An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor by Michael Smith Read Free Book Online

while Crean’s party was away when two ascents were made in a balloon. Sir Joseph Hooker, the elderly Arctic veteran, suggested that the party could obtain a better view of the unknown landscape if they ascended in a hydrogen-filled balloon. Scott elected to climb into the cramped little basket and go up first and he came perilously close to achieving another notable ‘first’ – the first man to be killed in a balloon over the Antarctic.

    After climbing slowly to 500 ft, Scott threw out the sandbag weights and the balloon shot upwards to about 800 ft. Fortunately, the weight of the chain halted the upward climb and Scott slowly began to descend. Despite the hair-raising escapade of his captain, the impetuous Shackleton immediately climbed into the basket and began his ascent. He took the first aerial photographs of Antarctica but neither saw anything useful. Wilson, irritated by the whole dangerous episode, said it was ‘perfect madness’ to allow novices to risk their lives. Fortunately for Wilson’s peace of mind, the balloon developed a leak after Shackleton’s ascent and was never used again.

    But there was also some anxiety at the increasingly urgent need to find suitable wintering quarters before the season closed in and, worst of all, that
Discovery
might became stuck fast in the ice. By 8 February, Scott had reached the head of McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea, close to the imposing volcano Mount Erebus on the edge of the Great Ice Barrier. It was decided to establish the expedition’s base camp at this spotand soon after, a shore party landed. The group immediately began to erect a wooden hut on a rocky promontory, which became known as ‘Hut Point’.

    Originally, it had been intended that
Discovery
would return to the safety of New Zealand for the winter, leaving a landing party to overwinter and prepare for exploration in the following Antarctic spring and summer. But Scott changed his mind after finding a snug sheltered harbour in which the ship was expected to moor safely during the bitter Antarctic winter. Although the ship would be frozen in for the winter, the belief was that the spring and summer thaw would free her. He was wrong and it would be exactly two years before
Discovery
was freed from the grip of ice.

    Parties of men worked flat out to bring provisions ashore to the newly erected hut and make the ship ready for its winter hibernation. It was long, heavy work but somehow they also found time for play and Scott recorded:

    ‘After working hours, all hands generally muster on the floe for football. There is plenty of room for a full-sized ground in the bay and the snow is just hard enough to make a good surface.’ 14

    Scott also sent his novices out onto the ice in an early training session designed to get them accustomed to travel over unfamiliar terrain. Although Scott had consulted the expert Nansen before leaving England, he was blissfully ignorant of the skills of ski travel or dog-sledging. They made an inauspicious start to polar exploration when Charles Ford, the ship’s steward, slipped and broke his leg.

    It was an unhappy start and Crean’s messmate, Williamson, dolefully recorded:

    ‘So, here we are, doomed for at least twelve months.’ 15

    Shortly afterwards, the party began to dig in and prepare for the dreaded Antarctic winter.

4
A home on the ice

    H ut Point, the site of
Discovery
’s winter quarters, is a small volcanic promontory which lies at the southern end of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island in McMurdo Sound. In the distance stands the towering, smoking volcanic beacon of Mount Erebus, which rises 12,400 ft (3,779 m) above the frozen sea level and stands imperiously as the world’s most southerly volcano.

    The narrow peninsula reaches out to touch the very tip of the Great Ice Barrier – the vast sheet of floating ice which is up to half a mile thick and covers an area larger than France. The Barrier is 400 miles long and almost 500 miles across at