Read An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Online
Authors: Michael Smith
Tags: #*read, #Adventurers & Explorers, #General, #Antarctica, #Polar Regions, #Biography & Autobiography, #History
An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (39 page)
They began to descend, hopefully for the last time. The slope was steep and soon they found themselves tramping along in a stream of very cold running water which rose to their knees and chilled them further. To their dismay, the stream came to a sudden halt and the bitterly cold water tumbled over the edge in a cascading little waterfall.
Shivering with the cold and on the point of exhaustion, the men stared in disbelief. The waterfall poured down about 30 ft (10 m) below and on either side there were impossibly steep rocks and cliffs. For a brief moment they contemplated doing what they had done so many times in the past day and a half and retrace their steps.
But the shivering, hungry, thirsty men were in no condition to make another uphill climb and more importantly it was now nearing 3 p.m., with darkness approaching and temperatures set to drop sharply as the sun disappeared. The three men had now been out in the open without sleep for 36 hours, their food was all gone and they had no means of melting ice for drinking water. A night in the open would probably be fatal.
Shackleton said it was ‘scarcely thinkable’ to retrace their steps. The only option was to climb down through the waterfall.
Hurriedly they found a suitable boulder and fixed the rope as firmly as possible. According to Shackleton, Crean, the heaviest of the three, went first. Slowly and cautiously Shackleton and Worsley lowered the Irishman through the bitterly cold running water. He disappeared altogether in the flowing torrent of water and came out gasping for air as his feet finally touched the rocks 30 ft (10 m) below.
All three endured their own cold shower as they climbed down through the waterfall. But they were unable to release the
rope, which therefore remained behind lashed to the boulder as a memento of their remarkable journey.
Once on the bottom the men were barely a mile from the whaling station. Despite the freezing cold, intense fatigue and growing thirst, their spirits were lifted by the prospect. The end was in sight.
They faced one last hazard before they completed their momentous journey. The eight, 2-inch (5-cm) brass screws which McNeish had fixed in the soles of their boots at Peggoty Camp, had been worn away by the constant scrapes with rocks and packed ice in the past 36 hours. By now they were flush against the soles and without the extra grip, each of the men suffered some heavy falls on the glassy ice which shook them badly. Crean took a painful tumble and fell onto the blade of the carpenter’s adze, narrowly avoiding a dangerous cut. Undeterred they picked him up and plodded on.
By now, as the end of the amazing journey approached, they began to ponder what people would make of the three ragamuffins who had come back from the dead. Worsley, in particular, became concerned that there might be women at Stromness who would be shocked at the appalling state of the three men.
The weary, bedraggled men were indeed a ghastly-looking sight. They had not washed for three months, their hair hung down onto their shoulders and their beards were matted with soot and blubber. Their haggard faces, which were blackened with grease, had been ravaged by a combination of frostbite, wind and exposure. They gave off a disgusting smell and their clothes, which they had worn for over a year, were wet and ragged. They had been on the march almost without a break for 36 hours and had probably covered around 40 miles (64 km) on their trek. Worsley said they were a ‘terrible looking trio of scarecrows’.
After leaving South Georgia eighteen months earlier with 28 fit men and a fully stocked ship, Crean, Worsley and
Shackleton were returning to civilisation with just the clothes they stood up in.
They could not have imagined the welcome awaiting them as they turned the corner and walked slowly towards some outbuildings of the whaling station. The first humans they saw were two boys, aged about ten or twelve. They took one look at the ‘scarecrows’ and fled in terror. Soon after they entered a building and found an old man who, like the young boys, turned on his heels and hurried away in alarm.
They moved onto the quay where they found a man called Matthias Anderson, who looked as though he was in charge of something or other. Shackleton, in a weak reedy voice, asked to see Anton Anderson, the station manager at Stromness.
It was 20 May 1916, and apart from their
Endurance
colleagues, some 532 days since they had last spoken to another human. Matthias Anderson shook his head and said Anton had left and been replaced by Thoralf Sorlle. By coincidence, Shackleton knew Sorlle.
Anderson was suspicious of the sight before him, but went into an office and told Sorlle that there were ‘three funny looking men outside’ who claimed to have walked across the island from the interior. As a precaution, Anderson asked the trio to remain outside while he spoke to Sorlle.
After a moment Sorlle, a tall imposing man with a large moustache, emerged from the building and stared in utter disbelief at the three unkempt wrecks of humanity who stood before him. He did not recognise them.
In fact, they were unrecognisable. But Sorlle knew Shackleton well and had entertained the party at South Georgia before the departure south. However
Endurance
had been out of touch for over 18 months and it was assumed all hands were lost. Shackleton recalled the first conversation:
‘Mr Sorlle came out to the door and said, “Well.”
“Don’t you know me?” I said.
“I know your voice,” he replied doubtfully. “You’re the mate of the
Daisy
.”“My name is Shackleton,” I said.
Immediately he put out his hand and said, “Come in, come in”.’
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Anderson turned away and wept.
Beyond belief
T
he scale of the achievement by Shackleton, Worsley and Crean is breathtaking by any standards. Indeed, it is almost beyond belief bearing in mind that the three men were hopelessly ill-equipped for either the 800-mile (1,300-km) journey across the Southern Ocean in an open boat or the forced march over the uncharted interior of South Georgia.
They were poorly protected from the bitter elements, with their badly worn clothing and inadequate food supplies scarcely enough to sustain even modest physical effort – let alone the traumatic ocean crossing and the trek of about 40 miles (64 km) in 36 hours over the glaciers and icefields of South Georgia. The physical demands were immense and so, too, were the psychological strains which the ordeal imposed on the three men.
Duncan Carse, the explorer who retraced their steps almost 40 years later in 1955, was astonished by what the three men had achieved and almost lost in admiration. He could barely understand how they survived and wrote a memorable assessment:
‘A man may travel on foot from the head of King Haakon Bay to the whaling station of Stromness, keeping either high or low. The high level route is circuitous, a gradual rise and fall via the spacious crest of
the Kohl-Larsen Plateau. The low-level route is direct, a saw-tooth thrust through the tortured upheaval of mountain and glacier that falls in chaos to the northern sea. In distance, they are hardly comparable.We today are travelling easily and unhurriedly. We are fit men, with our sledges and tents and ample food and time. We break new ground, but with leisure and opportunity to probe ahead. We pick and choose our hazards, accepting only the calculated risk. No lives depend upon our success – except our own. We take the high road.
They – Shackleton, Worsley and Crean – were desperate castaways with sick companions and their only asset a boat that would never sail again. They travelled under headlong duress, reduced by long privation to exhausted starvelings destitute of all but their own worn out clothing – no sledges, no tents, little food, and less time. They broke new ground in a race against falling reserves of strength. Their only safety lay in speed and the short cut regardless of danger; they dared not fail because “22 men were waiting for the relief that we alone could secure for them.” They took the low road.
I do not know how they did it, except that they had to – three men of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration with 50 feet of rope between them – and a carpenter’s adze.’
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It may be easier to guess the physical effect of the months of hardship, isolation and immense endurance, climaxing in the remarkable crossing of South Georgia in winter. The photographic evidence immediately after their arrival is limited, although some pictures taken in the following weeks still reveal gaunt, haggard faces.
The journey had clearly exacted a heavy toll and it says enough of their unkempt appearance that station manager,
Sorlle, did not recognise any of them. Or that a toughened Norwegian whaler should spontaneously burst into tears at the sight of the bedraggled men.
The effect which is obviously less easy to detect is the mental strain imposed by the months of physical hardship and the ever-present knowledge that they were so close to a miserable death. The three men had tapped deep reserves of mental strength as they fought against one seemingly fatal hazard after another and after all these years, it is extremely hard to estimate what impact this had made.
Shackleton’s inner strength and resolve were well known from two earlier expeditions to the South. But Crean, too, possessed special qualities of mental toughness and resilience which marked him out from the bunch and this was why Shackleton, a superb judge of character, chose the Irishman to accompany him on the boat journey and the South Georgia crossing.
On no occasion is there is any suggestion from the recollections of Shackleton or Worsley that Crean had weakened, either mentally or physically. Amazingly, he also retained his sense of humour and, to the occasional irritation of his stressed-out colleagues, even found the capacity to break into song.
But there was, in addition, another more surprising and inexplicable side effect of the men’s journey – a spiritual dimension that perhaps reveals more about the psychological effect of the ordeal than the more easily apparent physical damage. All three men confessed, at separate times, to a highly unusual experience on the South Georgia crossing. All three, it emerged, believed there was a fourth person accompanying them on the crossing.
Worsley, writing in his book,
The Great Antarctic Rescue
, revealed:
‘Three or four weeks afterwards, Sir Ernest and I, comparing notes, found that we each had a strange feeling that there had been a fourth in our party and
Crean afterwards confessed to the same feeling.’
2
In his other book,
Endurance
, published in 1931, Worsley was slightly more expansive:
‘There was no doubt that Providence had been with us. There was indeed one curious thing about our crossing of South Georgia, a thing which I have never been able to explain. Whenever I reviewed the incidents of that march I had the sub-conscious feeling that there were four of us, instead of three. Moreover this impression was shared by both Shackleton and Crean.’
3
Shackleton describes much the same feeling of a fourth presence in his book,
South
:
‘When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia, it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels “the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech” in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.’
4
Unfortunately, no documentary evidence has survived to show that Crean believed in the fourth person. But years later he told friends exactly the same story and evidently believed that he, too, had shared the experience. According to the recollections of his friend, Bob Knightly, Crean simply said:
‘The Lord brought us home.’
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Equally the comments of Shackleton and Worsley are both unequivocal in showing that the Irishman shared their belief. In the circumstances, it might have been worthy of more comment from Shackleton and Worsley if Crean had confessed to not believing in the presence of a fourth person.
Shackleton also provided another brief insight into the psychological effects of the journey while he was compiling his book on the expedition,
South
. Shackleton did not write his own books, preferring to dictate his version of events to a New Zealand journalist, Edward Saunders, who dutifully and painstakingly took down his every word. Shackleton’s adviser, Leonard Tripp, was present during the dictation session when the subject of the fourth presence came up and he thoughtfully recorded the strain which showed on Shackleton.
Tripp gave an account of the session, with evidence of the severe emotional strain, to Shackleton’s friend and biographer, Dr Hugh Robert Mill in 1922, shortly after Shackleton had died. He told Mill:
‘I shall never forget the occasion. I was sitting in a chair listening; Shackleton walked up and down the room smoking a cigarette and I was absolutely amazed at his language. He very seldom hesitated, but every now and then he would tell Saunders to make a mark because he had not got the right word; but that was only occasionally. I watched him, and his whole face seemed to swell, and I could see the man was suffering. After about half an hour he turned to me and with tears in his eyes he said, “Tripp, you don’t know what I’ve been through, and I am going through it all again, and I can’t do it.” I would say, “But we must get it all down”.
He would go on for an hour and then all of a sudden would say, “I can’t do it – I must go and talk to the girls or play tennis”. He walked out of the room as if he
intended to go away, lit a cigarette and then in about five minutes, he would come back and start again. The same thing happened after another hour or so. I could see that he was suffering when he came to his sensation of a fourth presence, when crossing the mountains, he turned around to me and said, “Tripp, this is something I have not told you”. As far as I can remember, his account of crossing South Georgia has practically not been altered in revision.’
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