An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (13 page)

The hut was cramped but more comfortable than
Discovery
, where the men had to make do with a hammock slung across a crowded mess-deck. At Cape Evans, each man had his own bunk and the galley stove kept the inhabitants reasonably warm at around 52 °F (11 °C). The hut was double-glazed and the floors, walls and roof were insulated with dried seaweed sewn into quilts and a layer of ruberoid felt which helped to keep out the bitter Antarctic winter.

With the unloading of supplies and equipment now largely complete, attention switched to the two important tasks which had to be wrapped up before the severe Antarctic winter took grip. First was an important journey to lay down depot supplies for the spring march to the Pole. Second, the
Terra Nova
was to carry a party of six men under Lt Campbell
to undertake exploratory and scientific work to the east past the Barrier onto King Edward VII Land.

However, what was supposed to be a straightforward scientific outing had a couple of major surprises in store. Campbell’s party – geologist Raymond Priestley, surgeon Murray Levick and the seamen, George Abbot, Frank Browning and Harry Dickason – sailed eastwards along the Barrier, reaching a place called the Bay of Whales. Suddenly and unexpectedly, they caught sight of another ship. It was Amundsen’s
Fram
.

Campbell, a cultured man who spoke Norwegian, strode across the ice to meet Scott’s rivals. After a while, three of the English party went aboard for breakfast and Campbell returned the favour by inviting Amundsen and two others onto
Terra Nova
for lunch. They were both rather stiff, formal occasions with each side politely attempting to learn details about the other’s plans but without resorting to the vulgarity of a direct question. Half an hour after lunch
Terra Nova
sailed back towards Cape Evans with the news of the remarkable meeting.

After they had left, Amundsen reported that some of the
Fram
party had caught irritating colds.

Campbell promptly abandoned the eastern option and switched his attention to Cape Adare and Terra Nova Bay to the north and the six men were duly landed. However, 30 miles of ice later wrecked plans for the
Terra Nova
to lift them off the land and the six-man party was forced to spend the winter in a 12 ft × 9 ft cave, eking out a survival by killing seals and penguins. But, as if to remind even stranded sailors that naval discipline was inviolate, Campbell drew a line in the snow-filled cave to signify separate ‘quarters’ for the officers and men.

The achievements of Campbell’s party should not be underestimated. If they had not been overshadowed by the tragedy of Scott’s march to the Pole, the ordeal of the Northern Party in that tiny cave would undoubtedly have been regarded as one of the great endurance and survival stories of polar history.

The journey to lay depots for the following season was vital and Crean was an obvious choice for the mission, his experience on
Discovery
giving him a significant lead over most of the others who prepared for the first major trip of the expedition. He cheerfully worked alongside Taff Evans in preparing sledges for the thirteen-man party and Scott was relieved to have such a reliable, hard-working back-room team.

The intention was to carry a large amount of supplies and equipment to three depots out on the Barrier which would be picked up by the party returning from the Pole a year later in 1912. The depots were the vital supply links.

The first depot, to be called ‘safety Camp’, was barely 2 miles onto the Barrier and was thought to be a region of firm ice which would not disappear with the regular seasonal breakup of the sea-ice. The second depot was ‘Corner Camp’, some 35 miles from Hut Point,
Discovery
’s old base and situated at the place where travelling parties would turn away from the base camp region to head due south across the Barrier for the Beardmore Glacier and the Pole itself.

Finally, the most important depot would be laid some 170 miles from Cape Evans at 80° S. The cache, which became known as ‘One Ton Depot’ because of the large amount of supplies and equipment it would hold, was to be the crucial link in the supply chain for the returning polar party. But no one at this stage realised how crucial.

The thirteen-man party set out on 24 January 1911, with Crean leading a pony called Blossom, one of the eight animals which each carried around 570 lb of supplies. The others in the party were Scott, Lt Evans, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, Meares, Cherry-Garrard, Gran, Atkinson, Forde, Keohane and the Russian Dimitri, plus 26 dogs. The group, which was hauling a total of 5,385 lb, carried fourteen weeks’ food and fuel. Only Crean, Scott and Wilson had any real experience of polar travel, though Gran was an expert skier and was therefore somewhat accustomed to the environment.

The routine was briefly interrupted when Crean and some of the party broke off to visit the old
Discovery
hut at Hut Point, which was a nostalgic detour for the Irishman. It was seven years since he had last seen the old hut.

The depot-laying party, which began with great expectations, soon ran into difficulties and Scott immediately turned to Crean’s experience to solve the problem. Edward Atkinson, the surgeon, had developed a suppurating heel caused by chaffing soon after leaving Cape Evans. The heel was lanced when the party reached Safety Camp but his condition did not improve.

Scott decided to leave Atkinson behind and turned to Crean as one of the most trusted and dependable members of the party to look after the dispirited surgeon. Scott’s diaries recorded the incident:

Gran, with classic understatement, said:

Crean was obviously disappointed at missing out on the expedition’s first important mission and Cherry-Garrard recognised it. He recalled:

A spare tent and primus stove was found for the two men but a disappointed Crean was forced to watch the party break camp and disappear slowly southwards on 2 February. The
depot journey, which was to have been a fairly routine affair, ran into considerable difficulties that would have tragic consequences.

The weather deteriorated and the ponies, on whom Scott had placed such faith, suffered badly. Despite the exemplary care of Oates, the ponies were weaker than expected and, without equine snow shoes, they frequently sank deep into the soft snow surface, making their task a terrible ordeal. The realisation was dawning on the party, particularly the horseflesh expert Oates, that the ponies were not adequate for the planned task of carrying large quantities of supplies across the Barrier.

Although doubts about the ponies began to grow, Scott was equally unconvinced about the dogs. He had never quite come to terms with the difficult task of driving and handling the beasts. Indeed, his weakness with both the dogs and the ponies was to prove a serious flaw in his overall management of both expeditions.

Scott had great hopes that the ponies would be vital in hauling tons of supplies across the Barrier, thus saving the men from the back-breaking work of man-hauling. But, misguidedly, he despatched Meares to Russia to buy the animals. Meares was no expert on horse-flesh and he had purchased a poor bunch. Oates, the real expert, was not even consulted about the animals and instead was employed humping boxes around
Terra Nova
on the Thames like an ordinary docker when he might have served the expedition more profitably buying the right type of ponies. Significantly, Oates was appalled when he saw the beasts, dismissing them as a bunch of ‘wretched old cripples’.

Scott had a further difficulty with animals. He was squeamish and could not tolerate what he saw as cruelty or unnecessary blood-letting. It was an attitude that would prove costly because he could not bring himself to shoot the weaker dogs and ponies, leaving the meat as food for the men and animals on their return journey. It was precisely this method of
killing off dogs as he travelled which helped Amundsen to move so efficiently across the ice.

However Scott rejected the idea and complained to a dismayed Oates about unnecessary ‘cruelty to animals’. Despite protests from Oates, he decided to halt the harrowing pony marches and place One Ton Depot at 79° 28½’ S. It was about 30 miles north of where he planned, enough to make the difference between life and death.

Scott hurried back to Hut Point, losing two more dogs in the process. At Hut Point he was reunited with Teddy Evans who had returned early with three of the weaker ponies. There was a double dose of bad news. Evans had lost two ponies on his return journey and there was a letter from Campbell informing Scott about Amundsen’s camp 400 miles away at the Bay of Whales. Scott conceded that Amundsen’s plan was a ‘very serious menace’ to his ambitions and noted that the Norwegians were camped 60 miles nearer to the Pole. Scott, once again showing little understanding of utilising animals in polar travel, even wondered how Amundsen had got his 120 dogs onto the ice.

Crean had been busy carrying pony fodder and seal meat up to Safety Camp. He and Atkinson had also gone back to Hut Point and cleared the snow which had built up inside the familiar old
Discovery
hut.

On 24 February Crean was back in harness alongside Scott as they travelled back to Corner Camp, where they were to meet Bowers and Cherry-Garrard. Crean’s experience of the ice was invaluable to Scott and both agreed that travelling by foot was harder than using skis. But Scott persevered with foot-slogging and the men prepared to head back for Hut Point.

The simple return to Hut Point, which almost turned into a disaster, was to be the first of Crean’s many acts of heroism on the expedition.

Bowers, who was on his first polar journey and was understandably inexperienced, had been ordered to start back alone to Hut Point on 28 February with one of the remaining
ponies. Soon Scott ordered Crean and Cherry-Garrard to take three more animals and catch him up. Scott remained behind with Oates and Gran to nurse another sickening pony.

Bowers, as a marine lieutenant, held the senior rank and was an immensely enthusiastic and well-meaning character. But Crean knew far more about the ice and had developed into an accomplished traveller in these treacherous conditions. His experience was to prove invaluable.

The trio marched across the remaining miles of the Barrier and eventually stepped down onto the sea-ice adjacent to Cape Armitage, close to Hut Point. But they soon came upon ice which was moving, a dangerous sign that it was breaking up all around them. Crean, aware of the dangers of falling into the freezing water, suggested that they push farther west to where he had previously seen firmer ice, but the inexperienced Bowers was unsure. Although the ice was 5–10 ft (1.5–3 m) thick, water was squelching through in some places and they could feel the disturbing swell of the sea beneath them, which indicated that the ice was breaking up.

The ponies were close to exhaustion, darkness was descending and a mist was swirling around the three men. Bowers, nominally in charge, decided to camp for the night and lit the primus stove to make a drink of hot cocoa. It took one and a half hours to heat the water alone and in the misty darkness, Bowers mistook a small bag of curry power for the cocoa bag. Unwittingly, Crean drank his mug of boiling curry before discovering that anything was wrong.

But, barely two and a half hours later at 4.30 a.m., the three men were woken by strange noises and appalled at what they saw. The ice had broken up around them, one of the ponies had disappeared, two of the sledges were on another floe and then suddenly their own floe split in two.

The men were stranded on a 30-ft floe in misty semi-darkness and dangerously low temperatures, floating menacingly towards open sea and certain death. Cherry-Garrard recalled that it looked a ‘quite hopeless situation’.

The trio leapt up and began their desperate fight for survival, with the men jumping from one moving floe to another, dragging their sledges and enticing the three terrified ponies to join them. They desperately needed to find a larger, more solid piece of ice.

Crean, summoning up his
Discovery
experience, was a tower of strength and offered considerable reassurance to the two inexperienced men. Bowers observed that the Irishman behaved ‘as if he had done this sort of thing often before’ which, of course, he had. Bowers and Cherry-Garrard, who were suffering their first ordeal in the ice, could not have chosen a better companion for the occasion.

When the men had gained some confidence in their ability to leap across the moving ice floes, another serious threat emerged with the sudden appearance of killer whales. It is not unusual for these whales to attack an ice floe in search of a meal, deliberately tipping a seal or penguin into the sea and its waiting jaws.

After about six hours of aimless drifting, with the killer whales still circling the marooned party, their floe came floating up close alongside the Barrier itself. It was only a small comfort since the Barrier presented a sheer cliff of ice some 15 or 20 ft high (4.5–6 m) and it was impossible to haul the ponies and sledges to safety.

At one stage there was a lane of open water between them and the Barrier about 150 ft (45.6 m) wide which Cherry-Garrard said was a ‘seething cauldron’. Bergs were falling off the Barrier and killer whales filled the rest of the lane. At one point, Cherry-Garrard recalled seeing at least six whales crammed into a space between two floes which was no larger than normal room-size.