An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (12 page)

It was typical of Amundsen’s single-minded devotion to his calling that at an early age he slept with his bedroom windows open during the freezing Norwegian winter nights to help toughen himself for the challenges ahead.

He sailed on the
Belgica
in 1897–8, the first expedition to overwinter in Antarctica. Between 1903–6 he achieved everlasting fame when his tiny 47-ton ship,
Gjoa
, became the first to sail through the North West Passage across the top of the North American Continent, achieving something which navigators, particularly the British, had struggled to do for over three centuries.

After
Gjoa
, his ambition was to become the first to set foot on the North Pole. But he was thwarted by the Americans, Peary and Cook, who each claimed to have landed the big prize in 1909. Amundsen, irritated by the news, immediately set his sights on the South Pole, even though he knew of Scott’s
well-publicised plans. In his book,
My Life as an Explorer
, Amundsen would later write:

He kept his plans highly secret, even from Nansen, the father figure of polar exploration who lent him his specially-built ice ship,
Fram
, ostensibly for a journey to Arctic waters. Even the small party of tough Norwegians who signed up to go with Amundsen thought they were heading north to the Arctic as the
Fram
sailed away from Oslo, then known as Christiania. He further blotted his copy-book in the eyes of the British by furtively slipping out of Christiania under the cover of darkness at midnight on 6 June 1910. Coincidentally, 6 June was Scott’s birthday.

Amundsen was hugely ambitious and entirely focused on his goal. Whereas Scott’s expedition was a wide-ranging mixture of exploration and various scientific studies, Amundsen had only one target in mind – to reach the South Pole and get home again with the news in the fastest possible time. There was little academic or scientific work to hamper proceedings and his single-mindedness was reflected in the small group of trained specialists he took on the historic South Pole journey.

Sverre Hassel was an expert dog driver, Helmer Hanssen an experienced navigator and first-rate dog driver, Oscar Wisting was another fine dog driver and utility man and Olav Bjaaland was a champion cross-country skier and ski-jumper. Others in the party included Hjalmar Johansen, who had been with Nansen on his epic ‘furthest north’ fifteen years earlier.

The drama of the most famous and tragic race in the history of exploration was under way in earnest.

Scott had initially shown very little sign of emotion as he digested the news of Amundsen’s challenge. The introverted explorer bottled up his anger and apprehension at facing what he knew would be a formidable and highly skilled opponent.
Instead of displaying outward signs of concern, Scott plunged himself deeper into the organisation of the expedition, including launching several last minute attempts to raise more money.

On 28 October 1910,
Terra Nova
sailed into another warm welcome at the small New Zealand port of Lyttelton, where by chance Crean had launched his polar career. It was almost nine years since
Discovery
had first landed at Lyttelton and a little more than six years since Crean, Evans, Lashly, Wilson and Scott had left there.

Lyttelton is the port of Christchurch, New Zealand’s most English of cities whose very name derives from Christ Church College, Oxford. It sits beneath impressive mountains and has been linked with Antarctic discovery since the 1840s when James Clark Ross and the American, Charles Wilkes, visited the area before going south.

The little port had changed very little in the years since the explorers had last set foot there and the party was at ease as they completed the last-minute preparations for the coming journey south. Some even took time off for long walks to feel the final tread of grass under their feet for some time to come.

Another month would pass while
Terra Nova
was prepared for the trip across the stormy Southern Ocean and all the final farewells were delivered. The wives of Scott, Wilson and Teddy Evans had travelled to New Zealand to see their husbands off, a luxury not afforded to the men. Instead, the sailors bade farewell in their own inimitable style and Taff Evans went on a drunken spree and fell into the harbour. Scott, still unhappy about Evans’ behaviour in Cardiff, promptly dismissed the Welshman, sending him 200 miles by train to Port Chalmers to cool off.

At 3 p.m. on 26 November,
Terra Nova
left Lyttelton for its last brief port of call, Port Chalmers at Dunedin. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the young Oxford graduate who was an assistant to Wilson, recalled that telegrams were sent from all over the world to wish the party good luck and the people of
Lyttelton once again rallied to provide a colourful send-off for the explorers. In a scene strongly reminiscent of
Discovery
’s departure in 1901, excited crowds gathered on the quays to wave their enthusiastic farewells, gaudily decorated steamers packed the harbour and bands played stirring and patriotic tunes.

Terra Nova
made a slow passage to Dunedin’s Port Chalmers where they would take on board their final supplies of coal and a contrite Evans. Scott forgave the Welshman and in the process angered his Number Two, Teddy Evans, who saw the reinstatement as bad for discipline. But Scott was not prepared to jettison one of his three talismen.

Finally, weeks later than expected,
Terra Nova
pushed off from Port Chalmers at about 2.30 p.m. on 29 November 1910, to another enthusiastic farewell. It was a moment for reflection and Teddy Evans admitted to having ‘a heart like lead’. Gran said that ‘all links with civilisation are cut …’

The ship, dangerously weighed down with equipment, food and a menagerie of dogs and ponies, was an ungainly sight. The Plimsoll line, it was said, had been painted out to avoid any embarrassing brushes with authority. Teddy Evans said the
Terra Nova
looked like ‘a floating farmyard’, while below decks the men from the sailing and landing parties were squashed together like sardines. Part of the mess deck had been given over to accommodate the Siberian ponies with the result that men frequently shared a hammock – one climbing in as the other left to take his watch. In the wardroom there was not enough room for all the officers and scientists to sit down together for a meal.

Lt Campbell, an expert sailor, was already worried about the vessel’s seaworthiness. He wrote:

Campbell’s concern was well placed. Shortly after leaving New Zealand,
Terra Nova
ran into a full-blown gale which raged for 36 hours and came very close to capsizing the fragile vessel. It was the first of many near and actual disasters on the expedition.

The ship’s log recorded a Force 10 gale, which on the Beaufort Scale puts the wind at between 55 and 63 mph. An officer estimated that the waves were up to 35 ft high and in one remarkable incident, one of the dogs was blown overboard by one mountainous wave and washed back on board by the next.

The over-laden ship pitched and rolled alarmingly and during the night the
Terra Nova
looked a doomed vessel when the main bilge pump became choked. Water poured in and the handpump, the only remaining defence against the flood, was woefully inadequate against the tidal waves of water. Officers, scientists and the men grabbed buckets and the party baled for their lives in the gathering storm.

Bowers said the storm force increased to 11, which is up to 72 mph and only marginally below the official 75 mph rating of a hurricane. He described the scene below as like a swamp and said the men were dependent for their lives on each plank of the little ship standing the strain. ‘If one had gone we would all have gone …’ he added.

Yet, at the depths of the crisis, Scott reported that the crew could be heard above the roar singing sea shanties. A heroic ten-hour ordeal by the crew working up to their chests in water had managed to repair the pumps and mercifully the gale abated soon afterwards. But two ponies and two dogs had died in the storm and the party had lost 10 tons of coal and a valuable quantity of petrol. Oates had struggled vainly for many long hours to keep the ponies alive and many of the exhausted men had worked virtually without a break for 48 hours.
Terra Nova
had come narrowly close to disaster but, miraculously, had survived.

As the gale abated,
Terra Nova
plodded southwards, crossing the Antarctic Circle on 10 December and making
good progress as the days passed. Christmas was marked by a major addition to the Crean family. The Irishman, who was fond of animals, had taken a pet rabbit on board the
Terra Nova
in New Zealand and Christmas Day turned out to be a day of celebration. Scott recorded in his diary:

Land was finally sighted on New Year’s Eve, 1910, much to the excitement of those seeing Antarctica for the first time. Scott had wanted to build his base at Cape Crozier, the eastern extremity of Ross Island, but landing was impossible and so they returned to McMurdo Sound, where
Discovery
had spent over two years.

This time the party chose a headland about 14 miles to the north of
Discovery
’s Hut Point, a little closer to the towering, smoking Mount Erebus. A piece of flat, firm ground was selected and work began to erect a hut where the party of 25 men would spend the Antarctic winter. In 1902, it had been called the Skuary because so many skua birds had been found there but Scott thoughtfully renamed the site ‘Cape Evans’ after his deputy, Teddy Evans.

There was precious little time to dwell on the new home because
Terra Nova
had not reached land until 4 January, which was comparatively late in view of the preparatory work that had to be completed before the winter season closed in. The first consideration was to offload supplies and equipment and then erect the hut before winter and darkness set in. Equally, Scott wanted to lay down some supply depots on the Great Ice Barrier for next season’s assault on the Pole before the weather deteriorated and travel became impossible.

In the flurry of activity, the landing and ship’s parties worked for up to seventeen hours a day hoisting supplies off
the
Terra Nova
and carrying them a mile or so across the ice to the slowly emerging hut. Both the dogs and ponies were put to work and seemed to revel in the energetic activity after the ordeal of the dreadful journey across the Southern Ocean. Crean was put in charge of one of the ponies, each journey to the hut ferrying 1,100 lb of precious supplies for the wintering party.

But another catastrophe struck when one of the three motor tractors, which Scott saw as vital for carrying tons of supplies across the Barrier, suddenly plunged through the ice into 120 fathoms of freezing water. The three tractors bore a strong resemblance to the tanks which would be used in the First World War and were capable of hauling a ton of equipment at a top speed of 3½ mph. Although this was very slow, the hope was that the tractors would cut down the amount of work that men would be forced to do, man-hauling supplies across the Barrier in freezing temperatures. Scott said it was a ‘day of disaster’ and promptly ordered that the two remaining vehicles should not be used on the ice until far later in the season when the sea was firmly frozen.

Finally, on 18 January, the party began to move into the hut which was to be their home for the next two years. Cherry-Garrard said it was ‘beautifully warm’ and soon after in a pleasant homely touch, the metallic, crackling sounds of a gramophone could be heard drifting across McMurdo Sound.

The 25 officers, scientists and men of the landing party were crammed together in the 50 ft × 25 ft hut which, in typically British fashion, was divided between the gentlemen and the players. The sixteen officers and scientists were separated from the nine ‘men’ by a purpose-built bulkhead of provision boxes, and the former occupied about two-thirds of the tiny hut, including two laboratories and a darkroom for the photographer, Ponting.

The most striking symbol of the segregation were separate mess deck and wardroom tables for meals, as though one side of the bulkhead would be offended by eating alongside the
other. However, neither side objected to the barricade, regarding it as a normal slice of both naval routine and social distinction in the late Edwardian era.

Crean slept in a row of four bunks, flanked by his old
Discovery
friend, Taff Evans on one side and Patsy Keohane, another Irishman from Cork, on the other. Next to Keohane was Robert Forde, another Irishman. Close by was the party’s sewing machine where Crean and Evans were to be found during the dark winter months mending the reindeer skin sleeping bags, preparing the sledges, overhauling tents, repairing foot-gear and other items of clothing, and stitching an endless number of provision bags for the coming journey.

They were two of the dominant personalities on the messdeck at Cape Evans; tall, experienced, hard-working and full of stories and idle chatter. The backbone of Scott’s Antarctic mess-deck was completed by Lashly, a quiet man with the unusual naval characteristic of being a non-drinker and non-smoker. Although a totally different character, he, too, was impressed with Crean. His published diaries describe Crean as a ‘strong, healthy, utterly dependable sort of man with a great zest for life’. Crean described himself to Lashly as being like ‘the wild man from Borneo’.
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