Tom Crean ( explorer ) Tom Crean , nicknamed the " Irish Giant " ( 20 July 1877 - 27 July 1938 ) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer from County Kerry . He was a member of three of the four major British expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration , including Robert Falcon Scott ' s 1911 – 13 Terra Nova Expedition , which saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his polar party . During this expedition Crean ' s solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal . Crean had left the family farm near Annascaul to enlist in the British Royal Navy at the age of 15 . In 1901 , while serving on HMS " Ringarooma " in New Zealand , he volunteered to join Scott ' s 1901 – 04 British National Antarctic Expedition on " Discovery " , thus beginning his exploring career . After his return with the " Terra Nova " , Crean ' s third and final Antarctic venture was the Imperial Trans - Antarctic Expedition on " Endurance " led by Ernest Shackleton , in which he served as second officer . After " Endurance " became beset in the pack ice and sank , he was a participant in a dramatic series of events including months spent drifting on the ice , a journey in lifeboats to Elephant Island , and an open boat journey of from Elephant Island to South Georgia . Upon reaching South Georgia , Crean was one of the party of three which undertook the first land crossing of the island , without maps or proper mountaineering equipment , to get aid . Crean ' s contributions to these expeditions sealed his reputation as a tough and dependable polar traveller , and earned him a total of three Polar medals . After the " Endurance " expedition he returned to the Navy , and when his naval career ended in 1920 he moved back to County Kerry . In his home town of Annascaul , Crean and his wife Ellen opened a public house called the " South Pole Inn " . He lived there quietly and unobtrusively until his death in 1938 . Early life and career . Thomas Crean ( generally known as Tom Crean ) was born 20 July 1877 , in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the town of Annascaul in County Kerry , to Patrick Crean and Catherine Courtney . One of ten children , he attended the local Brackluin Roman Catholic school , leaving at the age of 12 to lend much - needed help on the family farm . At the age of 15 , Crean enlisted in the Royal Navy at the naval station in nearby Minard Inlet , possibly after an argument with his father . His enlistment as a boy second class is recorded in Royal Navy records on 10 July 1893 , 10 days before his 16th birthday ; lacking his parents ' consent , he probably had to lie about his age to get in . Crean ' s initial naval apprenticeship was aboard the training ship " Impregnable " at Devonport . In November 1894 he was transferred to " Devastation " . By his 18th birthday in 1895 Crean was serving in " Royal Arthur " , and rated ordinary seaman . Less than a year later he was in " Wild Swan " as an able seaman , and later joined the Navy ' s torpedo school ship , " Defiance " . By 1899 , Crean had advanced to the rate of petty officer , second class and was serving in " Vivid " . In February 1900 Crean was posted to the torpedo vessel " Ringarooma " , which was part of the Royal Navy ' s New Zealand Squadron based in the South Island . On 18 December 1901 he was disrated from petty officer to able seaman for an unspecified misdemeanour . In December 1901 the " Ringarooma " was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott ' s ship " Discovery " when it was docked at Lyttelton Harbour before embarking on the British National Antarctic Expedition to Antarctica . When an able seaman of Scott ' s ship deserted after striking a petty officer a replacement was required ; Crean volunteered , and was accepted . After the " Discovery " Expedition , 1905 – 10 . Crean came back to regular duty at the naval base at Chatham , Kent , serving first in " Pembroke " in 1904 and later transferring to the torpedo school on " Vernon " . Crean had caught Captain Scott ' s attention with his attitude and work ethic on the " Discovery " Expedition , and in 1906 Scott requested that Crean join him on " Victorious " . Over the next few years Crean followed Scott successively to " Albemarle " , " Essex " and " Bulwark " . By 1907 Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic . Meanwhile Ernest Shackleton ' s British Antarctic Expedition , 1907 – 09 , despite reaching a new furthest south record of 88°23 ' S , had failed to reach the South Pole . Scott was with Crean when the news of Shackleton ' s near miss became public ; it is recorded that Scott observed to Crean : " I think we ' d better have a shot next . " Terra Nova Expedition , 1910 – 13 . Scott held Crean in high regard , so he was among the first people Scott recruited when planning the Terra Nova Expedition . Crean was one of the few men in the party with polar experience . His first major contribution to the expedition was as part of the 13 - man party who laid " One Ton Depot " from Hut Point , the depot being named because of the large amount of food and equipment cached there . On the return trip to the expedition ' s base at Cape Evans Crean , with Apsley Cherry - Garrard and Lieutenant Henry " Birdie " Bowers , experienced near - disaster when they camped on unstable sea ice . During the night the ice broke up , leaving the men adrift on an ice floe and separated from their sledges . Crean probably saved the men ' s lives by leaping from floe to floe until he reached the Barrier edge and was able to get help . Crean was one of the large group that departed with Scott in November 1911 for the attempt at the South Pole . This journey had three stages : across the Barrier , up the heavily crevassed Beardmore Glacier to an altitude of above sea level , and then another to the Pole . Crean and William Lashly , along with Lieutenant Edward Evans , formed the final support party which accompanied Scott and his team to 87°32 ' S , from the Pole . Here , on 4 January 1912 , Crean ' s party was ordered to return to base while Scott , Edgar Evans , Wilson , Bowers and Lawrence Oates continued towards the Pole . Crean ' s biographer Michael Smith suggests that Crean should have been selected for the polar party in the place of Edgar Evans , who was weakened by a recent hand injury ( of which Scott was unaware ) . Crean , considered one of the toughest men in the expedition , had led a pony across the Barrier and had thus been saved much of the hard labour of man - hauling . Scott ' s critic and biographer Roland Huntford records that the surgeon Edward L Atkinson , who had accompanied the southern party to the top of the Beardmore , had recommended either Lashly or Crean for the polar party rather than Edgar Evans . After two months of effort to reach this point , Crean apparently wept at the prospect of having to turn back so close to the goal . Crean , Lashly and Evans now faced a journey back to Hut Point . Soon after heading north , the party lost the trail back to the Beardmore Glacier , and were faced with a long detour around a large icefall where the plateau tumbles down onto the glacier . With food supplies short and needing to reach their next supply depot , the group made the decision to slide on their sledge , uncontrolled , down the icefall . The three men slid , dodging crevasses up to wide , and ending their descent by overturning on an ice ridge . Evans later wrote : " How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain " . The gamble at the icefall paid off , and the men reached their depot two days later . However , they had great difficulty navigating down the glacier . Lashly wrote : " I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through . " In his attempts to find the way down , Evans removed his goggles and subsequently suffered agonies of snow blindness that made him into a passenger . When the party was finally free of the glacier and on the level surface of the Barrier , Evans began to display the first symptoms of scurvy . By early February he was in great pain , his joints were swollen and discoloured , and he was passing blood . Through the efforts of Crean and Lashly the group struggled towards One Ton Depot , which they reached on 11 February . At this point Evans collapsed ; Crean thought he had died and , according to Evans ' s account , " his hot tears fell on my face " . With well over to travel before the safety of Hut Point , Crean and Lashly began hauling Evans on the sledge , " eking out his life with the last few drops of brandy that they still had with them " . On 18 February they arrived at Corner Camp , still from Hut Point , with food running low . With only one or two days ' food rations left , but still four or five days ' man - hauling to do , they decided that Crean should go on alone to fetch help . With only a little chocolate and three biscuits to sustain him , without a tent or survival equipment , Crean walked the distance to Hut Point in 18 hours , arriving in a state of collapse . He reached safety just ahead of a fierce blizzard , which probably would have killed him , and which delayed the rescue party by a day and a half . The rescue was successful , however , and Lashly and Evans were both brought to base camp alive . Crean modestly played down the significance of his feat of endurance . In a rare written account , he wrote in a letter : " So it fell to my lot to do the 30 miles for help , and only a couple of biscuits and a stick of chocolate to do it . Well , sir , I was very weak when I reached the hut . " Scott ' s party failed to return . The winter of 1912 at Cape Evans was a sombre one , with the knowledge that the polar party had undoubtedly perished . Frank Debenham wrote that " in the winter it was once again Crean who was the mainstay for cheerfulness in the now depleted mess deck part of the hut . " In November 1912 , Crean was one of the 11 - man search party that found the remains of the polar party . On 12 November they spotted a cairn of snow , which proved to be a tent against which the drift had piled up . It contained the bodies of Scott , Wilson , and Bowers . Crean later wrote , referring to Scott in understated fashion , that he had " lost a good friend " . On 12 February 1913 Crean and the remaining crew of the " Terra Nova " arrived in Lyttelton , New Zealand , and shortly after returned to England . At Buckingham Palace the surviving members of the expedition were awarded Polar Medal s by King George and Prince Louis of Battenberg , the First Sea Lord . Crean and Lashly were both awarded the Albert Medal , 2nd Class for saving Evans ' s life , these were presented by the King at Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1913 . Crean was promoted to the rank of chief petty officer , retroactive to 9 September 1910 . Imperial Trans - Antarctic Expedition ( " Endurance " Expedition ) , 1914 – 17 . Ernest Shackleton knew Crean well from the Discovery Expedition and also knew of his feats on Scott ' s last expedition . Like Scott , Shackleton deeply trusted Crean : he was worth , in Shackleton ' s own word , " trumps " . Crean joined Shackleton ' s Imperial Transantarctic Expedition on 25 May 1914 , as second officer , with a varied range of duties . In the absence of a Canadian dog - handling expert who was hired but never appeared , Crean took charge of one of the dog - handling teams , and was later involved in the care and nurture of the pups born to one of his dogs , Sally , early in the expedition . On 19 January 1915 the expedition ' s ship , the " Endurance " , was beset in the Weddell Sea pack ice . In the early efforts to free her , Crean narrowly escaped being crushed by a sudden movement in the ice . The ship drifted in the ice for months , eventually sinking on 21 November . Shackleton informed the men that they would drag the food , gear , and three lifeboats across the pack ice to Snow Hill or Robertson Island , away . Because of uneven ice conditions , pressure ridges , and the danger of ice breakup which could separate the men , they soon abandoned this plan : the men pitched camp and decided to wait . They hoped that the clockwise drift of the pack would carry them to Paulet Island where they knew there was a hut with emergency supplies . But the pack ice held firm as it carried the men well past Paulet Island , and did not break up until 9 April . The crew then had to sail and row the three ill - equipped lifeboats through the pack ice to Elephant Island , a trip which lasted five days . Crean and Hubert Hudson , the navigating officer of the " Endurance " , piloted their lifeboat with Crean effectively in charge as Hudson appeared to have suffered a breakdown . On reaching Elephant Island , Crean was one of the " four fittest men " detailed by Shackleton to find a safe camping - ground . Shackleton decided that , rather than waiting for a rescue ship that would probably never arrive , one of the lifeboats should be strengthened so that a crew could sail it to South Georgia and arrange a rescue . After the party was settled on a penguin rookery above the high - water mark , a group of men led by ship ' s carpenter Harry McNish began modifying one of the lifeboats — the " James Caird " — in preparation for this journey , which Shackleton would lead . Frank Wild , who would be in command of the party remaining on Elephant Island , wanted the dependable Crean to stay with him ; Shackleton initially agreed , but changed his mind after Crean begged to be included in the boat ' s crew of six . The boat journey to South Georgia , described by polar historian Caroline Alexander as one of the most extraordinary feats of seamanship and navigation in recorded history , took 17 days through gales and snow squalls , in heavy seas which navigator Frank Worsley described as a " mountainous westerly swell " . Setting off on 24 April 1916 , thanks to the navigational skills of Worsley , armed with just the barest equipment , they reached South Georgia on 10 May 1916 . Shackleton , in his later account of the journey , recalled Crean ' s tuneless singing at the tiller : " He always sang when he was steering , and nobody ever discovered what the song was . . . but somehow it was cheerful " . They made their South Georgia landfall on the uninhabited southern coast , having decided that the risk of aiming directly for the whaling stations on the north side was too great ; if they missed the island to the north they would be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean . The original plan was to work the " James Caird " around the coast , but the boat ' s rudder had broken off after their initial landing , and some of the party were , in Shackleton ' s view , unfit for further travel . The three fittest men — Shackleton , Crean , and Worsley — were therefore required to trek across the island ' s glaciated surface , in a hazardous 36 - hour journey to the nearest manned whaling station . This trek was the first recorded crossing of the mountainous island , completed without tents , sleeping bags , or map — their only mountaineering equipment was a carpenter ' s adze , a length of alpine rope , and screws from the " James Caird " hammered through their boots to serve as crampons . They arrived at the whaling station at Stromness , tired and dirty , hair long and matted , faces blackened by months of cooking by blubber stoves — " the world ' s dirtiest men " , according to Worsley . They quickly organized a boat to pick up the three on the other side of South Georgia , but thereafter it took Shackleton three months and four attempts by ship to rescue the other 22 men still on Elephant Island . Later life . After returning to Britain in November 1916 , Crean resumed naval duties . On 15 December 1916 he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer ( as a boatswain ) , in recognition of his service on the " Endurance " , and was awarded his third Polar Medal . On 5 September 1917 Crean married Ellen Herlihy of Annascaul . For the remainder of the First World War he served first at the Chatham barracks , and then in the depot ship " Colleen " at Queenstown , Ireland . In early 1920 , Shackleton was organising another Antarctic expedition , later to be known as the Shackleton - Rowett Expedition . He invited Crean to join him , along with other officers from the " Endurance " . By this time , however , Crean was married , his second daughter had arrived , and he had plans to open a business following his naval career . He turned down Shackleton ' s invitation . On his last naval assignment , with " Hecla " , Crean suffered a bad fall which caused lasting effects to his vision . As a result , he was retired on medical grounds on 24 March 1920 . He and Ellen opened a small public house in Annascaul , which he called the South Pole Inn . The couple had three daughters , Mary , Kate , and Eileen , although Kate died when she was four years old . On 25 April 1920 Crean ' s brother , Cornelius , a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary was killed along with another RIC officer in an Irish Republican Army ( IRA ) ambush in Ballinspittle , County Cork during the Irish War of Independence . Throughout his life , Crean remained an extremely modest man . When he returned to Kerry , he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic . Indeed , there is no reliable evidence of Crean giving any interviews to the press . It has been speculated that this may have been because Kerry had long been a centre for Irish Republicanism , and it would have been inappropriate for an Irishman to speak of his achievements on British polar expeditions . In fact , Crean and his family were once the victims of a Black and Tan ( British paramilitary ) raid during the War of Independence . The raiders ransacked his property and the Creans felt threatened until the Black and Tans happened across a framed photo of Crean in Royal Navy dress uniform and medals . They then left his inn . In 1938 Crean became ill with a burst appendix . He was taken to the nearest hospital in Tralee , but as no surgeon was available to operate , he was transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork where his appendix was removed . Because the operation had been delayed , an infection developed , and after a week in the hospital he died on 27 July 1938 , shortly after his sixty - first birthday . He was buried in his family ' s tomb at the cemetery in Ballynacourty . Crean is commemorated in at least two place names : Mount Crean in Victoria Land , and the Crean Glacier on South Georgia . A one - man play , " Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer " , has been widely performed since 2001 by its author Aidan Dooley , including a special showing at the South Pole Inn , Annascaul , in October 2001 . Present were Crean ' s daughters , Eileen and Mary , both in their 80s . Apparently he never told them his stories ; according to Eileen : " He put his medals and his sword in a box . . . and that was that . He was a very humble man " . In 2011 , an Irish brewery , The Dingle Brewing Company , named a lager after the explorer . The " Endurance Brewing Company " in Colorado , USA , uses a likeness of Crean on its " Arctica Pale Ale " product .