Crean’s surviving daughters and other contemporaries all share one common recollection of Tom Crean: that he seldom, if ever, talked about his exploits. When people, especially strangers, raised the subject of his polar exploration – as frequently happened in the South Pole Inn – he would politely change the subject. People would travel some distance to visit the pub and discuss his exploits over a pint of stout but Crean would not be drawn.
Crean was a modest man, as he frequently showed on his three expeditions, and in later life, by eschewing the many opportunities to turn himself into a local celebrity. He deliberately chose not to promote himself with tall tales of hair-raising adventures or exaggerated claims of famous feats. Nor did he seek fame in books or newspaper interviews. Indeed, there is no entirely reliable evidence that Crean ever gave a single interview to a writer. His ambitions had been largely fulfilled in three trips to the South and after enduring enough hardship for any lifetime, he was not ashamed to content himself with a quiet life.
However, there was another good reason for keeping a low profile. Ireland was in a state of turmoil in the years immediately following Crean’s retirement from the Navy. While the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 had ended almost 800 years of British rule over the majority of Irish people, the partition of the country led to a bitter Civil War in 1922. The country was split between those who accepted the partition of Ireland and those who pressed for a united independent Ireland.
Crean was inevitably vulnerable in staunchly Republican Kerry because of his links with the British navy and the political climate had deadly consequences for his brother. Cornelius Crean, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary, was shot dead near Ballinspittle, County Cork, on 25 April 1920, just one month after Crean’s return to Kerry.
In the circumstances, it was not the appropriate time for Crean to be publicising his exploits on three major British-led Polar expeditions, even if there was no political links between the two. It was easier to say little that could be associated with British colonial rule, even though Crean was certainly no political animal.
There seems little doubt the political tensions of the era prompted him to maintain a discreet silence about his remarkable feats. In that sense, Crean, too, was a victim of Ireland’s Troubles.
He had very little contact with old polar comrades after his retirement, except by the odd letter. Few made the journey to the west coast of Ireland and Crean himself made few trips outside of Kerry.
But one notable exception was Teddy Evans, who always remembered the man who had so courageously saved his life on the Barrier in 1912. Evans had made rapid progress in the Royal Navy and in 1926 was given the prestigious command of the battleship, Repulse. It was a special moment in Evans’ action-packed life and he chose to share the celebrations with Tom Crean and Bill Lashly.
Soon after his appointment, the pair were among the principal guests at a special reception on board Repulse at Portsmouth. Despite the stark difference in rank and social background, Evans always regarded the two sturdy seamen as special. His son, Broke Evans, said his father always spoke fondly of the two men and he confirmed:
‘He always called them his friends, he thought the world of them.’9
Oddly enough, Crean had his reservations about Evans and his famous episode when commanding the destroyer HMS Broke during the First World War. During an engagement in the Straits of Dover, Evans rammed a German ship and refused to pick up survivors, yelling from the bridge, ‘Remember the Lusitania’ after the passenger liner sunk by U-boats in 1915 with the loss of 1,198 lives. Evans was acclaimed for his action and became famous as ‘Evans of the Broke’.
But Crean was a naval purist and respected the etiquette of the sea, even if such customs are also victims of war. In later life, he told friends that one ship should never ram another and that he was uncomfortable with the fact Evans did not rescue the drowning German sailors.10
Outwardly Crean did not display any signs of the toll inflicted on his ample frame from years of hazardous living in the South. His daughters only recall that his ears were ‘stiff’ from the effects of frostbite. However, his feet had also been badly damaged by the severe cold of endless journeys in subzero temperatures in inadequate footwear. He had his boots specially made.
Two elderly residents of Anascaul recalled that as young girls they would sometimes accompany Crean on his daily walks into the nearby hills. On occasions he would take off his boots to dip his feet in the cool running water of the Anascaul River. His feet, they remember, were black. But, typical of his modesty, Crean urged the young girls not to tell anyone his secret.
Life passed quietly and pleasantly for Tom and Nell. The South Pole Inn and Tom’s pensions provided a decent living and the surviving children, Mary and Eileen, were afforded a reasonably comfortable upbringing in a quiet rural setting.
His fondness for his family also extended beyond the living and, around this time, Crean did something unusual. He personally built a large tomb for past and present members of his family in the little cemetery at Ballynacourty, a quiet but historic spot alongside the Anascaul River up the hill from Anascaul and not far from his birthplace at Gurtuchrane. Ballynacourty once stood at the crossroads of various pathways across the surrounding hills and tradition has it that it was once the site of an ancient Brehon law court.
Crean was doing more than returning to his Irish roots in building his own tomb at Ballynacourty. It was a powerfully symbolic gesture which showed how much Crean had come to terms with his own mortality. The man who had faced death on many occasions in his perilous Polar career now faced his final journey with the same equanimity. The tomb survives to this day.
But his peaceful, contented life came to an abrupt halt in the summer of 1938. At around the time of his birthday on 20 July, Crean suddenly complained about severe stomach pains and began to vomit. He was taken to hospital in Tralee, about 16 miles from Anascaul, where acute appendicitis was quickly diagnosed. But there was no surgeon available at Tralee to perform the necessary operation and Crean was transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital, Cork, over 75 miles away, where his appendix was removed.
The delay was fatal. Crean’s appendix had perforated and infection set in. The seemingly indestructible character had been felled by an illness which today is usually treated as a relatively minor problem.
He drifted in and out of consciousness for a week, with Nell in permanent vigil at his bedside as he clung to life. Tom Crean lapsed into unconsciousness for the last time and died on 27 July 1938, exactly a week after his sixty-first birthday. Nell was at his side.
The funeral a week later was among the biggest ever witnessed at Anascaul. He had commanded particular respect among the villagers and they were intent on paying a special homage. After a solemn requiem mass, Crean’s body was proudly carried on the shoulders of friends and old naval comrades in a long relay from Anascaul church through the village and over a mile up the hill to the tiny cemetery at Ballynacourty overlooking the Kerry hills.
He was laid alongside daughter Kate and other members of the Crean family in the tomb he had built with his own hands. Around his neck Tom Crean was still wearing the scapular which had been with him all his life.
One of the host of floral tributes came from Admiral Sir E.R.G.R. Evans, better known as Teddy Evans. The tribute of porcelain flowers, set in a clear glass case, contained a simple heartfelt message which read:
‘In affectionate remembrance from an Antarctic comrade.’
A few feet away from Tom Crean’s last resting place the peaceful Anascaul River flows gently down the hill and past the South Pole Inn.
27
Memories
Tom Crean’s memory has not been allowed to fade away, particularly among the devotees of polar exploration history and especially in Kerry where they are rightly proud of his achievements.
The South Pole Inn, for many, remains a notable commemoration of Crean. The pub will forever be associated with Crean and, like the man
himself, it has a colourful history. Nell Crean kept the South Pole Inn for ten years after Tom’s death, finally selling the pub in 1948 when she was 67 years of age.
By coincidence, 1948 was also a year in which Nell and her daughters briefly relived part of Crean’s exploits on the Terra Nova expedition when they travelled to Cork to watch an early showing of Charles Friend’s reverential film, Scott of the Antarctic. Tom Crean was portrayed by John Gregson and sitting alongside the three women in the cinema was Robert Forde, the Petty Officer from Cork who had served with Crean on Scott’s last expedition almost four decades earlier.
Nell lived until she was 86 and, when she died in 1968, was buried alongside Tom in the family tomb he had built at Ballynacourty. Tom’s daughters, Mary and Eileen, married two brothers called O’Brien who had their own building business. After moving a few miles to Tralee, Mary and Eileen had their own houses built next to each other. Appropriately one is called ‘Terra Nova’ and the other ‘Discovery’. Perhaps if young Kate had lived her home would have been called ‘Endurance’…
The pub had mixed fortunes after passing from Nell’s hands in 1948. The celebrated director, David Lean, came to Anascaul in the late 1960s when making the film Ryan’s Daughter and bought the pile of stones from the old forge that had originally stood on the site of the South Pole Inn. The stones, which had been collected by Crean when he was building the pub in the 1920s, were used by Lean to help construct authentic Irish cottages for the film sets.
But the pub itself changed hands several times in the years following Nell’s retirement and became badly run down before finally closing in 1987. It remained empty for about five years but was then happily restored by the new owner, Tom Kennedy, a distant relative of Crean’s mother. After considerable refurbishment, the South Pole Inn is now thriving once again and serving the people of Anascaul and passing tourists alike.
A further recognition of Crean’s exploits came in 1987 when his daughters and relatives from around the world attended a simple ceremony to unveil the memorial plaque, which still stands above the doorway of the South Pole Inn.
Sir Edmund Hillary, the great twentieth-century adventurer who shared a birthday with Crean, opened an exhibition on the Irishman’s life at the Kerry County Museum in Tralee. The display contains his many Antarctic medals, some photographs, a few letters, a naval uniform and ceremonial sword, and the silver tea service which Shackleton generously gave the Irishman on his wedding in 1917.
Another more ambitious attempt to commemorate Crean’s life came in 1997. A team of five leading Irish mountain climbers and sailors attempted to follow in the footsteps of Crean, Shackleton and Worsley by sailing 800 miles (1,300 km) across the Southern Ocean from Elephant Island to South Georgia and then repeating the famous crossing of the island.
Their boat was named Tom Crean in special remembrance of the Kerryman. Unfortunately, the violence of the Southern Ocean defeated the party and after overturning three times in ferocious Force 10 storms, the Tom Crean had to be abandoned.
Perhaps the most touching tribute to Tom Crean is to be found in the family of Teddy Evans. Evans never forgot the man who saved his life in Antarctica. Years after the heroic rescue, he framed one of Ponting’s photographs of a smiling Crean and placed it in a prominent spot in his home as a constant reminder of an outstanding man. Today the photograph still holds pride of place in the home of Broke Evans, son of Teddy Evans.
But the most permanent celebrations of Tom Crean can be found in his adopted home of Antarctica. The four-mile long Crean Glacier on South Georgia and Mount Crean, which rises 8,360 ft (2,550 m) above Victoria Land on the Antarctic mainland, will forever perpetuate the memory of polar exploration’s unsung hero.
Endnotes
Chapter 1
1. Steve MacDonogh, The Dingle Peninsula, p37.
2. Royal Navy service record.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Quoted Denis Barry, Capuchin Annual, 1952.
7. RN service record.
8. Ibid.
Chapter 2
1. Sir Clements Markham, Antarctic Obsession, p1.
2. Robert Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p24.
3. Ibid, p66.
4. Tom Crean, Royal Navy service record.
5. Log book, HMS Ringarooma, 29 November 1901, PRO.
6. Ibid.
7. Robert Scott, letter to RGS, 18 December 1901, RGS.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Markham, Antarctic Obsession, p90.
11. Ibid, p175.
12. Log of HMS Ringarooma, 19 December 1901, PRO.
13. Scott to RGS, 18 December 1901, RGS.
Chapter 3
1. Robert Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p84.
2. William Lashly, Under Scott’s Command: Lashly’s Antarctic Diaries, pp19–20.
3. Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p84.
4. Lashly, Under Scott’s Command, p20.
5. James Duncan, Antarctic journal, McMG.
6. Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p86.
7. Duncan, McMG.
8. Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p98.
9. L.C. Bernacchi, Saga of the Discovery, p27.
10. Ibid.
11. Thomas Williamson, Antarctic diary, SPRI.
12. Frank Wild, papers, SPRI.
13. Lashly, Under Scott’s Command, p21.
14. Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery.
15. Williamson, diary SPRI.
Chapter 4
1. British National Antarctic Expedition records, RGS.
2. Robert Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p170.
3. Louis C. Bernacchi, Saga of the Discovery, p40.
4. James Duncan, Antarctic journal, McMG.
Chapter 5
1. Michael Barne, Antarctic diary, SPRI.
2. Robert Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery, p466.
3. Ibid.
4. Barne, diary.
5. Ibid.
6. Scott, p539.
7. Louis Bernacchi, Saga of the Discovery p107.
8. William Lashly, Under Scott’s Command, p64.
9. Scott, pp566–7.
10. Barne, diary.
11. Charles Ford, diary SPRI.
12. Ibid.
13. Scott, p667.
14. Ibid, p672.
Chapter 6
1. British National Antarctic Expedition records, RGS.
2. Tom Crean, Certificate of Service, Royal Navy.
3. BNAE records, RGS.
4. Ibid.
5. Crean letter to R. Scott, 10 October 1905, SPRI.
6. Crean, RN service record.
7. Recorded in several books and based on memorandum from Dr Edward Atkinson among papers for the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910–13.
8. Ibid.
9. Robert Scott letter to Crean, 23 March 1910.
10. Sue Limb & Patrick Cordingley, Captain Oates: Soldier & Explorer, quoted from recollection by Oates’ sister, Violet Oates, p95.
Chapter 7
1. Victor Campbell, diary, 29 November 1911, The Wicked Mate.
2. Robert Scott, diary, 25 December 1910 (Quotations are taken from the facsimile edition, The Diaries of Captain Robert Scott).
3. William Lashly, Under Scott’s Command: Lashly’s Antarctic Diaries, p20.
4. Scott, diary, 2 February 1911.
5. Tryggve Gran, The Norwegian With Scott, p52.
6. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, p154.
7. Cherry-Garrard, quoting Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers, p183.
8. Ibid, p186.
9. Ibid, p196.
10. Scott, diary 3 March 1911.
11. Gran, diary, 1 March 1911.
12. Polar Record, 3 (17): 78–79, SPRI (1939).
13. Scott, diary 19 April 1911.
14. Cherry-Garrard, p217.
Chapter 8
An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Page 34
