An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (35 page)

It was shortly after noon on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and South Georgia was 800 miles (1,300 km) away. On the same day on the streets of Crean’s homeland, Irish Republicans launched the Easter Rising against British rule.

R
ight from the start, the Southern Ocean lived up to what Shackleton said was its ‘evil winter reputation’. Although they safely navigated their way through the immediate pack ice surrounding Elephant Island, winds rose to 30 mph and the sea picked up as evening approached. The only visible light in the vast expanse of ocean came from the occasional glow of Tom Crean’s pipe.

The party had been split neatly into two groups who took turns with four-hour watches, with Shackleton, Crean and McNeish taking one and Worsley, McCarthy and Vincent the other. The men on watch had to be particularly vigilant against the ice, since a collision with a sizeable floe would spell disaster. Darkness brought the greatest danger of collision and the men on deck strained their eyes to spot any looming danger.

Each man took spells at the tiller while the others pumped or bailed out the floods of water which constantly entered the boat. A man could hold the brass cylinder pump under the water for only five minutes before his hands went numb with the cold. By the time their watch had finished the men were exhausted and wet through. They all longed for waterproof oilskins.

Indeed, the men were poorly dressed for their ‘ordeal by water’. They wore a heavy suit of Jaeger underwear and a large, loose-fitting Jaeger sweater, plus a suit of Burberry overalls,
woollen helmet and a Burberry over-helmet. Their hands were covered by a pair of Shetland wool mitts and a larger pair of dog-skin mitts. On their feet there were two pairs of woollen socks, felt shoes and finnesko boots made from reindeer skin. However, the Burberry outer-wear was designed for dry cold and was not waterproof – the very opposite of what they needed in the Southern Ocean.

Those not on watch crawled into their wet reindeer sleeping bags in the hopes of snatching a few hours’ precious rest on the uncomfortable packing cases, bags of ballast and rocks. The men had to wriggle into the narrow space between the ballast-lined floor and the oarsmen’s thwart which Worsley said was like a ‘dungeon cell’. Worsley remembered that more than once he awoke in sheer panic thinking he had been buried alive.

The jagged edges of the rocks and ballast was especially hard on the men’s worn bodies which by now had developed severe boils on the wrists, ankles and buttocks caused by the combination of salt water, cold and continual friction from their rough clothing. To add to the discomfort, the men from the next watch were usually wriggling their way out at the same time and it required one person to direct the two-way flow of bodies like a traffic policeman.

Cooking was especially difficult in the rolling and tumbling seas which added a new soaking with every crashing wave that came pouring over the sides. The hardest task was to keep the hoosh from splashing out of the pot as the little boat pitched and rolled.

Crean was the cook, a vital task for men who badly needed hot, warming food and drink to counter the bitter cold and constant soaking. But a simple task on dry land was beyond the capacity of one man in the heaving Southern Ocean and it soon developed into a team effort.

The tortuous routine involved Crean bending double over the primus stove because there was not enough room to sit up straight. He sat crouched opposite Worsley, their backs
jammed against the side of the boat and feet pointing towards each other. The precious stove was then stuck between the pair’s legs to avoid being tipped over by the lurching seas. Worsley said he was the ‘scullion’ to Crean’s ‘chef’ and had to hold the ‘sacred hoosh pot’ to prevent it toppling over.

Others fished out the reindeer hairs which fell from the heavily worn sleeping bags and gathered everywhere. Every meal or drink was laced with hair from the bags. On one occasion, Worsley was idly watching Crean stir the hoosh. To his amazement, ‘a filthy black paw shot out, seized a handful of reindeer hair from the hoosh, squeezed it out so as to waste nothing and then threw it away’.
¹
The men could cope with a little dirt but drew the line at reindeer hair.

McCarthy dispensed chunks of ice into the pot and Crean stirred in the dried meat, usually about half a pound per man. Worsley described the routine:

Crean took special care to ensure that everyone had the same amount of hoosh but there was a price to be paid for being a cook and Worsley added:

Eating was an ordeal in itself as there was not enough space to sit upright in the confined space. Worsley said it was distressing, because ‘the chest is pressed down on the stomach, one swallows with difficulty & the food appears to have no room to go down’.

Despite the discomfort, one small consolation on the boat journey was that the six men were generally well fed. After the hoosh, the men also ate a chunk of ‘nut food’, a sweet nougat which had been brought along as part of the sledging rations for the trans-continental crossing. In between meals, hot milk was served regularly and supplemented with biscuits or sugar lumps. Worsley recalled that they trained themselves to guzzle the milk at scalding heat.

However, even hardened sea dogs like Crean and Shackleton were affected by the constant heavy swell. Everyone was seasick, except Worsley and McCarthy, as the little boat rose and fell, swayed and listed in the rolling seas.

The Southern Ocean, Worsley wrote, rolls ‘almost unchecked’ in the vast space between Antarctica and the land masses of South America, Australasia and South Africa. The waves rise 40–50 ft (12–15 m) and sweep forward in ‘fierce and haughty majesty’ and he added:

Astonishingly, the men retained their sense of humour, particularly Crean and Shackleton. Worsley reported a ‘quaint sort of mimic bickering’ between the two Irishmen which intrigued the others. Worsley explained:

On another occasion, Worsley provided a none too flattering critique of Crean’s singing talent, a habit he often practised at the most testing moments. He recorded:

Initially, they headed due north to get as clear as possible from the pack ice and pick up the westerly winds which, it was hoped, would carry them to South Georgia. Despite everything, they made remarkable progress. By noon on 26 April – two days after leaving Elephant Island – the
James Caird
had carried them 128 miles (206 km) away from captivity. But, as if to remind them of the constant threat from the vicious seas, they also caught sight of two small pieces of wreckage from an unknown and presumably unfortunate vessel. Shackleton now reckoned they were far enough north to be away from the pack and he turned the vessel to the northeast. South Georgia lay ahead.

Determining their precise position by ‘shooting the sun’ – using a sextant to line up the sun and horizon – was a difficult task in the turbulent seas and required a four-man effort. Worsley, the navigator, could barely stand still and upright in the swell to catch a steady glimpse of the sun, so Vincent and McCarthy had to hold him firmly round the waist. Crouched under the canvas, Shackleton struggled with the chronometer, pencil and paper, desperately trying to keep everything dry as readings were yelled out.

Worsley had served a long apprenticeship for this moment, having been at sea for almost three decades. His first command was a three-masted sailing ship which ploughed the more inviting waters around the South Sea Islands and his varied career had taken him through the merchant service to the Royal Naval Reserve. Even as a young second mate, Worsley had been spotted as a ‘careful and exact navigator’.

While accuracy was crucial, the observations were inevitably haphazard, particularly in the first few days as the little craft dodged the ice. At night, Worsley steered by the feel of the wind and by observing the angle at which the little pennant at the masthead blew. The compass was also affected by the iron plunger of the pump which worked up and down a few inches away.

But, in spite of everything, Worsley became increasingly adept and surprised himself with the accuracy of his sightings. Even a small margin of error would mean sailing past South Georgia and out into the yawning expanses of the South Atlantic, with no realistic possibility of fighting back to land against the prevailing winds. There was little, if any, room for error.

Until this point, the boat was assisted by the strength of the southwesterlies which on 29 April propelled them along at good speed. They covered 92 miles (148 km) in a single day and although it was still a long way to South Georgia, they had covered a good slice of the distance.

But the gathering Antarctic winter was tightening its grip and temperatures sank by the day. At one point during a gale, Crean and McCarthy bravely clambered forward on the fragile deck covering to take down the sails which threatened to freeze solid in the low temperatures. Worsley laconically described the seas as ‘very big’ or ‘heavy, lumpy’.

The constant wash and spray from the freezing sea was coating the little vessel with ice and posing a new threat. They woke on 1 May to discover to their horror that the ice covering was about 6 inches (15 cms) thick and the boat was in grave
danger of toppling over. They took it in turns to creep forward on their knees, chipping away at the layers of ice with an axe. Standing up on the pitching, rolling boat would have been suicidal and none of the men could tolerate the ordeal for more than a few minutes before crawling back under the canvas to recover. Vincent came perilously close to sliding over the edge when the boat lurched violently and he almost lost his grip on the slippery surface.

No sooner had they finished than the ice began to form again, the sea spray freezing as it washed onto the
Caird
’s makeshift decks. For a second time, they had to crawl out on the decking and chip away at the accumulations of ice.

Throughout the night, a gale raged and McNeish uncovered a new and unexpected twist in their battle to survive. After investigating a peculiar, fetid smell on the boat, he realised that the reindeer sleeping bags had begun to rot.

The men, too, displayed signs of the strain. They were exhausted from exposure to the penetrating cold and the constant battle against the freezing water which poured in with every wave. Worsley recalled that as a result of the thorough soakings their legs began to swell, turn white and lose much of their feeling. Shackleton called it ‘superficial frostbite’.

Worsley also recalled that their hands were ‘awful objects’ to look on and wrote:

Helped by a gale from the southwest, the little boat continued to make progress and by 3 May a sighting showed them to be 403 (nautical) miles from Elephant Island, or more than
halfway to South Georgia. They had another good day on 4 May but were not prepared for what happened on 5 May.

At around midnight, Shackleton caught sight of a line of clear sky between the south and southwest, which he thought was a rift in the clouds. He called Crean and McNeish to tell them the sky was brightening. Suddenly he realised that the line of clear sky was advancing menacingly towards them. It was, in fact, a gigantic wave.

Shackleton shouted for the men to hold on as the wave swept down on the small boat. The vessel, caught by the impact of the enormous wave, was catapulted forward and almost lifted out of the sea. The boat, said Shackleton, was lifted and flung forward ‘like a cork in a breaking surf’ and they found themselves in a ‘seething chaos of tortured water’. For an instant no one was sure whether they were still upright. The boat shuddered but almost as quickly as it had appeared, the wave was gone. They had survived, somehow.