An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (19 page)

In their plight, with food supplies critical, delay was out of the question. The men could not afford to lose time on their marches and so Evans decided to take drastic action.

He proposed a desperate do-or-die solution. They would climb aboard the sledge and glissade down the Ice Falls, regardless of the dangers and the unknown fate which waited them at the bottom.

The men were taking their lives in their hands with what seemed a cavalier and reckless plan. If one of the party suffered a serious injury in the haphazard enterprise it would probably spell the end for all three. But the alternative of ‘wasting’ three days on a detour round the Ice Falls with dwindling food stocks was even worse. Evans, true to form, discussed their precarious prospects with Crean and Lashly.

Evans later told members of his family that Lashly bowed to rank, accepting the apparently crazy scheme and Evans’ authority with the casual, almost dismissive remark: ‘You’re the
officer.’ But Crean was not afraid to question authority and he openly clashed with Evans. He protested:

Evans was prepared to listen but had clearly made up his mind. He retorted:

Evans, writing later, confirmed that the discussion with Crean and Lashly was ‘very short-lived’ and they promptly began the perilous descent into catastrophe or safety.

They packed their skis on the sledge, attached spiked crampons to their finnesko snow boots and guided the sledge through the maze of hummocks and crevasses. Quickly the men climbed on board and kicked off, sending the sledge racing down the slippery slopes of blue ice. They had attached themselves to the runaway sledge by their harness in the faint hope that they would be saved if it went into a crevasse.

Crevasses, described as ‘gaping gargantuan trenches’ up to 200 ft (60 m) wide, were all around and Evans later wrote:

Suddenly the men came across a very steep blue ice slope and the sledge began to accelerate even faster down the slippery hill like a toboggan, with the three terrified men lying face-down and clinging onto the straps which held their precious gear in place. The sledge, which had no means of braking, raced to a frightening speed of about 60 mph as it plunged helter-skelter into the unknown. At one point it seemed that it had literally
taken off as it shot straight across a yawning crevasse with the men hanging on for dear life. Evans cast a quick glance at Crean who raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘What next!’

Seconds later, the sledge crashed into an ice ridge, capsized and rolled over and over, dragging the bewildered men along in its wake until it finally came to a shuddering standstill. One of Evans’ ski sticks was wrenched from the sledge and plunged down a blue-black chasm which had nearly swallowed them whole. Then silence.

Crean hauled himself to his feet and discovered that his windproof trousers were torn to ribbons and Evans said the big Irishman was left ‘standing there in a pair of Wolsey drawers and fur boots’. But they were all alive and thankfully, no bones were broken.

Taking their lives in their hands, the three men had glissaded down about 2,000 ft onto the Beardmore Glacier and saved three precious days of marching and food. None of them was entirely sure precisely how far they had come and no one was going back to check the distance. They knew how lucky they had been and Evans admitted:

Years later Evans remembered the terrifying descent and wrote:

But the gamble had paid off and the men were now embarked on the descent of the Beardmore. They reached the Mount Darwin Depot on 14 January, replenished their food supplies and on 16 January managed somewhere between 18 and 20 miles (32 km) in a very good day’s march.

Although the weather had improved, the travelling was slow and heavy going, while the absence of a sledgemeter meant they were having difficulties steering directly. They
marched across a maze of crevasses and pressure ridges, which they occasionally overcame by slinging the sledge across gaping chasms and making a bridge. The heavy work and constant fear of crashing down a crevasse was beginning to take its toll on the weary men and Lashly’s diary on 17 January said:

On the same day, Scott reached the South Pole only to find that Amundsen and his Norwegian companions had beaten them by a month.

The three men of the last supporting party had little choice but to plough on through the labyrinth of passageways and crevasses, hoping the weather would not break and that the deadly broken ground would give way to smoother travelling. They were, however, coming closer together, increasingly aware that they depended upon each other for survival. Bonds were forming between the three men which would remain for the rest of their lives. Evans said Crean and Lashly had ‘hearts of lions’ and as fresh difficulties presented themselves, ‘the more valiantly did my companions set themselves to work’.
⁸

Evans fondly remembered Crean as ‘a raw-boned Irishman with the most comically serious face’. More pertinently, he also described Crean as ‘imperturbable’ and with the greatest dangers still ahead of them, the Irishman’s mental strength would be as valuable as his physical power. Crean himself tried to keep up their spirits with the occasional tune and in his diary Lashly remembered one night when ‘… old Tom is giving us a song while he is covering up the tent with snow’.

Evans developed a severe bout of snowblindness and soon after they ran into a major problem with vast and dangerous crevasses blocking their route. The men remembered
’stupendous gulfs’ and Lashly later said it would have been possible to drop St Paul’s Cathedral down some of the yawning icy canyons.

One vast chasm meant another desperate and dangerous decision. Going back or around it was out of the question because their food was running out and they could not spare the time. Reaching the next depot was vital, so they elected to struggle across one gaping hole via a connecting bridge of hard snow. But no one knew whether the bridge would take the weight. It was another huge gamble by three desperate men and Crean said afterwards:

Lashly went across first but was so concerned about the ‘bridge’ collapsing that he dared not walk upright. He sat astride it, moving gingerly across while Crean and Evans played him out on the end of an alpine rope. The snow bridge was an inverted ‘V’ so that the 400-lb (180-kg) sledge had to be balanced on its apex and guided across, inch by inch with Crean and Evans each holding one side to prevent it toppling into the inky depths below. Evans recalled:

After a while, Crean and Evans had joined Lashly on a small slope on the other side and they began to pull up the 400-lb sledge. The strenuous exertion with the sledge was a timely reminder that the men were getting weaker and even this effort stretched them to the limits of their endurance.

They were on the point of physical exhaustion and badly needed rest and a hot drink. But, in the broken maze of crevasse fields, there was simply not enough room to pitch the tent safely. Evans would later remember looking into the
‘hollow-eyed and gaunt’ faces of his two exhausted comrades as they gasped for air and contemplated their next move.

Evans, once again, defied convention and took a big risk by setting off on his own to find a pathway out of the tangled mess of crevasses and ice ridges. Crean and Lashly tried to dissuade him, knowing that a fall through a crevasse would be fatal or that, simply, he could get lost in the maze. But in reality, there was little alternative.

It was another desperate act by desperate men and Evans felt a huge responsibility for the two men who sat and watched as he disappeared behind the ice ridges in search of a route out of the maze. In
South With Scott
, he declared;

To his everlasting relief, Evans soon discovered that they were virtually at the end of the broken, crevasse-ridden ice fields and that ahead lay a smoother journey. They were close to the Mid Glacier Depot, well over halfway down the Beardmore and edging nearer to the Barrier where travelling would be far easier and depots easier to locate.

A mood of optimism swept over the small weary party at the thought that they had survived the worst part of their journey and they marched on to the next depot. But Evans had paid a terrible price for his mission to find a way out of the crevasses and was struck by a most severe attack of snowblindness, which lasted for almost four days.

Late on 21 January, the tired but relieved men stumbled into the Lower Glacier Depot and a day later they caught the first sight of the Barrier, bringing uninhibited whoops of joy from the embattled trio. Lashly recalled:

But the relief at entering the most straightforward part of their
journey was shattered by a grim discovery. Evans, who had man-hauled for about 1,100 miles (1,770 km), was now displaying clear signs of scurvy.

Evans had reported stiffness at the back of the knees and ‘looseness of the bowels’ and a few days later Lashly, who had spent the same time man-hauling, came over ‘giddy and faint’ while they were pitching the tent. Crean, too, began to suffer with a touch of diarrhoea and the constant interruptions were slowing their progress. It was still approximately 400 miles (640 km) to Cape Evans and the men were getting no fitter.

The men had been out on the ice for almost three months, existing on a diet very low in the vitamins which provide the necessary safeguards against scurvy, notably vitamin C. With all the classic signs of scurvy emerging, Lashly, who had assumed the role of doctor, stopped Evans’ pemmican. In addition, he prescribed a mixture of opium pills and chalk. His legs had become swollen, bruised-looking and olive-green in colour, while his teeth were now loose and gums ulcerated. The diarrhoea continued and then, disturbingly, Evans began to haemorrhage. He later recalled:

On 25 January 1912, as the men were beginning the haul across the flat, featureless Barrier, Amundsen arrived back at his Framheim base and casually asked if the coffee was on the stove. The journey to the Pole and back, some 1,860 miles (3,000 km), had taken 99 days.

By 30 January Evans and Lashly had been out in the icy wilderness for over 100 days and the normally buoyant Evans was getting uncharacteristically gloomy and pessimistic, at a time when keeping up morale was never more important if the men retained any chance of pulling through. He wrote that the disappointment of not being included in the polar party had ‘not helped me much’ and he believed that the prospects of
getting back to safety were diminishing every day. Four days later he broke down.

Lashly, who was increasingly worried about Evans, wrote on 3 February:

But Lashly was also suffering. Apart from the physical exhaustion, he also reported that he was ‘a bit depressed’
¹⁵
as they struggled to the depot at Mount Hooper. The deterioration of Evans was bad enough, but Crean would have been alarmed to learn Lashly, a calm and redoubtable figure throughout his Polar career, was also struggling. Crean thought very highly of his fellow seaman and once said that ‘whatever he did was first class’. Now, in the face of their growing ordeal, a run-down and dejected Lashly was unthinkable.