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

settled,
Discovery
left London on 31 July 1901 for the short trip to the Isle of Wight to participate on the fringe of Cowes Week and receive a royal farewell. The country was still coming to terms with the loss of Queen Victoria after her long reign and the new, but uncrowned monarch, Edward VII and his wife Queen Alexandra, came on board
Discovery
on 5 August to bid the expedition a royal farewell. Scott was impressed and recalled:

    ‘This visit was quite informal, but will be ever memorable from the kindly, gracious interest shown in the minutest details of our equipment, and the frank expression of good wishes for our plans and welfare. But although we longed to get away from our country as quietly as possible, we could not but feel gratified that His Majesty should have shown such personal sympathy with our enterprise …’ 3

    Discovery
, the fulfilment of Markham’s obsessive ambition and the opening chapters of both Britain’s Heroic Age and the Scott legend, sailed slowly away from the Isle of Wight at noon on 6 August 1901. She would not return home for almost three years.

    On the other side of the world, Tom Crean was in the middle of a period of almost two years on board HMS
Ringarooma
, the P-class special torpedo vessel of 6,400 tons which formed part of the Royal Navy’s Australia–New Zealand squadron.
Ringarooma
, with the unlikely sounding name, was to be the unexpected launching pad for his remarkable Antarctic career.

    The odd name for a ship in the Royal Navy arose from a special arrangement struck between Britain and Australia in the late Victorian age. Under the Imperial Defence Act of 1887, the Australians agreed to pay for the building of five warships for the Navy on condition that they were deployed in the seas around Australia and New Zealand.
Ringarooma
, built in 1890,was crewed by Royal Navy personnel, but the Australians were given the right to choose their own names for all five ships.

    Crean had joined
Ringarooma
on 15 February 1900 but before long had suffered an unfortunate brush with naval authority. On 18 December he was summarily demoted from PO to Able Seaman for an unknown misdemeanour, a rank he would retain for exactly twelve months. 4

    By November 1901, Scott’s expedition was in open water heading for New Zealand, the last staging post of civilisation before setting off into the unexplored region. Unknown to either of them, Able Seaman Tom Crean would be waiting for
Discovery
.

    Some confusion has surrounded the circumstances of Crean’s introduction to the polar landscape. Almost every mention of Crean in books, magazines and newspapers over the years has linked his arrival on the Antarctic scene with the untimely and widely reported death of another seaman, Charles Bonner, at Lyttelton, New Zealand, where
Discovery
was being resupplied before departing for the South at Christmas 1901. However, Crean’s elevation from the obscurity of the naval mess deck to a high-profile place on the
Discovery
expedition had nothing to do with the death of Bonner. Crean was already on board
Discovery
when Bonner died, having signed up with the expedition two weeks earlier. His arrival on the Antarctic scene was due to an entirely different act of fate which has received very little attention over the years.

    Crean’s contact with the expedition arose because
Ringarooma
and another man-of-war in the New Zealand squadron, HMS
Lizard
, had been instructed by the Admiralty to lend every possible assistance to Scott in New Zealand before the party set out on the journey into the unknown.
Ringarooma
’s log reported its first sighting of
Discovery
off New Zealand at 4.45 a.m. on Friday, 29 November, 5 and doubtless Crean would have been as eager as his messmates to catch sight of the historic vessel as it headed for one of the greatest journeys of the age.

    The
Discovery
expedition to one of the world’s last unconquered spots had aroused huge interest in the English-speaking world.