Officer at a salary of 15s (75p) a week. The monthly pay of £3 (today: £255 per month) was somewhat better than the £2.5s.7d (£2.28) he received on Discovery and, of course, he was going back to his adopted home. He would be gone for another three years.

  Scott also signed up the two other veterans from Discovery, Taff Evans and chief stoker, Lashly, who with Crean were to become the expedition’s most influential figures ‘below decks’.

  Others on board from the old ship were PO Williamson and William Heald. Scott also recruited his friend, Dr Wilson, as head of the large and diverse scientific team. After Discovery, Wilson had undertaken a major study of a mysterious disease which was killing large numbers of grouse and by coincidence, in 1905, had visited Crean’s hometown of Anascaul on the Dingle Peninsula.

  The purpose of the expedition was primarily to reach the South Pole, but Scott was also anxious to complete a wide range of scientific work which would add a large degree of academic credibility to the mission. Under the guidance of Wilson, he took meteorologists, geologists, biologists, physicists, a motor engineer and Herbert Ponting, the 40-year-old photographer, or ‘Camera Artist’, who was to capture some unforgettable photographs and moving film footage of Antarctica.

  Scott’s Number Two was to be Edward ‘Teddy’ Evans, who had sailed on the first Discovery relief expedition in 1903 and knew Antarctica. A place was also found for Henry Robertson Bowers, a small, squat man of only 5 ft 4 ins with a beak-like nose and enormous strength who boasted a 40-inch chest measurement. Inevitably, Bowers was known as ‘Birdie’.

  Transportation was to be a key element of the Terra Nova expedition and Scott appointed the taciturn ex-English public schoolboy and cavalry officer, Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, to look after the Siberian ponies. The intention was that the ponies would carry essential supplies onto the Barrier and avoid too much man-hauling of the sledges. A slightly eccentric global traveller, Cecil Meares, was hired to look after the dog teams and Bernard Day, a member of Shackleton’s recent Nimrod party, was appointed to take care of the motor-driven tractors. Scott agreed to take along a tall, dashing 21-year-old Norwegian ski expert, Tryggve Gran, after consulting Nansen in Norway shortly before the expedition sailed.

  The polar landing party, 31 in all, was rounded off by two Russians, Anton Omelchenko and Dimitri Gerof, hired to groom the ponies and help drive the dogs. It also included a six-man party, under the leadership of Captain Victor Campbell, which would explore the coast of King Edward VII Land.

  Crean joined Terra Nova and immediately bumped into several familiar faces like Evans and Lashly and soon began to get acquainted with the others as they came aboard over the next few weeks. He was on hand to record the party’s first meeting with the ill-fated Oates, who arrived on the Terra Nova, which was berthed at South-West India Docks on the Thames, in May. The arrival of Oates, a cavalry captain with a distinguished record from the Boer War, was eagerly awaited by the naval men who were keen to indulge in customary inter-service rivalry and banter.

  But as he stepped onto the ship, the 30-year-old Oates was wearing a battered bowler hat and a scruffy looking raincoat buttoned up to the neck, which was hardly the typical attire of a stiff-backed, cavalry captain. The seamen were astonished and according to later recollections from relatives of Oates, Crean observed:

  ‘We could none of us make out who or what he was when he came on board – we never for a moment thought he was an officer, for they were usually so smart. We made up our minds he was a farmer, he was so nice and friendly, just like one of ourselves, but oh! he was a gentleman, quite a gentleman and always a gentleman.’10

  Oddly enough, Oates, who became known as ‘soldier’, had once ridden at the Tralee races in Ireland, only a few miles from Crean’s home along the Dingle Peninsula in Kerry. Although they came from very different social and cultural backgrounds, the men would develop a mutual respect for one another.

  There was feverish activity in and around South-West India Docks in the spring of 1910 as Terra Nova prepared to set sail. Gran, the Norwegian, arrived in mid-May, and reported men tearing about ‘like busy ants’. An endless supply of equipment boxes were stowed away as the party tried to find suitable space on the crowded holds and decks for the sailing party of 60 men, 30 dogs, 19 ponies and countless boxes of stores and equipment for at least two years.

  Preparations were eventually complete and at 5 p.m. on 1 June 1910, Terra Nova finally slipped away from the wharf and onto the Thames. Some of those onboar
d were struck by two odd coincidences as Terra Nova moved slowly along the Thames. First, the nation was again mourning the loss of a monarch, King Edward VII who had died three weeks earlier after only nine years on the throne. As Discovery left the same port in 1901, Britain was still coming to terms with the death of Queen Victoria after 63 years on the throne and was preparing for the coronation of Edward. Second, Terra Nova had to sail past Discovery, now in the merchant fleet of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which happened to be berthed in the same dock.

  Terra Nova headed first to Greenhithe near Dartford and then round to Spithead and on to Cardiff, where she was to take on 100 tons of free coal and a large donation for the expedition’s kitty from generous public subscriptions in South Wales. Terra Nova had caught the imagination of Wales and the people of Cardiff alone raised around £2,500, (today: £212,000) the largest single donation of the £14,000 (today: over £1,200,000) which the expedition raised through public subscription.

  There was one other sober duty to perform before the ship left Britain. On the way to Cardiff, Scott mustered the entire party at the stern of the ship and quietly suggested that each man should make out a will before travelling South.