An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (18 page)

However, in the English translation of his diaries, Gran recounted the tale after chatting with Crean back at Cape Evans and wrote down the following exchanges. After sticking his head through the tent door, Scott said:

Crean’s response in this version was more straightforward and the Irishman replied:

There is very little difference between the two versions of events, although there is almost half a century between when they were written by the Norwegian. Gran’s book,
Kampen om Sydpolen
was not published until 1961, almost 50 years after the event, whereas the entry in his diary was written on 28 May 1912, less than five months after the episode and followed a chat with Crean at Cape Evans. However, Gran’s diary was unequivocal about what he clearly saw as Scott’s real motives. Gran’s own interpretation was:

Crean was ordered out of the tent as Scott asked Teddy Evans if he could ‘spare’ Bowers from his team. Evans, by now very tired after the exertions of so long in the harness and deeply disappointed at being excluded from the polar party, was in no position to argue. His writings dismiss the disappointment, almost as though he was half-expecting it. In
South With Scott
he wrote:

Perhaps more accurately, Bowers observed that Evans was ‘frightfully cut up’ and had expected to be in the final group. In a symbolic moment of surrender, Evans gave Bowers a small silk flag which his wife had given him to fly at the Pole. Scott, perhaps uneasy at his own decision, barely discussed the move in his diary. He simply recorded:

It was an astonishing decision. The entire enterprise had been founded on groups of four, notably the food and fuel which was carefully measured and broken into units of four. The little tent would be even more cramped and cooking for five on the howling Polar Plateau would take much longer, slowing the party’s progress at the very time when they needed to travel fast. Ponting’s revealing film footage of the men at Cape Evans camping and cooking showed how difficult it was for a party of four fit men squeezed into a small tent. A fifth man would inevitably pose extra and unwanted difficulties and discomfiture.

At the same time, Crean, Lashly and Evans would have to do the work of four men and spend valuable time at the homeward depots separating each unit of food and fuel to ensure that one quarter was left behind for the men on the way back from the Pole.

Equally the decision to send back three men was a huge risk for the returning party, particularly as only Evans was capable of navigation. The bleak featureless Plateau and the Barrier are little different to being afloat at sea and sound navigation was essential. The risk of having only one navigator, when accidents were commonplace, was immense.

Scott’s motives, which have been the subject of intense
debate since 1912, are difficult to fathom. The decision to take an extra man, Bowers, only days after ordering him to depot his skis, is bizarre. In addition, closer inspection of the team’s physical fitness would have revealed Taff Evans’ worsening hand injury and the growing weakness of Oates. Some historians believe that Scott panicked and simply wanted more pulling power for the final march.

The eight men rose early, at about 5.45 a.m., on 4 January 1912, but the reorganisation of supplies and sledges took somewhat longer than expected and they were late getting away. Eventually the two parties started out together, still heading due south. After what must have been a tense, silent few miles in the harness, the little caravan came to an abrupt halt at around 10 a.m. They were at latitude 87° 34′, about 146 geographic miles (268 km) from the Pole.

It was an emotional moment for Crean, the final grim realisation that, despite the prodigious efforts of the past two months, he was not going to the Pole. He was perhaps no more than ten to fifteen days of good marching away from the prize and the honour of being the first Irishman to stand at the Pole.

It was too much for the muscular Kerryman. On the barren Polar Plateau, in freezing, flesh-numbing temperatures of –17 °F (–27 °C), Crean openly broke down and cried, leaving his bitter tears of disappointment on the endless white snow plain. Scott recorded the sorrowful moment in his diary:

Many years later, Crean told members of his family that his tears were both for himself and for Scott, who he realised had taken a huge risk in adding an extra man to the polar party. With his experience of ice travel, it may well have struck Crean that Scott’s decision smacked of desperation.

They all shook hands and said goodbye for the last time. Crean probably gave an especially warm clasp to his old messmate and long time friend, Taff Evans. Oates, who was the
most affected of the polar party, gave Teddy Evans a letter for his beloved mother and his considerate last words were to console the three returning men over their disappointment of not going to the Pole.

Bowers handed over some letters and was almost dismissive of the severe difficulties the three men faced on the long journey home, writing that they had a ‘featherweight sledge’ and ought to ‘run down the distance easily’. Lashly said the group felt the parting ‘very much’ but wished the men ‘every success and safe return’. Scott gave Evans a letter for his wife, Kathleen, which he said was ‘a last note from a hopeful position’.

As the moment of parting approached, the silence of the Polar Plateau was broken with ‘three huge cheers’ from Crean, Lashly and Evans as they watched their five comrades trudge slowly off towards the bleak, white horizon. It was the last appreciation they would hear.

The trio then stood, watching in silence as their comrades moved slowly away into the distance and only shook themselves into action when the biting cold of the Plateau’s sub-zero temperatures began to take a grip. The Polar Plateau is no place to linger and for Crean, Lashly and Evans it was now time to turn round and begin their melancholy walk northwards to Cape Evans. The forlorn group frequently stopped in their tracks and looked back to the south to see the dark figures of Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Taff Evans silhouetted against the endless white backdrop.

Slowly the five figures began to disappear towards the horizon. The polar party grew smaller and smaller, until they were just a distant little black speck on the vast white expanse. Suddenly they were gone, melting into the whiteness.

It was the last time anyone would see the five men alive.

C
rean, Lashly and Evans faced a desperate march as the last supporting party began the homeward journey on 4 January 1912, a gruelling 750-statute-mile (1,206 km) journey which was to develop into a race of a different kind to the one they had endured with Scott – a race for life. From the start, the odds were stacked against the three men.

Scott had admitted before the separation on the Polar Plateau that Evans and Lashly were ‘stale’, the two men being badly weakened by over two months of energy-sapping man-hauling across the Barrier and up the Beardmore. In particular, Scott should have been more sensitive to the fact there were very serious risks involved with a three-man party, with only one navigator, pulling a sledge for hundreds of miles in sub-zero temperatures as the season began to close in. The fraught, winter journey to Cape Crozier under Wilson six months earlier was full testament to the risks facing a three-man team.

Also, the recent experience of all British polar expeditions suggested that, at best, the return journey would be a close run thing. Scott’s ‘furthest south’ on the
Discovery
expedition in 1902–3 was a typically narrow escape for a three-man team and Shackleton’s own ‘furthest south’, when he came to within 97 miles of the Pole in 1909, only averted complete disaster by the slimmest of margins.

An injury to any one of the men, such as breaking a leg by a fall through a crevasse, would probably have fatal consequences for the other two. Nor did the men have the benefit of a sledgemeter to measure their daily distances and steer dead ahead, a huge impediment for men with a critical need to find their food supply depots. If the trio could not pick up their depots, they would die of starvation.

Clearly an accident to Evans as navigator would be disastrous and would leave Crean and Lashly reliant on the precious few cairns of snow which were dotted across the snowy landscape. It would be foolish to rely on these few markers to pick a way across the ice to safety, especially in a blizzard when all landmarks were blotted out. Crossing the Barrier might be a little easier because more depots had been laid. But the Barrier was as flat and featureless as an ocean and without adequate navigation they would be highly vulnerable to missing the depot flags.

Finally, Evans was already in the early stages of scurvy.

The perilous journey was divided into three distinct phases – 230 miles (370 km) across the 10,000-ft high Plateau, 120 miles (190 km) down the crevasse-strewn Beardmore and then about 400 miles (640 km) across the desolate Barrier. Each stage, said Evans with classic understatement, had its own ‘special excitements, dangers and peculiarities’.

Evans was aware of the dangers, particularly the risks of a three-man party covering such long distances across the frozen wastes at that time of the season when the weather can wreak havoc. Unlike Scott, he was prepared to share his fears with his comrades. To his credit Evans was able to admit freely that they were all in the same mess and that survival was dependent on a combined effort. In his words:

The scale of their task was abundantly clear on the very first day that the three trekked northwards. The men marched for nine hours in radiantly fine weather on a surface that Evans said was ‘all that could be desired’.

But even with the environment in their favour, it was not enough. Evans quickly realised that nine hours was not enough if the men were to remain on full rations for the prolonged walk home and before long they were in the harness for ten hours and sometimes even thirteen hours a day. He concluded that they had to cover an average of 17 miles (27 km) a day for the first 230 miles across the Plateau. It was a demanding schedule for men who had already covered so many weary miles.

As a first step, Evans decided to ‘steal’ some time by secretly advancing his watch an hour each morning and putting it back to normal at the end of the day in the hope of fooling Crean and Lashly into spending more time marching. However, both Crean and Lashly later admitted that they were perfectly well aware of Evans’ ruse but, equally, they were aware of the urgency and never let on. Playing the game was in everyone’s interest and Evans confirmed the seriousness of their plight when he conceded that the march was now a ‘fight for life’.
²

The men, who were hauling around 400 lb (180 kg) on the sledge, made solid progress immediately after turning for home, despite an early blizzard and the rarefied air which at around 10,000 ft (3 km) above sea level made breathing a little difficult. However, they were particularly cheered after picking up their ‘depoted’ skis on 6 January when they covered a welcome distance of 19 miles (30 km) in one day.

Crean was initially in the lead, but paid a heavy penalty by developing an attack of snowblindness. Evans, who was prone to snowblindness, said the crippling ailment was as though ‘the
eyes were on fire’ and he improvised a treatment of bandaging them with a poultice made of old tea leaves.

They marched on in eerie silence, each man alone with his thoughts. The only noise was the grating sound of their skis scraping across the top layer of snow and the occasional muffled curse from one of their companions in the harness. They spoke little. It may be that, after months of close confinement with each other, they had simply run out of things to talk about. Temperatures were frequently –20 °F (–29 °C) and Evans recalled that the wind blew directly into their faces, slashing their cheeks ‘with the constant jab of frozen needle points’.

Inevitably the men lost their way in the bad weather and broken terrain at the point where the Plateau gives way to the descent of the Beardmore. By 13 January, Evans calculated they were miles off course, situated high above the Shackleton Ice Falls and gazing down on the Beardmore Glacier 2,000 ft below. He was concerned that it might take three days to make the long detour round the Ice Falls to get onto the Beardmore.