In 1912, a stubborn and strong-as-an-oak Irishman, dressed in worse clothing than anyone would wear today on a winter’s day, walked 56 kilometers alone at several tens of degrees below zero through Antarctica because he had promised himself that he would rescue a comrade immobilized in the ice. Touching death with his fingers must have seemed little to this optimistic son of a farmer, who returned to the South Pole a few years later to end up starring in what is perhaps the greatest adventure ever experienced in the era of exploration: together with Shackleton and a A handful of men, sailed 1,300 kilometers in an open nutshell through the Southern Ocean, one of the worst seas in the world, on another rescue mission.
The reader interested in the era of exploration, those fascinating decades of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in which the planet shrank every day at the same rate as maps grew, will know the names of Scott or the aforementioned Shackleton, protagonist of that impossible trip. Perhaps even that of the most famous of his ships, the Endurance. But you’ve probably never heard of Tom Crean, a smiling giant who ended up being one of the leading polar explorers by chance.
This Irishman born in poverty, with an affable character and impervious to discouragement, was in three of the four great British expeditions to the South Pole and played a fundamental role in each of them. But history had forgotten him. Until the British writer and journalist Michael Smith recovered it for humanity in A forgotten hero. The story of Tom Crean, the man who survived Antarcticawhich the Captain Swing publishing house has just translated into Spanish.
“It’s surprising that history almost completely overlooked Crean,” says Smith in a videoconference conversation, “because if you read about Captain Scott or Shackleton his name appears in all the important episodes. He was a central figure in this period and the history of Antarctica cannot be written without valuing his enormous contribution. But there was nothing written about him. And that really has to do with Irish history,” he says.
Because, as he was half illiterate, when he returned from his last trip he did not write any book that would place him in history. He had also not kept a diary of his travels, another of the usual sources for these expeditions, and he hardly sent letters. Returning to a country in turmoil after independence from Great Britain and the subsequent civil war, he opened a tavern in his native Gurtachrane – which is still there – and never spoke of his exploits. He was dangerous for anyone who had been associated with the British, and he had spent years earning money from the navy. enemy. His own brother, a local police officer, was ambushed and shot dead for it. So, the explorer who would later name to a glacier Already on a mountain in Antarctica, he opted for a low profile.
After suffering in the ice for three expeditions and carrying out two of the greatest feats recorded in the history of exploration, the man who had survived extreme cold, impossible navigation and extreme hunger died from simple appendicitis when he was 61 years old. With him his memory was lost. This historical injustice today Smith tries to repair with his book, a meticulous account of the great British polar expeditions that transports the reader to a desolate environment of unthinkable temperatures, incompatible with life, in which a handful of pioneers defied all logic. Where everything is white, but nothing is kind. The only place on earth where no human being lives.
Get off the map
In the first decades of the 20th century the world was bigger than today. The maps still had blank spaces that the empires wanted to fill, and countries like Great Britain, Russia or Norway set out to conquer the poles in a frantic race to be the first to plant their flag. That fierce nationalism fueled the so-called heroic era of polar exploration and the Great Game in Asia, which would culminate with the conquest of Everest (officially) in 1953.
“In the 19th century all advanced countries were expanding their empires,” Smith contextualizes. “The British Empire doubled in size. At the end of the 19th century it was the largest on the planet and 25% of the world’s population waved the British flag. At the beginning of the 20th century all that would be coming to an end, but before, within that context of expansion, there was a sense of exploration and it was felt as a right of countries – this was undoubtedly the case of Great Britain – to find “new lands where to put their flag.”
And the three poles – the north, the south and Everest, as it became known – were the great remaining objectives. “Antarctica was the last place on Earth, the last continent to be explored,” Smith recalls. Then it was still possible, as he wrote the ill-fated mountaineer George Mallory on the way to Everest, literally “going off the map.”
At that time, Smith recalls, “more was known about the moon than about Antarctica. “They had no idea what they were going to experience.” Every step taken by the English and Norwegian explorations – mainly – through the South Pole was treading on virgin ground. But some were better prepared than others, which marked the fate of the tragic British incursions into the frozen Antarctic territory.
“Roal Amundsen [quien sería la primera persona en llegar al polo sur físico, en 1912] and the Norwegians were professionals, while the English were amateurs. That’s the big difference,” says Smith. In the book, he tells how the British, purists in the most traditional sense of the term, thought that pulling dog sleds like their Norwegian rivals did was cheating in the noble challenge between man and nature. Exactly the same dilemma that his fellow mountaineers would have with oxygen on Everest.
In the first British expedition to the pole, aboard the discovery (1901-1904), they began using their own strength. The wear and tear was enormous; the results, poor. “When the temperatures dropped to -70 degrees, they were not prepared. Nowadays we go down to buy bread with better equipment than they had then,” Smith highlights.
They discovered it the hard way, when the second incursion towards the physical south pole (1910-1913) led by Scott ended in tragedy. Upon finally reaching the southernmost point of the planet, Scott’s group found some tents that testified that the Norwegians had been there a month before. The blow was hard for the empire and it would be even more so for the expedition.
The devastated explorers began their return, but the team that was supposed to meet them with sleds and supplies to complete the return did not arrive at the agreed point at the agreed time. Alone in the middle of nowhere, the men perished 20 kilometers from the next supply depot in an incident that shocked the country. Among those waiting at the base was Crean, who had just completed his epic and successful 35-mile solo walk to seek help for Lieutenant Evans, exhausted and unable to take another step on the ice. Still, the Irishman was part of the rescue party, only to find the bodies of his frozen comrades.
The second great feat of this optimistic Irishman took place during the third expedition to the pole, led by his compatriot Shackleton in 1914. “In many ways it is the greatest survival story in the history of exploration, those men were trapped for a year and a half in the ice,” says Smith without hesitation. When the Endurance got stuck 160 kilometers from the frozen continent, the 28 people who were on board abandoned the ship – which ended up being swallowed by the sea – and after floating adrift on an iceberg they managed to reach Elephant Island in a lifeboat, a piece of land inhabited only by seals and penguins.
“Nobody knew they were there, they weren’t going to go rescue them,” Smith recalls. “So they decided to make their own way out. And they sailed across the Southern Ocean in a seven-meter-long ship that still exists. “They sailed through the Southern Ocean, which is without a doubt the worst piece of sea in the world.” In total, they would cross 1,300 kilometers of rough seas, giant waves and hurricane-force winds under the leadership of Shackleton until they reached a whaling post and got help for the 22 men who were left waiting on the island.
“But there was also Tom Crean’s determination. He was never intimidated by challenges. There’s an episode when they’re in the Southern Ocean and the ship is being rocked by these huge waves and hurricane-force winds, and Tom Crean is standing at the helm singing. He is saying that he is going to get out of that situation. His determination and resolve are off the Richter scale. “He was one of the few men Shackleton could trust,” says the author.
Crean’s story is also the story of a man of humble origins who entered the territory of the aristocracy, a rarity at that time. “In most of the history we are told we always talk about kings, queens, lords, ladies, generals, admirals, prime ministers and presidents. “I wanted to tell the story of the exploration of Antarctica through the eyes of this common man,” says Smith. “A man who was respected by officers and scientists as well as by his fellow sailors. An extraordinary man, because he cut across both sides in the Great Britain of 100 years ago, a society divided by class distinctions in which place of birth was very important.”
Its story, the story of Antarctic exploration, is also a reminder of how climate change is affecting the planet. Although speaking in general terms about Antarctica is risky – it is larger than Europe – the melting ice is affecting the area, scientists say. Not so much to the continent – somewhat more in recent years – but to the seas that surround it. The discovery of Endurance at a depth of 3,008 meters in the Wedell Sea (in the Antarctic Ocean) in 2022 was possible, in part, because the climatic conditions opened a window of opportunity that facilitated it. The numerous photographs from the expeditions also allow us to visually compare the state of the glaciers today and 120 years ago, notes Smith.
Resorting to the cliché of “if Tom Crean returned to Antarctica today” cannot be completed by stating that he would not recognize it, says Hilo Moreno, polar guide at the Spanish Antarctic base. “But what would catch your attention the most is that it is now a tourist destination. In the last five years, interest has skyrocketed and there are several cruises that travel the coasts, sometimes even with landings.” As happened with Everest.
The other big difference with that stage, Moreno points out, is that the continent operates today under an international treaty by which no country can exercise sovereignty over it, a 180-degree turn with respect to a time in which many people left the life “to take there to the British Empire or Norway.” Maybe Tom Crean would smile – I’m sure Scott would – because the polo is now basically a scientific sanctuary.
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