Customer Reviews

Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read almost every book I can find on Antarctic exploration and without a doubt, this is one of the finest. Tom Crean is always mentioned in books about early Antarctic epics but we've never really got to know him and what kind of a man he was. Michael Smith has done a fine job in tracing Crean's life from his early days in the Navy, his subsequent trips with Scott and Shackleton right up to his final days as a Pub owner is his home in Ireland. This is the kind of man you'd want whatever your expedition might be. He was brave, strong, honest, trustworthy and humorus, no matter what the circumstances. A great story about a real hero!

Tom Crean survived several famous Antarctic adventures of the Edwardian Era, and yet is hardly mentioned in most of the popular Antarctic Exploration books. Michael Smith does a fantastic job telling Crean's personal history with humor and understanding, while giving insight into the expeditions, the explorers and Antarctic History as a whole. This is a must-have for polar enthusasts (or shall we say, PolarGeeks?).

Any reader of the many books written on the Heroic Age of Polar explorations will very much enjoy this well presented biographical history of a tough Irishman who accompanied Shackleton on two Antarctic voyages (including the ill fated
Endurance trip) and Scott on the ill fated trek to the South Pole.
Wonderfully presented, this book was fascinating to read and will be most treasured in my collection of polar exploration books. Do not hesitate to select this book if you enjoy nonfiction adventure.

An excellent account of the life and achievements of Tom Crean, a veteran of three Antartic expeditions, including the ill fated Scott expedition and the Endurance expedition. Good narrative and some beautiful photos combine to make this biography an excellent and fascinating read.

A captivating read and even more than a book about Tom Crean.
Michael Smith assembles a intriguing chronology that reveals
a compelling perspective of the times and lives of the Polar
Explorers. An insightful character analysis into the leadership and the crews.
My only complaint is,after Smith's meticulous documentation of names,dates,latitude/longitude, and geographic locations,
the book offers only a few rudimentary maps. But you can easily remedy this(inconceivable oversight)by obtaining the USGS Topographic Index Map of Antartica(free)and a beautiful Satellite Image Map($7 US)scale 1:5,000,000 mapI-2560.I plotted as I read and ended up with a great reference souvenir.

One night last week I watched "Scott of the Antarctic." Being very impressed with the realistic nature of this 1960 production and, always impressed with the stalwart, intrepid, and frankly at times, insane daring of the British Explorers, I picked up this volume from my shelf and read the whole thing in a single night!! It had actually been given to me by an Irish friend about two years ago.

I am grateful to that friend. Here in one book is more adventure than several explorers can pack into many lives - all accomplished by a single man - Tom Crean -- backbone of the Expedition: stalwart working-class hero and embodiment of everything that made both Ireland and Britain great nations.

Tom was the non-com backbone of the operation. Someone capable with his hands, able, trustworthy and dependable in the extreme, men like Crean built the Empire and made feats of arctic exploration possible. From an adventure reader's point of view Crean was part of the last accompanying party with Scott, before Scott's choice to proceed onwards with 5 men deemed fittest. Of course Capt. Scott assured his posterity by dying along with 4 of his men. What I did not really know was the epic adventure Crean and his remaining companions endured in their eventual return.

I will spare the details, but this book is packed with non-stop action (one thing that sticks out in my mind is the wild and very imprudent sled ride down the glacier -- it has to be read to be believed -- especially by anyone with actual glacier travel experience). Crean's last solitary walk of 32 kilomentres to gain help for his starving and badly scurvied companions is at once a stroke of genius, courage and luck -- he would not have survived if he had arrived 30 minutes later, by that time a wild storm pummelled the camp and Crean would have died if he had not made the hut).

Crean also was a part of the Shakleton expedition and was again selected as one of the most dependable, and physically strong people to undertake the long journey to South Georgia and the also epic traverse of South Georgia ( a 34 mile trek across an island mountain range that had never been explored before). The adventure is unrelenting -- even the last kilometre before reaching the Whaling Station involves them on an abseil down a 20 metre waterfall.

This book should be read for the sheer joy of understanding what gives all people strength when all else seems lost... it would have been easy to give up, but Tom Crean and his ilk never did.

There is one point I should raise with this book that is a little annoying. It is the prediliction to interpret people as the embodiment of their race and nationality. Of course the Irish do this much more and perhaps better than most... but the idea that figures such as Crean are some sort of Zeitgeist representative of their country is misleading and wholly beside the point. There are points in the narrative where the author postulates what would have happenned had Crean be choosen to accompany Scott...there is also the attempt to make the obligatory genuflections to Irish Nationalism -- how does one square the circle of him being the right hand of Empire but at the same time significantly nationalist enough for the Irish (as if loyalty to the British made a person any less Irish).

In simple terms Tom has little time for politics -- he evaluated people individually. It wasn't like him to judge. He was in many ways the strong and silent type. As such he offers us a template for a very fulfilled, dependable and just human being This is the story of this remarkable man.

Tom Crean's life deserves to be told, but may never get fleshed out fully. There is just not enough material available for a good in-depth biography. Crean wrote few letters and left no interviews or diaries for a biographer to use. He was mostly uneducated in the sense of a few years of schooling. The author of this book has admitted in a past interview that due to these limitations, as well as until recently the forgotten Shackleton & Endurance saga, Crean didn't warrant a biography! The information about Crean and his polar experiences with Scott & Shackleton have been covered before in many books. A few years after the Endurance expedition ended in 1917, Crean retired from the seas, got married, and opened a pub in Ireland, the South Pole Inn. He apparently never spoke much of his polar days. I was mildly disappointed with this book, expecting more than I received. It's worth a read- the story of that heroic age of polar exploration is amazing and absorbing no matter how many times you read it, and you are left with much respect for Crean and his fellow explorers who lived through such incredible experiences.

A fantastic story well told. Let drastically down in the kindle version with most of the fantasic photographs and diary entry's missing from the digital version. This edition wasn't even given a table of contents. Get the paper back version the photographs alone are worth the price of the book. Sadly missing from the kindle version. A true unsung hero.

Even if you are uninterested in Polar Explorations, this book is a most fabulous read. You can feel the cold come out of the pages and tears in your eyes as you feel you are sharing the good times and bad times. A book for anybody who can read. Brilliant.

The tantalizingly brief references to Crean in books by Caroline Alexander, Ernest Shackleton, and Frank Worsley will make you hunger for a fully fleshed-out story of the man. I idolize Crean the way so many others do, for his remarkable combination of bravery, stoicism, and lightheartedness. Yet I didn't quite find the tale I was looking for here.

There were a few memorable passages, best of all the one describing his puddle-jumping dash for safety while a school of killer whales surfaced willy-nilly all around him. That attempt at a rescue of his fellow voyager has to be one of the greatest rescue stories of all time. But generally the narrative lacked sophistication and depth of detail. Sometimes it seemed to lack objectivity as well, as the author would bend over backwards to praise his hero for the most trivial accomplishments.

I think we're all doomed never quite to know all we want to know about Tom Crean.