An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Read Free Page A

with the naval routine that he tried to run away. One writer claimed that Crean was so dismayed by the poor food and rough accommodation on board naval ships of the time that he threatened to abscond. 6

    The regime in the late Victorian Navy of the time was undoubtedly arduous and unforgiving. While the Royal Navywas traditionally the right arm of the British Empire, by the late Victorian era it had become smugly complacent, inefficient and out of date. It had more in common with Nelson and still lent heavily on rigid discipline and blind obedience. It required sweeping reforms by the feared Admiral Sir John ‘Jackie’ Fisher to eventually modernise the navy in time for the First World War in 1914.

    But there is a strange inconsistency about a young man, fresh from a poor, undernourished rural community in the Kerry hills complaining about the quality of the food and bedding. It may be that Crean, like others at the time, had other grievances. Or it may well have been a simple case of a young man a long way from his roots who was homesick. In any event, he drew some comfort from the other young Irish sailors around him and decided that he, too, would stick it out.

    On his eighteenth birthday in 1895, after exactly two years service, Crean was promoted to the rank of ‘ordinary seaman’ while serving on HMS
Royal Arthur
, a flag-ship in the Pacific Fleet. A little less than a year later, he advanced to become Able Seaman Crean on HMS
Wild Swan
, a small 170-ft versatile utility vessel which also operated in Pacific waters.

    By 1898, Crean was apparently eager to gain new skills and was appointed to the gunnery training ship, HMS
Cambridge
, at Devonport. Six months later, shortly before Christmas 1898, he moved across to the torpedo school ship of HMS
Defiance
, also at Devonport. At the major naval port of Chatham, he advanced a little further by securing qualifications for various gun and torpedo duties. 7

    Crean was also developing a reputation for reliability and his career record is impressive. His conduct was officially described by the naval hierarchy as ‘very good’ throughout his early years in the service, despite occasional brushes with authority.

    It was around this time – between 1899 and 1900 – that Crean began to rise up and down the slippery pole of naval ranking and he secured the only recorded blemish to his otherwise impressive career record. It may have reflected hisdiscontent, or it may be that after six years ‘below decks’ Crean lacked any sense of purpose and felt he was going nowhere in this Englishman’s navy. Or, more simply, it may have been that, like countless sailors before and since, Crean was a victim of excessive drinking, the traditional curse of the ordinary seaman. Drinking was a regular feature of a sailor’s routine and shore leave was normally peppered with heavy and excessive bouts which easily got out of hand with predictable results. Crean liked a drink and as a gregarious, outgoing character would have been at his ease in the company of other heavy-drinking sailors.

    At the end of September 1899, he was promoted to Petty Officer 2nd Class at the Devonport yard while assigned to
Vivid
. There followed a brief period on board HMS
Northampton
, the boy’s training school before Crean made the move which would change his life.

    The momentous move came on 15 February 1900, when PO 2nd Class Crean was assigned to the oddly-named special torpedo vessel, HMS
Ringarooma
, in Australian waters. 8 It was a move which introduced the strapping 22-year-old to a new and very different type of challenge – the rigours of polar exploration with the likes of Scott, Shackleton, Wild, Evans and Lashly.

2
A chance meeting

    T he year 1901 marked the end of the long Victorian era for Britain. Queen Victoria, who had presided over the country’s most expansive age, died on 22 January after more than 63 years on the throne. It was also the year when Britain, under the leadership