An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor (44 page)

The audience, who paid between 1s 3d (6p) and 8s 6d (42½2p) to see the explorers in the flesh, were invited to ask questions from the floor and Shackleton was taken aback when one man asked: ‘Was there not any use for a proper trained nurse?’ The innocent question must have struck a chord for men with painful memories of almost two years of sexual deprivation and Shackleton diplomatically pointed out that women had so far not taken part in Antarctic exploration.

The lecture season was purgatory for Shackleton and he longed for the real thing. Initially he had plans for a trip to the Arctic north. He later changed his mind and declared his intention to circumnavigate the Antarctic Continent in a special ice ship. He bought a ship, renamed her
Quest
and began recruiting his tried and trusted comrades from
Endurance
.

First he wanted his two most loyal lieutenants, Crean and Wild, to accompany him on his latest adventure. Shackleton was so convinced that Crean would agree that he submitted the Irishman’s name in a list given to the Admiralty in London of people prepared to join the expedition. The list included Wild, Worsley, Macklin and several others from
Endurance
.
⁵

Shackleton told the Admiralty that he had picked a body of experienced men, who were ‘ready to go with me’. Crean was to be ‘In charge of boatwork’ and he gave the Admiralty a brief rundown on his long Antarctic career. Indeed, Shackleton was so enthusiastic that he mistakenly claimed that
Crean had accompanied him South on the
Nimrod
expedition, during 1907–9, when he came to within 97 miles of the Pole.

But Tom Crean said no.

Crean, now a father and a prospective businessman, politely declined. His second daughter had arrived in 1920 and with a mixture of playful blarney and typical firmness, he told Shackleton that his wife and family now came first. Crean simply said:

Quest
, without the reassuring and formidable presence of Crean, sailed southwards in September 1921, with old
Endurance
colleagues forming the backbone of the expedition. On board with Shackleton and the faithful Wild were the instantly recognisable names of Worsley, Macklin, McIlroy, Hussey, McLeod, Kerr and Green. Three months later, on 5 January 1922, Shackleton died of a heart attack while the
Quest
was moored at the familiar setting of Grytviken, South Georgia.

In the period of only ten years, Crean had prematurely lost the two men – Scott and Shackleton – who had been so influential in his own life. Their loss aroused different emotions in Crean. He respected Scott but understood his weaknesses. In contrast, he worshipped Shackleton.

Crean had now decided where his priorities lay. First there was the matter of a family. His second child Katherine was a weak, sickly youngster who needed much care and attention from her concerned parents. Even today generations of Creans insist that the child was another unfortunate victim of Ireland’s Troubles.

Nell was heavily pregnant with Kate when she became embroiled in an incident with the hated irregular soldiers of the Black and Tans. Nell, an independent and resolute woman, had attended a parade in honour of the martyr Thomas Ashe, who hailed from Kinard a few miles from Anascaul. It was a relative of Ashe who had left Anascaul with Crean in 1893.

Ashe, a prominent supporter of nationalist leader, Michael Collins, had died while imprisoned by the British and Collins turned his funeral into a great national demonstration against British rule. Ashe’s funeral was an important episode in generating mass support for popular rebellion and his continuing popularity had a particular resonance for the British.

The Black and Tans, who were feared for their ruthless brutality, retaliated by raiding Crean’s home in Anascaul to search for any evidence which might link the Crean family to Ireland’s armed struggle. All they found was a Union Jack, a souvenir of Tom Crean’s honourable 27 years’ service in the British navy.
⁷

However, Nell always swore that the rough treatment and harassment she received that day was the cause of Kate’s subsequent sickness. The young child, who suffered from epilepsy, struggled through a short life.

In 1924, Tom and Nell found enough money to take her on a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Lourdes, the small town in southwest France where in 1858 a vision of the Virgin Mary is reputed to have appeared to Bernadette, a peasant girl, in a grotto. Millions of Catholic pilgrims have since visited the grotto for the waters from an underground spring which, it is claimed, have miraculous powers of healing the sick and infirm. But shortly after returning from the pilgrimage to Lourdes in December 1924, Kate Crean died, aged four.

At around this time, Crean’s plans for his own business, a pub in Anascaul, were beginning to come to fruition. It was more than a decade since he had bought the old thatched building adjacent to a forge at the western end of the village, alongside the stone bridge which crosses the Anascaul River. He demolished much of the structure and in 1927 opened a new pub which was given a name synonymous with his adventurous past. He called his pub the ‘south Pole Inn’.

The pub was a favourite haunt of locals, partly because of Crean’s fame and partly because he and Nell were popular
figures in the village. To the people of Anascaul they were affectionately known as ‘Tom the Pole’ and ‘Nell the Pole’.

Although the pub trade was his chosen profession after leaving the navy, Crean was not ideally suited to pulling pints and running a business. He enjoyed the profile but disliked bar work and Nell, who had been born and brought up in an Anascaul pub, soon assumed full control. She was a natural publican, while he was a traveller, a seaman at peace when on the move. As a result, the thriving business of the South Pole Inn was managed almost entirely by the resolute figure of Nell.

It was a good marriage. The two were well suited. Equally, the division of labour at the South Pole Inn worked well. Tom fully recognised that Nell was the brains behind the business and he respected her business acumen. While she ran the business, Tom could be found in the small snug bar chatting with his close friends or perched on the nearby stone bridge over the Anascaul River, smoking his familiar pipe and passing the time of day with his neighbours. Crean’s simple lifestyle rarely ventured beyond a glass of stout, a glance at the newspapers or a bit of gardening. In particular, he liked to stroll up to his old home, the farm at Gurtuchrane, where his two brothers still lived. The prodigious traveller rarely ventured any further.

Crean never lost his love for animals. Each day he went for a long walk accompanied by two dogs, which he named Fido and Toby after two of the pups he had reared on
Endurance
. One of the dogs was accidentally killed after slipping down a cliff on the daily walk and Crean, the man who had seen and endured so much in his life, broke down and wept for the dead animal.

Nell also had to come to terms with her husband’s past life, sometimes with unexpected results. On one occasion she encountered Tom in the kitchen cooking bacon, sausages and eggs for his pals. It was a Friday, the day when Catholics are traditionally forbidden to eat meat. Nell began to chastise her
husband for his sins and Crean, with his customary robust mixture of bluntness and ready wit, shouted back:

At one stage he bought a large house in a Dublin suburb near the famous Croke Park sports stadium where he and Nell planned to spend their retirement. But the man who had spent so much time in vast open spaces disliked the clamour and bustle of big cities and after some further thought, he abandoned the idea of moving. The house was subsequently rented out before being sold off many years later.

He did, however, like to keep up with the comings and goings in the navy and each day he walked to the now-closed railway station at Anascaul for a chat with his close friend, Bob Knightly, and buy English newspapers as they arrived from Tralee. He particularly liked the
Daily Mail
because, said friends, it published a list of naval appointments and retirements and he could keep up with events and the progress of old friends. But that was as far as he allowed his old life to intrude on the new.

It was almost as though he had closed the book on his great days and adventures with Scott and Shackleton. He was, of course, rightly proud of his achievements and the massive contributions he had made to the three famous expeditions of the Heroic Age. But, surprisingly, he rarely spoke about his old life.

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:

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.