An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor Read Online Free

hardship, bitter cold and endless gloomy months of total winter darkness took a heavy toll on the crew. One man died and two others were declared ‘insane’.

    The survivors included a 25-year-old Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, and a 33-year-old American, Frederick Cook. Amundsen, the finest polar explorer of all time, would later complete the first ever navigation of the North West Passage across the frozen top of the North American Continent, and he would reach the South Pole a month before his ill-fated British rival, Captain Scott. Cook, a flawed but undeniably gifted character, would falsely claim until his dying day that he had beaten Robert Peary to become the first man to reach the North Pole.

    The first landing on the Antarctic Continent outside the Antarctic Peninsula is thought to have taken place on 24 January 1895 when an eight-man party from the whaler,
Antarctic
, landed at Cape Adare. The identity of the first person to make the landfall has never been accurately established because of a series of disputes. But the naturalist, Carsten Borchgrevink, claimed to have leaped out of the rowing boat ahead of others to gain the honour of being first to place his feet on the Continent. Borchgrevink later went onto secure the significant distinction of leading the first expedition to deliberately overwinter in Antarctica.

    Borchgrevink, a Norwegian, landed near the entrance of Robertson Bay at Cape Adare on the Adare Peninsula in 1899 and erected two small prefabricated huts where his ten-man party was the first to spend winter on the Antarctic Continent. One hut, the party’s living quarters, still stands today. However, Borchgrevink’s exploratory deeds were modest and confined to a short trip onto the Ross Ice Shelf, or the Great Ice Barrier.

    The first major attempt to explore Antarctica was conceived some years earlier by a remarkable English naval figure, Sir Clements Markham, who had made a brief trip to the Arctic decades before. Markham, an ex-public-school boy who entered the Navy at thirteen years of age, was on board the
Assistance
in 1850–51 during one of the many fruitless searches for Sir John Franklin’s party, which had tragically disappeared in search of the North West Passage in 1845 with the loss of all 129 lives.

    It was an episode which shaped Markham’s colourful life and had profound consequences for Britain’s role in polar exploits, first in the Arctic and later in the exploration of the Antarctic Continent. Britain’s memorable part in the ‘Heroic Age of polar exploration’ would have been entirely different without the driving influence of the formidable bewhiskered Victorian patriarch, Markham.

    Markham, a brusque and stubborn man who has been likened to a Victorian Winston Churchill, adopted polar exploration as a personal quest which bordered on obsession. There was a fanatical zeal about the way he manoeuvred, cajoled and expertly used his influence to ensure that Britain should undertake new expeditions south at a time when there was little support elsewhere for the idea. Moreover, Markham ensured that future exploration to the South would be a naval affair, when Britain could once again demonstrate its manhood and superiority to a slightly disbelieving world.

    The Antarctic: the fifth largest continent was largely unexplored at the start of the twentieth century.

    In particular, he was determined that the expedition would use traditional British methods of travelling, which meant man-hauling sledges across the ice, rather than the more suitable and modern use of dogs and skis. Dogs were quicker, hard working and at worst, could be eaten by the other dogs or the explorers themselves to prolong the journey or ensure safe return.

    Markham, however, was typically sentimental towards dogs and implacably opposed to using them as beasts of burden at a time when others – notably the Norwegians – used theanimals to great effect. There is little doubt that he greatly