An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (27 page)

It involved taking a ship’s party through the frozen and largely unknown Weddell Sea and landing a small group of specially selected men on the opposite side to Scott’s base in the Ross Sea. The men would first march about 900 miles (1,500 km) across unexplored wilderness to the South Pole. They would then travel the same route taken by Scott, across the Polar Plateau, down the Beardmore Glacier and finally over the Barrier to Cape Evans in the McMurdo Sound – another 900 miles. The key to the bold plan was that the men at Scott’s old base would lay down a supply line of food and fuel depots on the Barrier and up the Beardmore for Shackleton’s party to pick up after leaving the Pole.

By the autumn of 1913, Shackleton was sounding out his many acquaintances for the princely sum of £50,000 (today: £4,000,000) to finance the expedition. He hoped to find a single backer to sponsor the journey in return for the now customary newspaper and publishing rights, scientific collections and the single honour of having the expedition named after him, or her. Helped by the additional promise of £10,000 (today: £800,000) from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, he broke the first official news of the expedition in a letter to
The Times
on 29 December. With typical flourish, he called it the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Initially Shackleton planned to take only one ship, dropping off men and supplies on the Weddell Sea side of the continent. The ship would then circumnavigate the frozen land mass to Cape Evans at McMurdo Sound and drop off the depot-laying party. But he later amended the plans and opted to take one ship into the Weddell and despatch another, the
Aurora
, to Cape Evans.

Shackleton decided to take six men on the epic journey. Mindful of Amundsen’s almost leisurely stroll to the South Pole, he planned to take about 120 Alaskan and Siberian dogs, who would pull the heavy loads and save the men from the dreadful ordeal of man-hauling.

Early indications were that Shackleton proposed leading the march and would take along Frank Wild as his deputy. Wild, who virtually devoted his life to serving Shackleton, had already been on three expeditions to the South. He had been on
Discovery
with Scott in 1901–4,
Nimrod
with Shackleton in 1907–9 and with the Australian Douglas Mawson in Antarctica around the time of Scott’s last expedition. He was by now a toughened polar veteran, hard as nails and thoroughly reliable.

Shackleton had also selected Bernard Day, the mechanic who had struggled in vain to get Scott’s two motorised tractors to cross the Barrier with tons of supplies in 1911. Two others initially chosen for the journey were Aeneas Mackintosh and George Marston, both old
Nimrod
hands.

The unnamed sixth was to be ‘one of two men who have had experience with me and Scott’, Shackleton recorded.
²
This obviously fits the description of Crean but it is not clear whether he could not name him at the time because of his naval commitments or indeed that he had someone else in mind. In the event only Wild, Marston and Crean would go with Shackleton, while Mackintosh went with the depot-laying team in the Ross Sea party.

Shackleton knew Crean well from
Discovery
and had heard even more about the Irishman’s powerful presence from Teddy Evans, who had become a regular acquaintance of Shackleton
after his return from the South in 1913. Few knew more about Crean’s strength and reliability than Evans who was alive only because of those very qualities. Crean’s rescue was full testament to his endurance and courage and Shackleton could not fail but to be impressed with the story Evans told.

In addition, Shackleton knew that Crean was trustworthy and no sycophantic yes-man. Crean had a particularly forthright manner and was not afraid to speak his mind. Although this may have been less easy to accommodate within the strict regime of the navy, on the unforgiving polar landscape there was no room for half-truths and idle flattery. Shackleton, who came from the merchant navy, was far less of a disciplinarian than the strict Royal Navy types of the late Victorian era which characterised Scott’s men and did not see the need to surround himself with servile characters. Also, he was fond of Crean.

For Crean the opportunity to venture South again was too much to turn down. There was one potential difficulty, however, which was the intense rivalry between Scott and Shackleton and their respective supporters. This antagonism had begun when Shackleton was sent home from
Discovery
in 1903 after the near disaster on the ‘furthest south’ journey. A dislike had grown up between the men and it erupted again in 1907 in a dispute over whether Shackleton could use Cape Evans as the base for his
Nimrod
expedition. Scott claimed priority over the area and Shackleton was eventually forced to winter there because he could not find a suitable alternative. Scott was furious and the rivalry intensified in 1911 and 1912 in the Antarctic as Scott became almost obsessive about beating Shackleton’s best distance to the Pole.

But Tom Crean wanted no part of the simmering feud. He held both in high regard and in his simple, straightforward reasoning, the dispute was none of his business. Crean was loyal to his chosen leader. But equally he was always his own man.

Shackleton opened an office at 4 New Burlington Street in central London and invited volunteers to sign up. He was
swamped with 5,000 applications to join the expedition, mostly from wholly unsuitable characters. The deluge of applications was put into three large drawers cheerfully labelled ‘
Mad
’, ‘
Hopeless
’ and ‘
Possible
’.

One particularly hopeful application came from ‘three sporty girls’ who promised to wear male clothing if ‘our feminine garb is inconvenient’. Shackleton’s biographers, Margery and James Fisher, said it was the only time in his life that he refused a challenge.

There is the apocryphal story that Shackleton opened the floodgates of applications by placing an extraordinary advertisement in newspapers which reportedly read:

Apocryphal or not, the ‘advertisement’ is a reasonable summary of Polar exploration at the time and gives some indication of the types of people needed to undertake such journeys. Shackleton, in particular, was a shrewd judge of character and knew the type of men he wanted for his ‘Hazardous Journey’. Tom Crean was one of those men, a true stalwart whose polar record was now second to none.

The precise circumstances of Crean’s appointment to the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition are unknown. Scott’s biographer, Elspeth Huxley, claimed that Crean had bought himself out of the navy in 1912, which was erroneous on two counts. First, he spent the whole of 1912 out of touch with civilisation in Antarctica and, second, his service record shows that he had an unbroken career in the navy, apart from secondment to three polar expeditions.

Crean officially joined Shackleton’s expedition as second officer on 25 May 1914, at a salary of £166 a year, the equivalent of £13,800 at today’s values.
³
The formal contract signed away all Crean’s rights to publish articles or books, hold
onto scientific material or even speak about the expedition to a third party without first gaining Shackleton’s permission. It was a strict agreement designed to give Shackleton full control of the profits from sales of literary and artistic works which, in turn, would help finance the expedition itself. But Crean did not care too much since he did not keep diaries on any of his three expeditions and was not a prolific letter writer.

Shackleton had by now made his final selection of the six-man party for the historic crossing of the Continent. It was to be Shackleton, Wild, Macklin, Hurley, Marston and Tom Crean. In contrast to Scott’s secrecy over the final polar party and poorly considered last-minute choices, Shackleton was prepared to name his men before setting out, thus avoiding any disputes and disappointments when the expedition was under way.

Shackleton was a supreme optimist, which he demonstrated by proposing to cover the 1,800 miles (3,000 km) across the largely unknown Continent in only 100 days – a staggering performance for someone who was no expert at driving dogs. Amundsen had taken 99 days to cover much the same distance to and from the South Pole, but Amundsen and his companions were experts and experienced at both ski and dogs.

Wild was to be Shackleton’s deputy on the expedition and another
Discovery
veteran, Alf Cheetham, was third officer. Captain of the ship was Frank Worsley, a tough Anglo-New Zealander widely known as ‘skipper’, who joined up in strange circumstances. He claimed to have dreamt one night that Burlington Street in central London was blocked with ice and he was navigating a ship along the thoroughfare. Next morning he went along to Burlington Street and found the offices of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and he was signed up after meeting Shackleton for only a few minutes.

In another bizarre episode, Shackleton decided to take a young medical student, Leonard Hussey, because ‘I thought you looked funny’. Also on board was Frank Hurley, an adventurous photographer from Australia who had previously
been to Antarctica with Mawson. The rest of the
Endurance
team included a crew of officers and hardened seamen, plus a mixture of doctors, biologists, geologists and other scientists. Shackleton, to one and all, was known as ‘The Boss’.

Shackleton had already found his two ships. He bought the 350-ton Norwegian polar vessel,
Polaris
, and renamed her
Endurance
. She was destined for the main chunk of the expedition, crossing the largely unmapped Weddell Sea and dropping the trans-continental party somewhere on the Antarctic coast near Vahsel Bay. He had arranged with the Australian, Mawson, to take over the specialist polar ship,
Aurora
, for the Ross Sea party at Cape Evans. The Ross Sea party was to be led by Mackintosh and included Wild’s brother, Ernest, the Antarctic veteran, Ernest Joyce, and a blend of scientists, engineers and even a padre, Rev Arnold Spencer-Smith who would go as photographer.

As ever, Shackleton’s biggest problem was raising money. The Government had agreed to advance £10,000, which left about £40,000 (today: £3,300,000) to be raised from a variety of wealthy private donors. Typical of the supporters were the industrialist, Dudley Docker, who gave £10,000 and Janet Stancomb-Wills, the rich adopted daughter of a tobacco millionaire. The biggest contribution came from Sir James Caird, a jute manufacturer and philanthropist from Dundee, who generously gave Shackleton £24,000 (today: over £1,900,000), almost single-handedly ensuring that the expedition would go ahead.

The
Endurance
, specially built in Norway as an ice ship, was brought to London in June and berthed at Millwall Docks, Isle of Dogs. Work began to load the mountain of stores and equipment, including a wooden hut which would serve as a base camp on the Weddell Sea side of the Continent.

There was a constant trickle of curious visitors, eager to catch a glimpse of the explorers. On 16 July, the Dowager Queen Alexandra came on board, as she had done on the eve of the departure of both
Discovery
and
Terra Nova
. She later
gave Shackleton a bible, with her handwritten message inscribed on the flyleaf. Worsley said the royal party stayed for an hour, taking their own photographs and showing ‘a huge interest in everything’.

Crean, as second officer, was introduced to the glittering array of guests, who included Princess Victoria and the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia, and the formidable Lord ‘Jackie’ Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet. One of the party’s doctors, Alexander Macklin, would later recall a humorous moment when the tall, burly Irishman was being introduced to the refined, well-heeled dignitaries. Macklin remembered a lady in Queen Alexandra’s entourage:

But in the midst of the preparations, the shadow of the coming war was growing by the day. The heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, had been assassinated at Sarajevo on 28 June and the relentless countdown to the Great War had begun.

On 1 August,
Endurance
moved out of her berth at Millwall Docks and into the Thames; there was little of the celebrations which had seen
Discovery
and
Terra Nova
away from English shores. Attention was focused on the worsening diplomatic situation and the growing prospect of war with Germany. This time there was a small crowd and a solitary piper to wish the men
bon voyage
. In deference to Shackleton, Crean and the other Irishmen onboard, the Scottish piper thoughtfully played ‘The Wearing O’ the Green’.

The low-key send-off was no surprise given the deteriorating political climate, which was getting worse by the day. The
world was moving inexorably towards war and on 1 August the final pieces of the macabre jigsaw were moved into place as Germany declared war on Russia. It drew Britain closer to the brink and many people felt that the expedition would have to be abandoned.

However, the ship sailed down the Thames to Margate on the north Kent coast where Shackleton called the entire party together and said each man was free to leave and join the war effort if he chose. Several men accepted the offer and immediately left to enlist. He then telegraphed the Admiralty offering to place the ship and its provisions at the military’s disposal. Within an hour, the First Lord, Winston Churchill, had telegraphed a laconic one-word reply: