An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (15 page)

Away from the feasting, one important duty was to ensure that the remaining ten ponies were properly treated and in fit shape to carry out their planned task of shifting tons of essential supplies across the Barrier to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. Trusted people like Crean were asked to assume responsibility for individual ponies and take them for regular exercise throughout the winter.

Where possible, the men also took as much exercise as the conditions would allow and regular games of football were played on the ice in bone-chilling temperatures of –30 °F (–34 °C) and with winds howling to 40 mph. Scott also recorded that the best players were Atkinson, Hooper, Taff Evans and Tom Crean.

There were other diversions apart from eating and smoking. The gramophone, donated by HMV, was popular and the small collection of records was played over and over again in the winter evenings. Ideally the men might have enjoyed a little more musical variety from the pianola. Unfortunately, the repertoire of the musicians was limited and these lost their popularity as winter advanced!

Chess, draughts, backgammon and dominoes were also played and individuals could always retire to their bunks to read and reread the small library which had been provided. Tastes varied, with a few popular cheap novels contrasting with the works of Kipling or Dickens. Oates was famed for burying his nose in Napier’s
History of the Peninsula War
and, of course, there were the obligatory volumes of recent polar books for those who needed to stir their imagination about the hostile climate outside their door.

Church services were held on Sundays, with hymns sung. Crean, as a Catholic, was excused, just as he had been on
Discovery
and would say his prayers alone. There were occasional games of moonlight football and the
South Polar Times
, which first appeared on
Discovery
, was revived under the editorship of Cherry-Garrard. A few inveterate gamblers played poker but with money virtually useless in Antarctica, the currency was cigarettes.

One of the regular features which Scott introduced to help keep people busy was a series of three evening lectures a week delivered by individuals on a wide range of subjects. Ponting was a particular favourite with his talks and lantern shows on his lengthy travels around the world to countries like Burma, India and Japan. Bowers talked about polar clothing and Wilson lectured on the Antarctic’s birds. Oates, predictably, ventured forth on horse management, the physicist Charles Wright tried to hold everyone’s attention with The Constitution of Matter and geologist Frank Debenham lectured on the classification of rocks which, he admitted to his diary, was a ‘very dry subject’.

The highlight of the lecture season came on 8 May when Scott outlined his plans for the forthcoming polar journey which provided the first clear indication that the explorers faced a very tight and potentially hazardous schedule. He estimated that the party would be gone for a total of 144 days and would not return to Hut Point until about 27 March.

Scott could not afford to start earlier because of the weakness of the ponies who, as the depot-laying journey had demonstrated, were not suited for travel across the ice and highly vulnerable to the low temperatures of the Antarctic spring. Just as worrying to some was that the scheduled date of return was dangerously late in the season when temperatures would plunge.

It was certainly too late to catch the ship,
Terra Nova
, which would have to leave the South by about 10 March to avoid being frozen in like
Discovery
. This, in turn, meant that
the men on the polar party faced a second winter in the Antarctic, an unhappy prospect for some as they were only just starting their first sojourn.

The men who would lead the assault on the Pole faced a daunting itinerary. It consisted of five months of sledging, first about 400 miles (640 km) across the Barrier, then a 120-mile climb of 10,000 ft (3,000 m) up the Beardmore Glacier and finally around 350 miles across the uncharted Polar Plateau.

After reaching the Pole they would retrace their steps across the Plateau, down the Beardmore and across the Barrier at a time when, as experience had shown, the weather conditions would be deteriorating badly. From the start, it was a high-risk exercise with precious little margin for error.

It was a round trip of about 1,800 miles (2,896 km), the longest polar journey ever attempted. The men would have to walk every mile, each one responsible for dragging up to 200 lb (90 kg) across the ice. More worrying than anything else was the knowledge that the party would have to spend 84 days – almost three months – on the hostile Polar Plateau itself, 10,000 ft above sea level and exposed to its fearsomely low temperatures.

The intention was to take groups of men in parties of three or four, dropping off support parties en route. It was still not clear whether Scott would lead a three-or four-man party on the final assault to the Pole and at this stage, no one knew who would be in the final party. Indeed, it is not clear from his writings at the time that Scott had entirely made up his mind about the men he would take to the Pole. Although he had many months to weigh up the merits of his men, he apparently did not choose his polar party until long after the expedition was under way.

Significantly, Scott again dismissed the idea of using dogs for the main assault and insisted that a combination of ponies and good old-fashioned man-hauling would be used to get to the Pole. His faith in the motor tractors had vanished during the winter.

Gran, who fully understood why Amundsen would employ dogs, was sceptical. He already felt distinctly uncomfortable as the sole Norwegian at Cape Evans but his reservations about the planned polar journey were purely practical. He wrote:

In the meantime, preparations were under way for a short but highly risky trip in the depths of the dark Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin from the rookery at Cape Crozier for embryonic research. The idea was Wilson’s, and Scott, who did not like confrontation, readily agreed to allow him to take along Bowers and Cherry-Garrard, even though he was concerned about the enormous risks of the venture. It was a horrendous trip which would later prompt Cherry-Garrard to call his classic book on the expedition
The Worst Journey in the World
.

The purpose of the jaunt was primarily scientific, although Scott also hoped that the three men would test out key equipment and food supplies for the more important polar journey in the spring. What he did not appear to appreciate was that the terrible journey would expose three important members of the expedition team, who were likely to be included in the polar party, to the most appalling travelling conditions and serious risks from which they were very lucky to survive.

The hazardous and unnecessary journey reflected the essential conflict between exploration and scientific study which characterised Scott’s last expedition and contrasted starkly with the single purpose of Amundsen’s expedition. While Scott had two aims, Amundsen was able to be single-minded.

A more decisive leader would have vetoed the winter journey in 1911, perhaps saving it for the following season when the Pole had been reached. It is inconceivable that
Amundsen would have risked key personnel on the Cape Crozier journey ahead of his attempt on the Pole.

The three-man group, pulling a 757-lb (343-kg) sledge, managed only a few miles of slog each day in the pitch darkness and almost unimaginable weather conditions. There were constant winds of around 60 mph and temperatures frequently sank to –50 °F (–45 °C). At one stage the thermometer plunged to an astonishing –77.5 °F (–61 °C). In such intense cold, their breath and bodily sweat froze and in one highly graphic recollection Cherry-Garrard said the three men in the sleeping bags shook with cold until they felt their backs would break. He said ‘madness or death may give relief’ and added that they thought of death ‘as a friend’.

They survived their horrible 36-day ordeal but the penguin eggs proved to be of little scientific value. The three, who were photographed by Ponting immediately after returning from their ordeal, had the haunted, shattered look of men who had stared a terrible death in the face. Gran perhaps summing up the feelings of many at Cape Evans, said that without doubt the three men were in ‘bad shape’ and added:

However, the men had only been out for 36 days, a quarter of the time the polar party faced and their poor condition aroused concern among the men at Cape Evans who were shortly to embark on their own hazardous trek. The fond hope was that the weather, at least, would not be as bad.

While they had been away, Crean’s experience of the Antarctic had been summoned once again to help surgeon Atkinson, who had gone out with Gran to read the thermometer in temperatures that had sunk to –28 °F (–33 °C) and with the wind howling at up to 45 mph. Gran returned unscathed but to illustrate the severity of the conditions, reported that it had
taken an hour to travel no more than 200 or 300 yards (274 m). But Atkinson was still missing.

Crean, Taff Evans and Keohane were sent out with lanterns but returned empty-handed. By now concern for Atkinson had grown and Scott ordered a major search. Crean, Evans, Keohane and Dimitri took a light sledge, a sleeping bag and a flask of brandy out into the freezing, dark Antarctic night.

Atkinson was eventually found with a badly frostbitten hand, having been wandering around aimlessly for five hours. It was another grim warning of the ever-present dangers and Scott said ‘we must have no more of these very unnecessary escapades’. He had overlooked the Cape Crozier trip.

Scott was equally busy putting together his plans for the march to the Pole and he had been much impressed with the contribution so far from his three stalwarts in the ranks, Crean, Evans and Lashly. He wrote:

The sun returned on 26 August after four months and preparations for the spring season and the march to the Pole began to accelerate as the gloom slowly lifted. But, as before, there were more mishaps which, although not fundamental to the success or failure of the expedition, merely reinforced the belief that it was an unlucky venture. The superstitious among the men would have been worried.

First Teddy Evans took Gran and Forde on a short spring trip to dig out Corner Camp, less than 50 miles from Cape Evans, where the polar party would turn due south and head for the Pole. The trio, pulling over 600 lb (270 kg) ran into
severe weather, with temperatures dropping sharply to –73.3 °F (–58.5 °C) or 105° of frost. Only weeks after the Cape Crozier ordeal, the spring temperatures had caught them out and Forde was badly frostbitten on the hands. Forde, who came from Cork, never fully recovered and was invalided home on
Terra Nova
in 1912 while the others headed towards the Pole. A little later the Australian geologist, Debenham, suffered a bad knee injury whilst playing in a football match on the ice outside the hut at Cape Evans. Ponting had wanted to record an ice-match on film and Debenham’s injury caused an irritating three-week delay in taking a geological party to the western mountains. In another film-related escapade, the cook, Clissold, had fallen heavily and was concussed while posing on the ice for Ponting.

Along the Barrier at the Bay of Whales, Amundsen, too, was getting impatient. Despite outward signs of confidence, he was worried about losing the race to the British party. On 8 September, while Evans was struggling against the elements on the Corner Camp journey, Amundsen’s eight-man party and teams of dogs had set out for the Pole. But it was far too early in the season, with temperatures on the Barrier sinking to close to –70 °F (–56 °C) and even the hardy dogs suffered badly. It was a rare mistake by Amundsen and after only a few days he bowed to the inevitable and returned to his base camp, Framheim, a chastened man.

Scott, meantime, was putting the finishing touches to his preparations. The years of meticulous planning, tedious fund-raising and idly sitting out the bleak Antarctic winters were finally over. The last great overland journey on earth was about to begin.

T
om Crean had an unusual role to play in the days before the historic polar journey began. Ponting was anxious to capture at first hand the experience of polar travelling on moving film and the ever-willing Crean was recruited for a starring role. He joined Scott, Wilson and Taff Evans in a man-hauling harness to demonstrate the method of travelling to be used for the next five months in the assault on the Pole.

Despite his long legs, Crean had a short, stabbing stride and the characteristic gait was clearly evident on Ponting’s cine film as he pulled the lightly-laden sledge alongside his friend Evans and behind Scott and Wilson in the mock exercise.

However, Ponting’s film is a marvellous record of the Heroic Age of polar exploration, which has never been surpassed. Although it could never catch the true horror of the fateful journey, the little film has left an indelible memory. He spent several hours photographing the four men, shooting a total of 700 ft (213 m) of film. He recorded the men pulling a sledge, erecting a tent and cooking in what was a faithful reconstruction of the daily routine on the ice. Wilson wrote about the filming in his diary: