An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (6 page)

After climbing slowly to 500 ft, Scott threw out the sandbag weights and the balloon shot upwards to about 800 ft. Fortunately, the weight of the chain halted the upward climb and Scott slowly began to descend. Despite the hair-raising escapade of his captain, the impetuous Shackleton immediately climbed into the basket and began his ascent. He took the first aerial photographs of Antarctica but neither saw anything useful. Wilson, irritated by the whole dangerous episode, said it was ‘perfect madness’ to allow novices to risk their lives. Fortunately for Wilson’s peace of mind, the balloon developed a leak after Shackleton’s ascent and was never used again.

But there was also some anxiety at the increasingly urgent need to find suitable wintering quarters before the season closed in and, worst of all, that
Discovery
might became stuck fast in the ice. By 8 February, Scott had reached the head of McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea, close to the imposing volcano Mount Erebus on the edge of the Great Ice Barrier. It was decided to establish the expedition’s base camp at this spot
and soon after, a shore party landed. The group immediately began to erect a wooden hut on a rocky promontory, which became known as ‘Hut Point’.

Originally, it had been intended that
Discovery
would return to the safety of New Zealand for the winter, leaving a landing party to overwinter and prepare for exploration in the following Antarctic spring and summer. But Scott changed his mind after finding a snug sheltered harbour in which the ship was expected to moor safely during the bitter Antarctic winter. Although the ship would be frozen in for the winter, the belief was that the spring and summer thaw would free her. He was wrong and it would be exactly two years before
Discovery
was freed from the grip of ice.

Parties of men worked flat out to bring provisions ashore to the newly erected hut and make the ship ready for its winter hibernation. It was long, heavy work but somehow they also found time for play and Scott recorded:

Scott also sent his novices out onto the ice in an early training session designed to get them accustomed to travel over unfamiliar terrain. Although Scott had consulted the expert Nansen before leaving England, he was blissfully ignorant of the skills of ski travel or dog-sledging. They made an inauspicious start to polar exploration when Charles Ford, the ship’s steward, slipped and broke his leg.

It was an unhappy start and Crean’s messmate, Williamson, dolefully recorded:

Shortly afterwards, the party began to dig in and prepare for the dreaded Antarctic winter.

H
ut Point, the site of
Discovery
’s winter quarters, is a small volcanic promontory which lies at the southern end of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound. In the distance stands the towering, smoking volcanic beacon of Mount Erebus, which rises 12,400 ft (3,779 m) above the frozen sea level and stands imperiously as the world’s most southerly volcano.

The narrow peninsula reaches out to touch the very tip of the Great Ice Barrier – the vast sheet of floating ice which is up to half a mile thick and covers an area larger than France. The Barrier is 400 miles long and almost 500 miles across at its widest point and in a warmer climate it would be an enormous triangular-shaped bay, lined on one side by an imposing chain of mountains, which point towards the South Pole. Now known as the Ross Ice Shelf, it is the flat, forbidding and hostile gateway to the Transantarctic Mountains, which ultimately lead 10,000 ft up (over 3,000 m) to the Polar Plateau and South Pole itself.

The Barrier was named after Sir James Clark Ross, who was awestruck when he first encountered the formidable sight 60 years earlier. As he sailed alongside, the Barrier loomed higher than his ships’ masts and Ross said that he might as well try to ‘sail through the cliffs of Dover’.

There was plenty of work for Crean and his colleagues before the sun finally disappeared for four long months and the officers, scientists and men had little time to waste on idle thoughts about the rigours ahead. Provisions for up to three years were landed, including 42,000 lb (over 19,000 kg) of flour, 3,000 lb (1,360 kg) of roast beef, 800 gallons (3,636 l) of rum and the 45 sheep who had managed to survive the horrendous trip south. There was also an endless supply of equipment, including extra clothing, tents, sledges and a windmill to power a dynamo for lighting. The party also carried a modest printing press on which the
South Polar Times
was published – the first journal to be published in Antarctica.

Although the hut had been erected, it was decided to spend the winter on board
Discovery
. Crean had quickly established himself as a popular and adaptable member of the party, capable of turning his hand to most tasks and with a great appetite for work. Armitage, the navigator and Scott’s second-in-command, was obviously fond of the Kerryman and had spotted a character in the making. In his book,
Two Years in the Antarctic
, Armitage wrote:

Crean was in his twenty-fifth year as
Discovery
sailed south and physically in his prime. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, taller than average, although not as tall as is often depicted. He had grown since enlisting in the Navy eight years earlier and Crean’s naval records show that he stood 5 ft 10 ins (almost 1.8 m), although some contemporary references described him as being well over 6 ft. It may be that his deep chest and broad shoulders conveyed the impression of greater height and at 5 ft 10 ins he would have been taller than many others at the turn of the century. He was a cheerful-looking soul, with dark brown hair and clear hazel eyes. His trademark was the broad, welcoming grin and a warm ‘open’ face.

Crean was quickly recognised as a thoroughly dependable and stalwart member of the
Discovery
party. He soon adapted to life on the ice, developing into a highly capable sledger who was disciplined and never afraid of hard work. Doubtless his upbringing on an Irish farm had acclimatised him to hard work but it was his adaptability, reliability and enduring sense of humour which probably marked Crean out from the bunch. The officers also discovered that he was someone who obeyed orders.

His selection for the first sledging party immediately after landing had shown that he quickly picked up the knack of man-hauling sledges quicker than most. It was an unlikely talent for a man from the splendid green fields and rolling hills of southwest Ireland.

It is full testament to his rapid progress that he became one of the most consistent ice travellers of the entire party. The expedition records show that Crean amassed a total of 149 days man-hauling sledges in just over two years with the
Discovery
in the South. Only seven of the 48-man party spent more time than Tom Crean in the sledging harness during the expedition. He was behind only Scott with 193 days, Taff Evans’ 173 days, Skelton’s 171 days, Albert Quartley’s 169 days, Barne’s 162 days, Wilson’s 158 days and Handsley’s 153 days.
¹
But it ranked him many weeks ahead of Lashly and Wild, two men who were to establish their own formidable reputations as sledge travellers in the South.

Crean accompanied Lt Barne on three notable sledging trips, which were a mixture of exploration and depot laying of supplies for other parties. These trips also provided early examples of the difficulties of sledge travel in the South and the serious dangers posed by the hostile polar climate, which brought him several narrow escapes. Crean endured a tough test of character in those early days on the ice as the party struggled to come to terms with the environment – and he passed with flying colours.

He also formed a close friendship with Evans and Lashly, two fellow sailors who, with Crean, were to become an
influential triumvirate in the Age of Polar Exploration. Crean, Lashly and Evans, with their background in the navy, formed a strong bond as soon as fate threw them together at Lyttelton in New Zealand and before long the trio were inseparable. In time they would become the backbone of Scott’s sledging parties.

Crean remained unflappable and phlegmatic in most situations, even though he had an unhappy reputation for accidents and mishaps. But the imperturbable Irishman was rarely shaken despite finding himself in some nasty and potentially fatal tight spots on all three expeditions on which he sailed. Throughout his career in the South, colleagues remarked on his unending cheerfulness and constant habit of launching into a song at the slightest excuse. One fellow traveller said he had the ‘heart of a lion’.

The
Discovery
expedition was Crean’s Antarctic apprenticeship and there is little doubt that without the experience of those early years he would never have made the outstanding contribution to polar exploration which was to become so apparent in later journeys. Both Shackleton and Scott clearly recognised the Irishman’s qualities even at this early stage in his polar career and both readily took the Irishman on subsequent trips south.

Ice anchors had secured the
Discovery
in its temporary berth, but as an insurance against the threat of being crushed by the ice, the ship’s boilers were kept permanently lit. The theory was that, in the face of any threat from the ice, the ship could make a quick getaway. The reality was different.
Discovery
became trapped and would remain a prisoner of the ice.

However, Wilson said that
Discovery
’s winter quarters were the ‘most perfect natural harbour’, helped by the abundant stocks of Weddell seals. Wilson’s hope was that the regular supply of fresh meat would eliminate scurvy, the debilitating disease which is caused by lack of vitamin C and for centuries had plagued sailors on long voyages. But, rather like the wishful thinking over
Discovery
’s quick getaway from the ice,
Wilson’s hope of avoiding scurvy was to prove optimistic. Indeed, it is likely that even in their winter quarters, the
Discovery
party suffered from the early effects of scurvy because they did not get enough fresh meat or vegetables. The men disliked the strong fishy taste of seal meat and instead preferred tinned meat. It is likely, therefore, that the party was weakened even before it began exploring.

Meanwhile, two observation huts were erected nearby and the men began the necessary but bloody business of slaughtering seals and penguins to provide food for the winter, despite their misgivings about the taste. Short reconnoitring trips across the ice were undertaken as the party began to familiarise themselves with the surroundings. Ski practice continued, although even at this early stage in proceedings Scott doubted their value. By contrast, some of the party had adapted well and Scott noted that Skelton, the chief engineer, was by far the best of the officers. He added that ‘some of the men run him close’ but he curiously did little to encourage their use. Scott’s discomfiture with skis may have been further hardened by a slight accident when he fell and damaged a hamstring.

Nor was there any real progress made in mastering the teams of dogs who had been taken south with the express purpose of pulling the party’s supplies as far as possible and saving the terrible toil of man-hauling sledges. As we have stated, dogs were to become the key method of travel across the ice, most notably by Amundsen, the finest of all polar explorers. But Scott, taking a lead from Markham’s antiquated methods, was already warming to the laborious and monotonous task of man-hauling sledges.

Man-hauling, the system of placing groups of men in harness and dragging heavy sledges on foot across the ice, is probably the most physically demanding form of travel anywhere on earth. The painfully slow, back-breaking work of hauling an 800-lb (360-kg) sledge over uneven and broken ground strewn with hidden crevasses is an exhausting exercise. But it becomes a debilitating ordeal in temperatures of –40 °F
(–40 °C) and in the face of biting winds and a swirling blizzard.

The principal strain is taken on the waist but when the sledge became stuck fast, it requires a succession of heavy jerks to jolt the dead weight out of its imprisonment. On soft snow, the physical exertion is immense, reminiscent of pulling a dead weight across sand. It was one area of activity where class and rank did not matter, with officers and men in the same harness engaged in the same exhausting struggle, each man desperate to pull his weight.

The system also demanded that the haulers had to be well fed to compensate for the heavy work. But there were no seals, penguins or birds to yield fresh meat for hungry men once they left the shore-side base, so the long-distance travelling parties had to carry every ounce of food with them on any long journey.

Man-hauling over a long distance, therefore, became a vicious circle for the men, involving a life-or-death equation of weight versus distance. The farther they travelled, the more food they had to drag and the more food they had to haul, the weaker they became and the less they travelled. It became a delicate balancing act to measure the amount of food against the prospective distance to be travelled.

Although explorers developed a system of leaving depots of food brought out by supporting parties, it meant that man-hauling parties could only travel as far as the supplies of food they could carry on sledges weighing 700 or 800 lb. Each person in a typical four-man team was regularly pulling the equivalent weight of 200 lb (90 kg) a head across soft snow, occasionally sinking up to their midriffs and constantly battered by bitter, bone-chilling winds. Even worse was the fear that the fragile ice might crack, sending a man crashing to his death down a crevasse to a concealed abyss below.