Crean: The Extraordinary Life of an Irish Hero by Tim Foley

CREAN

The Extraordinary Life of AN IRISH HERO

Tim Foley

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time

T.S. Eliot

Tom Crean, photograph taken by Frank Hurley on 7 February 1915.

© The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo

FOREWORD

Written by Julian Evans Grandson of Admiral Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans

Our lives hang by a thread. For me, that thread could not have been thinner, nor more poignantly exemplified than by the heroism of just one man. In rescuing my grandfather from certain death, Tom Crean assured my very existence. So I never tire of reading the accounts of the ‘Heroic Age of Exploration’ and I am always profoundly moved. I am far from alone in this respect because, as Tim Foley explains in this excellent account of one man’s extraordinary endeavours, Tom Crean’s legacy is a testament to the human spirit.

My father was introduced to Tom Crean as a babe in arms, carried to him by my, no doubt, grateful grandfather, a man whose life was not without its own stories of extraordinary courage which my family proudly celebrates. Not to say that any of us have ever been involved in similar adventures. As my late father once said, ‘I haven’t done anything heroic in my entire life that I’m aware of.’

But that’s not the point. The point is, we need these stories.

We need to hear them again and again because they give us reasons to strive, to endure hardships, to remember that we are fortunate to be alive.

Tom Crean is one of those human beings whose life and deeds make him an icon and an inspiration, not just to the individual, not just to Ireland, but to the world. Tim Foley was right to strive to achieve national recognition for him. This account is a reminder to those of us who know and a succinct introduction to those of us who don’t.

Weall have our heroes, and the basis on which they were given that status stems from a variety of different reasons.

The subject of this book became my hero because the stories I’d heard and read about him were so incredible that I doubted such a man could ever have existed. Interestingly, the river beside which he grew up, the Owenascaul, translates in English to ‘the hero’s river’, and the nearby lake, Loughanscaul, similarly translates to ‘the lake of the hero’.1 Some may see this as prophetic.

After many years of research, I learned that the stories about this man were not myths – they were witnessed and documented by his colleagues and by those who benefitted from his actions.

Although his birth was registered on 25 February 1877 in Dingle, County Kerry, church records confirm that Tom Crean was actually born on or shortly before 16 February, close to the small village of Annascaul on the Dingle peninsula in Ireland. He was born at a time when the British Empire governed Ireland and many young men, seeking a way out of poverty, joined the British Royal Navy. Among their number was Tom Crean and therein, perhaps, lay the reason his heroism was not ‘officially’ acknowledged by his own country until eighty-three years after his passing.

To offer a better sense of the era, in the year that sixteen-year-old Tom Crean joined the Royal Navy, 1893, the Second Home

Tom Crean in an image featured in the Irish Independent in 1912 entitled: ‘The Kerryman with Scott’.

Rule Bill was introduced to the British parliament. For a while, things looked promising for Irish nationalists, as the Bill would have given Ireland autonomy over aspects of Irish governance, although Ireland would have remained under British rule. This was an era when a growing number of Irish men and women believed they should assert their independence from Britain, and Home Rule was seen as a step in that direction. However, the Bill went the way of its earlier iteration and was defeated in the House of Lords.

With the advent of the twentieth century, Irish nationalism gained increasing support, leading to a strong reaction against those seen to have supported the British Empire. Tom Crean has often been tarred with this brush, and there has since existed a belief that the impoverished, poorly educated teenager, who sought a means of escape from

The track from Crean’s birthplace at Gortacurraun into Annascaul village.

a life of deprivation, may have joined the Royal Navy out of some sense of allegiance to the British Empire. For more than a century, this belief was, I believe unjustly, a factor in how little recognition this remarkable man’s deeds received in his homeland.

The truth is actually very different. Crean was a dyed-in-the-wool Irishman brought up in an area in County Kerry where Irish was still the first language. A native Irish speaker, he had a fierce love for his country. He entered paid service with the Royal Navy for economic reasons, undertaking training on depot ships, on shore establishments and out at sea. He displayed his patriotism proudly over the course of a twenty-seven-year career, which ended with his retirement in 1920. For nine years of his naval service, he was seconded by the navy to three expeditions that took him to the most inhospitable location on the planet: Antarctica.

Many major historical events occurred as his career and life progressed. Most notable among them were the First World War in 1914–18; the Easter Rising of 1916; the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21; and the Irish Civil War in 1922–23. In this era of conflicts at home and abroad, Crean’s heroism, understandably, went unheralded. His incredible story transcends any attempts to politicise it and should be celebrated for the astonishing outcomes that allowed the very existence of the descendants of the men he saved. In 2021, with a greater insight into and understanding of Tom Crean’s story, the case for official recognition from the country of his birth finally brought about the honour he richly deserves. It came in the shape of a government-funded scientific vessel being named RV Tom Crean, the result of an eleven-year campaign which generated huge support from across the world.

As much as I fought for Tom Crean’s official recognition over the years, researching his life for this biography triggered a new drive in me. Discovering the number of falsehoods that have populated previous

accounts of Tom Crean’s story was entirely unexpected. Finding also, that a host of missing information had never before been made available to readers, I found myself with a new mission – to correct the errors and to fill in the blanks in his life and career. The inaccuracies included his birthdate, the gender make-up and number of his siblings, and other significant blunders that have, for many years, been digested by readers who were eager learn more about his fascinating life.

Other errors include it being documented that Crean’s mother died twenty years before she actually did and that, after his retirement, Crean would often visit his two brothers, Hugh and Daniel, at the family farm at Gortacurraun, despite the fact that Hugh passed away in 1908, twelve years before Tom retired. Relatively minor errors include the misnaming of the ship that brought Tom and his Endurance colleagues back to England in November 1916. Highland Lassie, a ship that disappeared at sea on a voyage from Swansea to River Plate in 1904 with a loss of thirty-six lives, is separated by two letters that would have correctly logged the vessel under her true title, Highland Laddie. There are several more examples, but I’ll refrain from listing them all.

In addition to the errors that have populated Tom Crean’s timeline, missing also from previous accounts of his life are a number of notable assignments, events and people that played a part in his story. Among these were an eventful seven-year period of naval service in the Americas and Oceania before his maiden voyage to Antarctica aboard Discovery. Shortly before the First World War broke out, Crean’s service on on the Admiralty yacht HMS Enchantress, in 1914, at a time when Winston Churchill was aboard was, to my mind, a noteworthy assignment. It was also just a matter of months before Crean would embark on his final expedition to Antarctica, yet Enchantress, and Crean’s presence on board, is an event that has never been referenced in other accounts of his life. Absent too, is any mention of the

overtures expedition leader Joseph Foster Stackhouse made to Crean for the proposed British Antarctic Expedition in 1914. Crean’s activities in 1919, in the Arctic Circle with the Northern Russia Expedition are never documented other than to suggest his career effectively ended before HMS Fox set sail from England to Murmansk, something which I have sought to remedy here.

Very little has also been written about Crean’s time after leaving the navy and the stories incorporated within this account of his life offer a clearer picture of his time in retirement. They make for tales of sadness as well as humour, and they allow us a greater insight into Tom Crean’s character and his mindset.

It will take time to replace the misinformation that still does the rounds in articles, lectures and in books written for all ages, but it’s a challenge I’ve attempted to rectify in writing up this volume of his life. It truly was an extraordinary life and for those who may never have heard of Tom Crean, I believe you will never forget his name after discovering his incredible story.

Possibly the first ever newspaper reference to Tom Crean, as he took to the Gaelic football field to play for his hometown team, the Liberators (Annascaul), against the Shamrocks (Dingle). Kerry Sentinel, 3 May 1892.

Hardships

often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny

C.S. Lewis

Chapter 1 THE ROAD THAT LED SOUTH

A view of Annascaul showing the single-storey dwellings to the left of the bridge where Tom Crean would, in 1929, rebuild his house to become the South Pole Inn.

Growing up in Salford, England, the son of a County Kerry man, I had an early introduction to the beautiful county of my father’s birth. My father was born in Keel, Castlemaine, birthplace of the ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ and an entry point to the Dingle peninsula, one of the world’s most scenic routes.

As the years passed and my familiarity with Kerry grew, I became aware of the strangely named pub we often passed while travelling to visit relatives in the village of Annascaul. ‘Why on earth’, I pondered, among a host of typically named Irish bars, ‘would someone think to call a pub the South Pole Inn?’ Over the years, my intrigue got the better of me and, upon reaching an age when I was able to step into the bar, the reasons became apparent. The bar was adorned with pictures on every wall of the man who so named it. He was a man whose remarkable feats of incredible bravery were legendary among the polar expedition community.

A few kilometres up the road from the pub lies the townland of Gortacurraun. In 1877 it was a community of small dwellings where families resided in cramped, cold conditions. It was in one of these small houses that farmer Patrick Crean and his wife, Catherine, would

raise their family. Thomas Crean, the seventh of eleven children, was born at a time when opportunities were rare for those across an Ireland still suffering in the aftermath of the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) of 1845–52. Within three years of Crean’s birth, the Little Famine (An Gorta Beag) of 1879 had taken root across Ireland, after successive disastrous harvests in the preceding years. In 1880, Irish emigration figures rose to more than double those of the previous year, as 100,000 people left their home shores in search of better fortune.1

Records and newspaper articles of the time paint a dismal picture of life for the poor and destitute in late nineteenth-century Ireland. It was a time when ruthless land agents, representing their landlord masters, frequently carried out evictions in a repugnant ritual replicated across the whole of Ireland.

On 31 March 1880 the weekly meeting of the Annascaul Relief Committee sat surrounded by almost 150 men and women applicants from the area who, it was reported, ‘presented a very destitute appearance’.2 With no possibility of growing potatoes and with no seed available to them, many had walked for miles to collect a ration of ‘Indian meal’, an imported, poorly ground maize used, in the main, to make bread, on which they had to survive until the next meeting.

For many families, Poor Relief (assistance for the poor based on the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act 1838) was essential to help avoid a life in the workhouse. Operated by Boards of Guardians in Poor Law Union districts across Ireland, property rates levied on landowners were calculated by the Guardians and used to fund the governance of these workhouses. Each district had one, and they were places where those in the most dire of circumstances were housed. It was a fate that many had to suffer in institutions where children, many of them orphans, were high in numbers. In February 1883 almost 1,100 people populated the workhouses of Dingle and Tralee and, of these, almost half were children under the age of fifteen.3

It was a hopeless time, when children of the poor had to walk barefoot. There was little people could do to improve the circumstances of their hand-to-mouth existence. Raising a large family meant long, hard hours working the cattle and the fields just to keep from starvation. Fathers often called on their sons and daughters from an early age to help them with their labours and the Crean household was no exception. At the age of twelve, Tom Crean’s school days at the nearby Brackluin school ended when he began his working life on the farm.

Farmers relied on the good health of cattle and, in the cold of winter, often brought them into their dwellings where animals also provided a valuable heat source to the occupants. Building or erecting a shed in which to house animals meant an increase in rent, so, rather than face even greater penalties, they unwittingly placed themselves in peril from infections from the livestock they owned. To compound the misery, Annascaul families faced further dangers as fresh water supplies were scarce. Water taken from the river or wells presented a grave risk of disease, as did the poor sanitation in most households.

In stark contrast, for the landowners and visiting British gentry, Annascaul and the Dingle Peninsula provided a wealth of fishing and hunting grounds, all of which were reserved for their exclusive enjoyment. Attracted by the magnificent surroundings, and its wildlife, a host of poets, artists, botanists and naturalists ventured into the imposing hillsides and onto the beautiful beaches that encircle the village in search of inspiration or their next scientific discovery. In the days when the class system divided the haves from the have-nots, life’s leisures and luxuries were being enjoyed by the upper classes amidst the squalor and suffering of the poor.

The beauty of the surrounding coastal landscape was of little consolation for those who faced the misfortunes of an impoverished farm life in nineteenth-century Ireland. A number of sons and daughters felt that, to change their fortune, they must emigrate to another land,

William O’Brien, Irish nationalist politician and journalist, making a case for a navy training ship to be sited in Cork, his home county: Correspondence to the First Lord of the Admiralty.

‘If it be admitted that Ireland is entitled to at least one training ship, then I think the claim of Cork Harbour to be selected as its station is beyond any reasonable dispute, by two facts. First, that Queenstown is the Irish Headquarters of the Royal Navy and, second, that of 220 boys joining the Navy from Ireland last year (1892), 97, or considerably more than a third of the whole, came from Cork.’

The Cork Examiner, 26 August 1893.

His request, and that of other Irish representatives conveying concerns of worried parents witnessing their sons travelling long distances to English ports, was listened to but never acted upon.

and many took this route to seek a better life. Those who were fortunate enough to find paid work in their adopted homelands would send money home to help their families pay the rent. Eviction was a constant threat to those who fell into arrears, unable to pay the extortionate rents levied upon them by landlords. Groups of men employed by the land agent – the Crowbar Brigades, as they were known across Ireland – and accompanied by police would ruthlessly force their way into a property that had, more often than not, been barricaded by the fearful tenants. On entry, they would eject the homeowners from their property while the police and sympathetic neighbours looked on.

In February 1886, a total of twelve families, amounting to over fifty men, women and children, were evicted from their Annascaul homes by gangs operating under the stewardship of the infamous land agent Samuel Hussey.4 It was a dark backdrop to the formative years of the young Tom Crean, who may well have gazed out across the horizon of the coastline that surrounded him and wondered what lay beyond the hardships and sufferings to which he was bearing witness.

With seven brothers and three sisters, the prospects for the young Tom Crean looked bleak unless he was able to take control of his own destiny. That opportunity arose in 1893.

After a series of petty arguments with his father,

Typical eviction scene in nineteenth-century Ireland.

the latest seeing him take the blame for allowing cattle to stray into a potato field,5 young Crean made a decision that would alter the course of his life. Like many young Irishmen of his era, he decided to join the Royal Navy. Many of his acquaintances from neighbouring areas joined up in the months and years before and after him and, in 1893, no fewer than fifteen boys from Annascaul, Ventry, Ballinacourty, Minard, Lispole and Dingle travelled the same path to a new life.6

Perhaps surprisingly, joining the Royal Navy was seen as an acceptable option in an area that was a hotbed of rebellion against the Crown.7 The belief that naval recruits were unlikely to meet fellow countrymen in the field of conflict may have played a part in this; another reason may have been the fact that those recruited as ratings were not required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown.8

An evicted tenant family.

Signing up to the navy was, therefore, a longstanding and traditional means of escaping poverty for the sons of Annascaul.9

Despite being just sixteen years old, Tom made his way to Minard, a short distance from his home, where the British Navy coastguard station was located. Upon receiving his papers, Crean’s new life in the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class began on 10 July 1893.

Crean’s service record signifies that he was born on 20 July 1877;10 it was not until 2015 that a genealogist, Kay Caball, discovered his birth certificate, which gave the date as 25 February 1877.11 His true date of birth, which occurred on or shortly before 16 February 1877, can be found in the parish registers of the period, albeit under a different Christian name – I’ve elaborated on these findings in the Appendix. Incorrect birth dates are anomalies that exist in the records of a number of naval recruits of the time, yet the reasons for this, if any, remain unclear.

After undertaking a medical at Dr John Moriarty’s in Dingle, Crean headed down to Queenstown (now Cobh) by train. Accompanying him was a local acquaintance from Minard, James Ashe. Already a ten-year navy veteran, Ashe was travelling back to HMS Victory 1, the shore-based holding barracks at Portsmouth, after a period of leave.12 James was a relation of Thomas Ashe, the Irish martyr and patriot who died in 1917, after being force-fed during a hunger strike at Mountjoy Prison.

In Queenstown, James, who was fond of a drink or two, stopped at a local bar. Outside, waiting to board the boat to England, Crean became embroiled in a scuffle with another boy. Separated by a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constable, it was only after showing his newly signed naval documents to the officer that he was allowed to board the boat.13 One imagines it would have been heartbreaking for Crean to leave his family and the magnificent shores of the Dingle Peninsula, yet a life beyond the horizon was one he seemed destined for.

HMS Impregnable, the depot ship to which he was first assigned, was a training ship based in Devonport, where Crean was one of over 1,500 boys living in the cramped environment below deck.14 Conditions on board drew such cause for concern over the health and well-being of the recruits that questions were being raised on the issue in the British parliament.15 Concerns were heightened when the death toll aboard Impregnable reached alarming rates in comparison to other training establishments. Naval statistics for 1892 revealed a mortality rate of 12.26 per thousand aboard Impregnable and HMS Lion, another training ship based in Devonport. The death rates recorded aboard the two ships were alarmingly high and were twice the number of those that occurred aboard HMS Britannia, the Dartmouth-based training ship for naval cadets. That trend would

HMS Impregnable, the ship in which Tom Crean was trained for a life at sea.

continue into 1893, when, in the first twentysix days of February 1893, eight deaths were documented aboard the two training ships. Many of the deaths were from pneumonia and meningitis, and overcrowding was cited as the root cause.16

Life as a boy recruit in the navy was only for the hardiest, and discipline was extreme. Boys would rise at 5 a.m. and carry their hammocks to the upper decks for storage before thoroughly scrubbing the decks and polishing the ship’s brasses and the utensils in the mess decks until they were shining spotlessly. Punishments were severe and were carried out without compunction for even the most minor offences. If, during the daily inspection call, a boy was seen to have a button missing, or if his uniform was not spotlessly clean, his instructor would note it and, should it reoccur, he would receive six swipes of the cane. A harsher and more public punishment awaited those who were caught smoking or those arriving back late from shore leave. All crew would assemble on the quarterdecks and the offender would then be brought midships, where his arms and legs were tied to a wooden horse before the ship’s corporal dished out twelve strokes of a stout cane – each end of this was covered with wax string and it was reversed every four strokes.

The most severe punishment was meted out to those who had been insolent to an

‘

Royal Navy

There are vacancies in the Training Ships for Boys from 15 to 16½ years old, of good character, able to read and write, physically fit for service and up to standard, viz:–

Pamphlets containing information as to conditions of entry, pay and prospects, etc., can be obtained at any post office. For further information, apply by letter to one of the following officers:–Captain, H.M.S. Impregnable, Devonport; the Officer of any Coastguard Station …’ The Manchester Guardian, 31 December 1892.

instructor or were caught stealing. Again, the offender would be tied to the wooden horse and twenty-four lashes of the birch would strike his bare-skinned body. This horrific spectacle would have served as a warning, not only to the poor victim, but also to the boys who witnessed it.17

In this harsh environment, dreams of a better life must have seemed as distant as ever for young Tom Crean, and it would be safe to assume that he would have had some regrets about his decision to join up. Crean, though, was raised from hard Kerry stock and would have adjusted to the oppressive treatment meted out to boy recruits. Developing a strong character was essential at a time when no-nonsense taskmasters ran their crews under strict navy protocol.

Crean’s early training consisted of general schooling and seamanship carried out aboard the training ship. Gunnery training was undertaken on the drill fields of nearby shore bases. As time progressed, all boys had to be ready to go to sea and, to ensure they were capable in all the skills required of a sailor, training brigs attached to the mother ship were used. Daily forays, over a course of twelve weeks, in the brig that the boys were assigned to, would provide them with their first taste of real seamanship, and they would learn splicing, knotting, boarding, handling sails and masts, rowing small boats and swimming. After becoming more accustomed to undertaking their duties out at sea, they would be assigned to a depot ship.18

Throughout his training schedule on various ships and in training establishments, Crean would cross paths with others from his locality who had signed up before or after him. The familiar sounds of home, when the Irish officers conversed in their native tongue while relaxing or playing cards in the officer’s mess, must have provided him with some comfort in the uncomfortable surroundings in which he found himself.19

When Crean left HMS Impregnable in November 1894 to join

HMS Devastation, the port guard ship at Devonport, his rating had changed to Boy 1st Class.

After joining the crew of HMS Wild Swan in December 1894, Crean journeyed across the Atlantic before being transferred to HMS Royal Arthur at Valparaíso in Chile in March 1895. Valparaíso was the navy’s former base for South American operations, from which Crean’s fellow countryman Edward Bransfield had set out to discover Antarctica seventy-five years earlier. During his service aboard Royal Arthur, Crean’s progression through the ratings saw him reach Ordinary Seaman, an automatic rise in status for those reaching their eighteenth birthday, at which age it was deemed by the Royal Navy that boys became men.

On board HMS Royal Arthur, the flagship assigned to the Pacific Station, Crean was a member of a crew that included William Lashly.20 It is likely the two men became familiar with each other in the course of their duties, and not only would they quickly be thrust into playing a part in a major international incident, but they would also later take part in an historic tale of a very different kind in a very different place.

It was during Crean’s service aboard Royal Arthur that he was first called to action, as the ship, along with HMS Wild Swan and HMS Satellite, entered the port of Corinto, in Nicaragua, on the morning of Tuesday, 23 April 1895.21 Operating under the command of Rear Admiral Henry Stephenson, the small naval task force was on a mission to collect compensation of £15,000 (around £2 million in today’s currency) from the Nicaraguan government.

In late 1894 the Nicaraguans had occupied the Mosquito Coast, a disputed territory spanning the coastlines of Nicaragua and Honduras, and the natives looked to Britain for protection. The arrival of the three ships at Corinto was sparked by the seizure of the British Vice Consulate at Bluefields, the largest town in the disputed territory,

where Nicaraguan forces had arrested some twenty British subjects, who were then confined in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.

Commander Stokes of the Royal Arthur left the ship and handed Admiral Stephenson’s demands, contained in a letter and a proclamation, to the Nicaraguan Minister for Foreign Affairs. This ultimatum allowed the Nicaraguans three days to meet the conditions issued in a previous letter sent by the Foreign Secretary Lord Kimberley. These terms included handover of the payment, cancellation of varying decrees of exile issued against the British subjects and that they agree to the constitution of a commission to determine the losses sustained by those arrested in respect of property and goods seized after their abduction. Failure to do so would see the town of Corinto occupied by a landing force and a continuation of the passive blockade implemented at two other coastal points, San Juan Del Sur and Paso Caballos.

After the deadline for handover of the indemnity passed on 27 April 1895, a detachment of 400 men from the naval force occupied Corinto without opposition and martial law was declared. Captain Frederick Trench, commander of Royal Arthur, was installed as the new governor and the British flag was raised over Customs House.

Further escalation of the dispute loomed large when the Nicaraguans sought protection from the USA for what they considered an illegal invasion of their territory, but Nicaraguan President José Santos Zelaya’s overtures to his American neighbours were rejected, with the US proclaiming: ‘We decline to protect a wrongdoer in her wrongdoings.’22

Directing their response from Managua, the Nicaraguan government boycotted Corinto and cut off all supply lines and provisions in an effort to isolate the British forces. After a tense stand-off, with Nicaraguan forces having retreated outside the town, negotiations began. On 3 May, helped forward by the offices of the USA, an agreement

was reached for Nicaragua to pay the compensation and fulfil the conditions of the ultimatum.

With the crisis at an end, the ships headed out of Corinto on 5 May 1895, but not without further incident, as Captain Trench had, during his short-lived governance of the town, contracted a fatal bout of gastritis while ashore. As the ships set a course for Esquimalt in British Columbia, Canada, Trench was buried at sea.23

In October 1895 Crean would be assigned for a second period of service aboard HMS Wild Swan, under Commander Macvey Napier. The decision to send Wild Swan to the Pacific station the previous year had met with a barrage of criticism. Built in 1876, the vessel, an Osprey-class sloop capable of propulsion under steam, was described as ‘hopelessly obsolete’ and ‘altogether out of date’. The same report described it as ‘scandalous’ that the ship would serve out her time in a part of the Empire that was considered crucial to British interests.24

Tom Crean would spend almost two and a half years patrolling the south and north Pacific from the ship’s base at Esquimalt in Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada. In that time he would chalk up thousands of nautical miles travelling to an array of ports situated along the whole of the Pacific coastline of the Americas. Of all the British naval squadrons based abroad, the fleet based at the Pacific station was charged with patrolling the most extensive area, covering 133 lines of latitude from the Arctic to the Antarctic Circles. The territorial range bordered the China and Australian stations and stretched from the Bering Strait in the north to beyond Cape Horn in the south. The squadron was relatively small, consisting of just seven vessels and a store-ship permanently moored in Coquimbo, Chile.25

In the century before tour operators filled the seas and skies with people eager to see the world, the early voyages of Wild Swan during her tenure in the Pacific, read like the itinerary of a modern-day cruise ship. Leaving Esquimalt on 21 November 1895, she set sail for

Hawaii, arriving at Honolulu on 12 December.26 Renowned later for his exploits on the coldest place on earth, it is strange to think of Tom Crean spending Christmas and New Year in Hawaii, but the Kerry man did, on this occasion, celebrate the festive season in the heat of the tropics.27

In January 1896 the ship would journey on to Tahiti. Over a century earlier the island had been a frequent port of call for Captain James Cook during the period of his three expeditions to discover new lands. Cook’s explorations would, in 1773, see his ship HMS Resolution become the first manned vessel on record to cross the Antarctic Circle. Assigned as Gunner’s Mate to the Resolution would be a sailor from County Cork named John Marra, who, along with Andrew Horn from County Kildare, would become the first Irishman to cross that line of latitude and into the history books.

Serving alongside Crean as Wild Swan sailed to Tahiti was another young sailor, Able Seaman Thomas Kennar.28 It would be an incident involving Kennar five years later that would trigger Crean’s recruitment to an expedition to the Antarctic continent that Cook failed to discover.

From Tahiti the ship headed out to Pitcairn Island, the refuge where Fletcher Christian and the HMS Bounty mutineers would settle after taking control of the ship and banishing their commander, William Bligh. In 1798 Bligh and a crew of eighteen men in a 23-foot lifeboat would make an historic forty-seven-day journey of over 4,000 miles to safety in a tale of survival that would go down in history as among the greatest lifeboat journeys ever undertaken. Ironically it would be another extraordinary lifeboat journey of survival and rescue, one in which Tom Crean would feature highly, that, in the eyes of many, would eclipse the achievement of the Bounty’s ousted commander.

Wild Swan’s following port of call would be Juan Fernández Islands, which are thought to have been the inspiration for Daniel

Defoe’s classic Robinson Crusoe. After calling at Coquimbo in Chile in March 1896,29 and with her extended southern cruise at an end, the ship returned to Canada before continuing her patrols along the Pacific west coast. Continuing his rise in naval status, Tom Crean was promoted to Able Seaman on 1 July 1896.30

On 18 September that year, the ship again sailed to Chile, where she called at the northern port of Iquique. During their sojourn at the port, the ship’s crew witnessed trouble between opposing parties, who were fighting an election in the aftermath of a civil war and took their battles to the streets. It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last time in Crean’s life that he would witness political upheaval, revolution and rebellion.31

While navigating its way into Callao, the port serving the Peruvian capital, Lima, on 23 September, the ship hit a rock at full speed and it appeared her days were numbered. Newspapers reported that: ‘those who know the place say that her chances of escape from total destruction are few’, but a successful rescue and repair, aided by the divers of the American ship USS Marion, ensured that Wild Swan, ‘the smallest ship of the Pacific coast squadron and rather an inferior type of vessel’, was rendered fit to resume her duties. Soon after this, she was grounded once more at Fanning Island, yet the resilient twenty-year-old craft was still not ready for the scrapyard, despite the condemnation of her critics, many of whom had denounced the ship at every given opportunity.32

Revolution was again in the air when, in early October, Wild Swan was ordered to Guayaquil, the ancient capital of Ecuador. The ship arrived at a time when the port city was in the midst of a raging battle between government forces and rebels. As the ship’s crew bore witness to a number of atrocities shortly before the rebels retreated into the surrounding hillsides, one of the officers recalled:

The slaughter on the streets, on one occasion, was horrendous. The rebels were, in some cases, accompanied by their women, who rode astride, carried rifles and displayed great bravery. I saw a big fellow shot off his horse and trampled under foot while a woman who rode with him, probably his wife, stood her ground and poured hot shot into the enemy until he retreated. Then she managed to get her mate across the saddle and rode away with the rest of the gang toward the mountains. They made several sorties while we were there and they kept the city in constant terror.

When hostilities appeared to have ceased, and having completed her duties in the protection of British properties and subjects, Wild Swan headed south before entering the port of Callao in Peru. However, she was forced to make a hasty return to Guayaquil when a humanitarian mission began, which saw a Chilean warship, President Pinto, joining in the efforts. It wouldn’t be the last time Chile answered the call for help and twenty years later it would be a small Chilean tugboat that would undertake a historic rescue with Tom Crean aboard.

On their return to Guayaquil on 19 October, the crew found one of the most beautiful and oldest cities in South America reduced to ashes, after rebels had indiscriminately set fire to buildings leaving over $30 million-worth of damage in their wake, a sum that translates to a current value of over $900 million. Thousands of the poor, made homeless by the destruction, roamed the streets, yet they seemed indifferent to the ruins that lay around them. An officer of Wild Swan noted that:

The poor people were the last to complain of the fire. They seemed to like the idea and were better clothed, fed and sheltered than they had ever been before. Some were in favour of

burning the rest of the town so as to keep up the stream of charity flowing in upon them. We had hard work to get rid of our supplies. Nobody wanted the provisions and we had plenty, among them 1200 pieces of clothing some of which were entirely new.

Leaving Guayaquil on 3 November, the ship made her way via Acapulco in Mexico to San Diego in the USA, where the crew retold the stories of the killings and destruction they had witnessed.33

In March 1897 Wild Swan was back in Hawaii where she stayed for three weeks before continuing on her cruise south. By 4 May 1897 the ship had reached Christmas Island (today known as Kiritimati), the Pacific atoll where it was reported that the number of inhabitants amounted to just six men and one woman. Over half a century later it would be the stage for the most destructive weapons on earth to be put to the test.34 On this occasion Christmas Island would play host to events of a more benign nature, when, after Wild Swan’s arrival, the ship was visited by the natives of Fanning and Washington Islands, who brought on board fresh food supplies and, in a break from naval protocol, entertained the crew with a concert of song and dance.35

On 4 July 1897 Tom Crean would spend American Independence Day enjoying the celebrations aboard Wild Swan as she lay moored in Seattle alongside USS Oregon, one of the USA’s first modern battleships.36 During this visit to the largest city in northwest America, parades and visitors filled the waterfront to see the vessels on display. Now aged twenty years old, Crean had reached the age at which he could officially receive his ration of grog, a daily ship’s ritual he had only been able to watch for the previous four years due to strict naval regulations. Interestingly, it was a time when the growing temperance movement was gaining ground and those not wishing to receive their allotted alcohol intake could be recompensed in cash to the value of a

ration. We can be fairly certain that the man destined, years later, to become a notable publican would not have been among the teetotallers picking up the cash equivalent.37

After returning to Esquimalt, the ship would spend much of the middle and later months of 1897 patrolling the North Pacific, monitoring the hoards of Canadian vessels sailing the Bering Sea on the hunt for northern fur seals, the skins of which were a much sought after export commodity. On 20 September 1897, two days after leaving the Alaskan port of Unalaska, storms hit as Wild Swan headed back to her base at Esquimalt. Soon a furious gale had developed and would batter the already vulnerable older vessel as she was tossed around in the heavy seas. With her foresail torn to shreds and her main topsail split, the ship had little choice but to wait out the storm. For sixteen hours, only her storm-sails kept the ship from succumbing to the conditions, before she sailed under steam into Esquimalt on 28 September. The vessel was a sorry sight, but to the relief of her crew she had proven her seaworthiness in the worst battle she had ever faced.38

With her time on the station at an end, Wild Swan reached Coquimbo in late December on her way back to England. Her last port of call in the Americas, after rounding Cape Horn, was reached when she sailed into St Vincent, West Indies. On 19 March 1898 she reached Plymouth where she was sold out of the service due to her poor condition and outdated armaments.39 The ship’s swansong across the Americas had been a memorable and eventful time in what was Tom Crean’s introduction to the New World. In a period of assignment to the Pacific Station totalling three years and four months, he had visited many places of exquisite beauty, yet his time there served as a reminder of man’s inhumanity to man, much of it in the pursuit of land and power. No such human conflicts would face Crean in the uninhabited world that lay in wait for him.

On 1 June 1898, Crean was promoted to Leading Seaman and was

serving at the naval barracks, HMS Vivid, at Devonport. From this point in his career, a topsy-turvy navigation up and down through the ranks ensued. After postings to the Devonport-based gunnery school depot ship, HMS Cambridge, and to HMS Defiance, the navy’s torpedo and submarine mining school also at Devonport, he was downgraded to Able Seaman, then upgraded to Petty Officer 2nd Class within the space of three months between July and September 1899.40

Any rise and fall in naval status impacted financially on a sailor, for better or worse. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Able Seamen were paid one shilling and sevenpence per day, and a promotion to Petty Officer 2nd Class would see the daily rate rise to two shillings and twopence. Although these rates may today appear to be a pittance, the amounts earned helped provide for the family of the sailor. For Tom Crean, the money offered peace of mind, and over the course of his early career in the navy his wages were allotted to his mother. His family back home would have been highly reliant on this income to help them maintain the farm and to pay the landlord’s rent. Coming as he did from an impoverished background, financial incentives for Crean and others like him were a powerful motivator, and they encouraged good behaviour and a studious intent. For all sailors, the award of good conduct badges and certificates of proficiency after completion of gunnery and torpedo courses equated to a small additional daily amount to their earnings.

It’s understandable that the initial years of Crean’s navy life had left him with great cause for doubting his decision to join up. Never could he have imagined that his fledgling career would see him exposed to the severe punishments meted out to boy recruits, or that he would bear witness to armed insurrections, killings and rebellions in the Americas. It must have been, by any standards, a rude awakening for the young Crean; yet he had persevered, gained a good promotion and would continue his life in the navy.

In October 1899, Crean, by then a seasoned sailor, would pass on his range of skills in a four-month term of service aboard the seagoing boys training ship HMS Northampton based at Chatham. In the two years since his return from the Americas, Crean, on periods of leave, would have paid a number of visits back home to Annascaul to catch up with family and friends, and in the festive period of 1899 it is likely that he would have been given notice about a forthcoming assignment, one that would take him to yet another part of the world. From 15 February 1900 Crean’s term of service would be ledgered to HMS Ringarooma, although it appears he didn’t commence service on the ship until over two months later.

The Admiralty, seeking to relieve the existing crews of the Australian Station, commissioned the cruiser HMS Diana to ferry replacement crews to man the squadron of Royal Navy ships based there – Ringarooma, Boomerang and Torch – and it is almost certain that among their number would have been Tom Crean. The Diana left Plymouth bound for Australia on 27 February 1900. Carrying 450 men, she arrived at Sydney on 21 April,41 and Crean commenced his service there three days later, on 24 April 1900, under the command of Captain Frederick St George Rich.

At just twenty-three years old, Tom Crean had already clocked up many thousands of miles across the world’s seas and oceans, and his time aboard Ringarooma would prove just as eventful as his previous assignments. The pre-Antarctic seafaring career of Crean was, I believe, an unhappy time for him and one need look no further than his naval record to provide some evidence of this. Despite his recent promotion, Tom Crean’s one and a half years’ service aboard Ringarooma would only add to his woes.

In the land-grabbing days of empire, tensions were high between French and British ships sailing to the outlying islands around Australia as they sought sovereignty over territory as yet unclaimed by

either nation. Safeguarding their territorial assets meant continuous tours of duty to pacify and govern their subjects and to ward off any threats to their dominions. One such ship making a tour seeking to consolidate British interests in territories to which claim had already been laid was HMS Ringarooma.

Over the course of the southern hemisphere’s winter period, Ringarooma was to undertake a three-month tour labelled a ‘punitive mission’. It would be a mission to bring to heel warring tribes of what was then known as the New Hebrides (modern-day Vanuatu), a grouping of eighty islands 1,000 miles east of the northern coast of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean.

Of specific concern was the island of Erromango, where missionaries had had a chequered history with the indigenous tribes since their first attempt to convert them to Christianity in 1839. Reports had been received that fifteen native lives had already been lost as the tribal factions fought for dominance and that the missionaries feared for their own safety. Ringarooma’s objective was to prevent further loss of life.

Prior to the mission, from 30 May 1900, Ringarooma, with Crean aboard, would be subjected to a twelve-day period of quarantine in the New Caledonian port of Nouméa before returning to Sydney, the ship’s home port.42 The reason for the ship’s isolation was an outbreak of a disease renowned as being the deadliest in recorded history.

In January 1900, a month before Tom Crean stepped aboard HMS Diana bound for Sydney, the first case of bubonic plague (the Black Death) had been verified in Australia’s largest city and it represented a huge threat to the population. Health scientists quickly identified the causes and, with measures put in place to curtail the spread of the disease, the number of deaths up to August 1900 had been kept to the relatively low figure of 103.43

Following the ship’s precautionary term of isolation, Ringarooma

would visit almost every island in the New Hebrides, where, on some, it was reported that: ‘Letters received by Ringarooma state that there has been a good deal of fighting on Tanna Island. Cannibalism was found to exist on many of the Islands, it is seen in its worst form on Aoba where the people seem really fond of human flesh.’44

The practice of cannibalism understandably was beyond the comprehension of those living in a civilised society, but in the islands that made up the New Hebrides it was often a ritualistic tradition that overrode a pure desire to taste human flesh. For those who have studied the practice in great detail, it has been explained, by some tribes who participated in the act, as a tradition that symbolised respect to a defeated enemy. Nevertheless, evidence that it did occur, and the revelation that it was commonplace, will have left a lasting impression on the minds of the crew of Ringarooma and whatever it was they witnessed.

The aforementioned Aoba Island, where it was confirmed that tribes had partaken in cannibalism, is today known as Ambae Island and its beauty inspired the mythical creation of Bali Ha’i in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, more popularly known today for its depiction in the musical South Pacific. Michener’s Second World War portrayal of Aoba and the civility of its natives was a million miles away from the reality of what the officers and crew of HMS Ringarooma bore witness to in 1900.

Before the ship finally made its return into Sydney on 3 October 1900, word of another notable incident was reported. While on a training exercise off the coast of the archipelago’s second largest island, Malakula Island, Ringarooma misfired one of its torpedoes and it dropped into the sea below. At a cost then of £250 (equivalent to over £30,000 in today’s currency), retrieval of the valuable armament was of great importance.

Ship’s divers descended into the depths in an attempt to salvage the torpedo. Soon the crew above felt the divers violently tugging at the

ropes, indicating an eagerness to be hauled back up. Safely back on board, they were found to be bleeding from the nose and in a state of exhaustion. It transpired that they had landed on a submarine volcano and had to quickly escape the bubbling waters that threatened to boil them alive. It was a narrow escape, but they lived to tell the tale.45

Further missions around the islands saw the captain issue warnings to the natives for a number of disputes over land seized by French or English settlers. Another saw Ringarooma commandeer a vessel caught trading illegally. Policing the southern posts of the Empire, where unwelcoming natives were contemptuous of their new masters, brought little in the way of job satisfaction to the crew on what was for them a ‘displeasure’ cruise. Unsurprisingly, it was reported that all crew members were ecstatic when the mission was at an end. One officer was quoted as stating: ‘Sydney is a heaven, after three months in the Islands.’

Signifying a continued lack of enthusiasm among Ringarooma’s crew, a month after her return to Sydney in November 1900, three deserters, described as ‘Stragglers’, became the first of a number to flee the ship.46

In December 1900 the Ringarooma underwent an extensive refit in preparation for a royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, the future King George V and his wife, Queen Mary. It was around this time, on 19 December, that Tom Crean was demoted from Petty Officer 2nd Class to Able Seaman, a status he would retain until 1904.47 The reasons for his downgrade at this time are unclear and we are left to wonder whether the desertions and the discontent of the ship’s crew was related to the after-effects of their problematic tour. Naval regulations would downgrade a rating for the slightest misdemeanour and Crean, like most young men, enjoyed his share of grog and a smoke of his pipe. Returning late from shore leave or being caught smoking or drinking outside of designated periods would be

TIMELINE March–October1895

December1894–April1898 April1900–December1901

Fanning Island Tahiti

Pitcairn Island

THESHIPS HMS RoyalArthur HMS WildSwan HMS Ringarooma

the road that led south

Corinto Acapulco Guayaquil

Callao

Juan Fernández Islands

Atlantic Ocean

Plymouth

Norwegian Sea CaribbeanSea

Iquique

Coquimbo Valparaíso

Falkland Islands

Graham Land

South Georgia

deemed sufficient reasons for demotion, even dismissal, and it’s not rare to see similar instances of this in naval records of the time.

Desertions from Ringarooma continued, with another two men absconding in March 1901. The navy offered £3 for the apprehension of each deserter if handed over within two years.

Returning to service on 1 April 1901, after being floated out of dry dock, Ringarooma was ready to resume her duties and play her part in the upcoming royal visit.48 On 6 May she shadowed HMS Royal Arthur, now flagship of the Australian Squadron and a ship Crean was familiar with from his time in the Americas, as they escorted the Royal Yacht, HMS Ophir, to Melbourne for the inaugural opening of the Australian parliament.49

Reports of ‘runners’ were now becoming commonplace among news updates, and another two desertions from Ringarooma occurred in June 1901. There was, quite clearly, some cause for concern, and it was perhaps fortunate for Tom Crean that on 5 October 1901 HMS Ringarooma sailed to New Zealand to relieve HMS Mildura. This was a journey that would determine the future direction of Crean’s life and career.50 Whilst there the ship took part in a coastal search operation to find the Union passenger steamer SS Monowai. The ship, carrying almost 150 passengers and crew, had been missing for four days. It would give Crean his first brief taste of partaking in a search and rescue mission.51 Whether Ringarooma located the troubled vessel is unclear, but Monowai was discovered and towed into Port Chalmers on 25 October with no casualties reported.

With cannibalism, the Black Death and the potential for armed conflict all forming a part of Tom Crean’s fledgling naval career, the visit to New Zealand would see a certain Commander Scott inadvertently rescue him from more of the same. In December 1901, Crean’s life would unexpectedly take yet another turn – one that would lead him to a place that would become his second home: Antarctica.