A Truly Humble Hero of Irish History

In Tralee, an Irish village, are two houses side by side.  One is named Terra Nova and the other Discovery, after the ships in which the father of the occupants sailed. Mary and Eileen say that their father never told them his story.  ‘He put his medals and his sword away in a box on the wardrobe and that was that.  He was a very humble man’.

Eileen thinks her father deserves more recognition than he’s ever had, and for good reason.

Heroes are people you know about, aren’t they? The South Pole has its share, you’d think – Captain Scott, who froze to death in 1912, and Ernest Shackleton, who died of a heart attack in 1922, on his abortive fourth attempt to reach the pole. Yet we hear very little about Tom the Pole, as he is even today referred to, for he was a true hero of Antarctic exploration.

Today, however, in light of the impending release of films about Shackleton, by Kenneth Branagh and Russell Crowe, it is perhaps time to properly recognise this stalwart of Antarctic exploration, a brave and gallant Irishman, who was a credit to his country.  

Tom Crean, a semi illiterate Irishman, is not a name that springs readily to mind, when people think about the South Pole. Born in 1877, in Annascaul, on the Dingle peninsula in Ireland’s county Kerry, to a local famer, he was just another of those boys who ran away to sea, at the age of 15.

Barely able to read or write, the Navy offered him, he thought, a future, and fate decreed that he should be stationed in New Zealand when Christmas came to the year 1901.  Discovery, the ship of Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton – those legendary figures of Antrarctic history – docked to make ready for the final leg of its journey.

Just before the departure date, a dissatisfied sailor jumped ship, having attacked an officer, and Crean volunteered to take his place on board.  He was an eager and able crewman, so it was no surprise that Scott enlisted his help again, for the 1910 expedition – the one that was to end in Scott’s own, tragic death, so near to his goal.

Though this was well documented, little was said of Crean’s incredible acts of heroism.