GREAT EUROPEANS. An Irish farmer’s son from Annascaul in County Kerry carried out what has been called the single most selfless act of courage in the history of exploration, and then went home and never talked about it.

Tom Crean was born in 1877 at Gortacurraun near Annascaul, one of a big family on a small farm. He walked out of there at fifteen or sixteen, joined the British Royal Navy, and went south.

He ended up on three of the great Antarctic expeditions: Scott’s Discovery, Scott’s Terra Nova, and Shackleton’s Endurance. Tom spent more days in Antarctica than either Scott or Shackleton did.

He Wept

In January 1912, 150 miles short of the South Pole, Scott picked his final party and sent the rest back. Crean was sent back. He cried, by his own account. Scott went on and died.

So Crean, Bill Lashly and Lieutenant Teddy Evans turned for home, with about 700 miles of man-hauling ahead of them.

Dogs and Sledges

Evans got scurvy. The two men pulled him on the sledge for days until he could no longer be moved at all. They were 35 miles from help; Evans was barely conscious, and Lashly was nearly finished.

Crean put Lashly in the tent to mind Evans, and set off alone.

Empty Pockets

No tent. No sleeping bag. Three biscuits and two sticks of chocolate in his pocket.

He walked 35 miles across the ice shelf in 18 hours and stumbled into Hut Point. A blizzard came down half an hour after he arrived. If he’d been slower, nobody would have got back out to them.

Evans lived, and went on to become an admiral.

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Crean was given the Albert Medal by King George V in 1913. He accepted it without fuss.

The South Pole Inn

Then he came home to Kerry, married, opened a pub in Annascaul and called it the South Pole Inn. He raised his daughters there and barely mentioned Antarctica again, even to his own family. He kept no diary on display and told no stories.

He died in 1938 at 61, of an appendix that was operated on too late. There’s a statue of him in Annascaul now, standing across the road from his own pub.

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