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Adventurer Tom Crean was born in 1877 in Annascaul, Kerry. He joined the Royal Navy at 15, lied about his age and drifted steadily southwards until he reached the edge of the known world. By the time the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration reached its brutal peak, Crean was already a veteran. He would serve on 3 major expeditions, under Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and he would outlive many of the men whose names now loom larger in the history books. Crean’s first great test came during Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition. By January 1912, Scott’s party was pushing south towards the Pole, supported by rotating teams who were ordered to turn back at set distances. Crean was part of the final support party, alongside Bill Lashly and Lieutenant Edward “Teddy” Evans. They were just 150 miles from the Pole when Scott made his decision. Crean was ordered to turn back. The return journey was a slow collapse. Evans fell gravely ill with scurvy. He was disoriented, frostbitten and barely able to stand. Crean and Lashly tied him to a sledge and dragged him north across the Ross Ice Shelf, hauling a grown man for hundreds of miles in sub-zero temperatures. By the time they reached Hut Point, Evans was close to death and Lashly was near exhaustion. This is where Crean made the decision that defines his reputation. With no tent, no sleeping bag, and only two sticks of chocolate and three biscuits in his pocket, he set off alone for the final 35 miles to Cape Evans to fetch help. He walked for eighteen hours straight through a blizzard, navigating by instinct and memory across a white nothingness. He reached the hut just as a massive storm closed in behind him. The rescue party returned in time. Evans survived. Lashly survived. Crean was awarded the Albert Medal for Bravery, one of the highest civilian honours for lifesaving. He accepted it without fuss and never spoke of it again. Scott, meanwhile, marched on and died with his polar party on the return from the Pole. Shackleton’s Endurance expedition revealed his ability to survive disaster without surrender. The ship Endurance was trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea in early 1915 and slowly crushed over months, until she finally sank beneath the ice. The crew were stranded for over a year, hauling boats, supplies and each other across a landscape dissolving under their feet. When the ice finally broke up, the men launched 3 small lifeboats and made for remote inhospitable Elephant Island. During the brutal open-boat journey, Crean effectively took command of one boat when the navigator collapsed, steering by instinct and experience through freezing seas. Elephant Island offered no rescue. Shackleton knew that if they stayed, they would die. He selected 5 men to attempt a suicide mission. An 800-mile voyage across the worst ocean on Earth in a modified 22-foot lifeboat, the James Caird. Crean was an obvious choice. For 17 days they battled the Southern Ocean, 60-foot waves and hurricane winds. The boat iced over constantly. Men bailed water day and night. Sleep only for minutes at a time. Crean took turns at the tiller and sang to keep morale up. They made landfall on the wrong side of South Georgia. The whaling stations lay on the far side of the island, separated by unmapped mountains, glaciers, and ridges rising to over 3,000 feet. No one had ever crossed the interior. They'd no tent or mountaineering equipment. They hammered screws through their boots for grip. For 36 hours they climbed without stopping. Faced with a steep descent and night closing in, they sat on their coiled rope and slid 1,500 feet down a snow slope into complete darkness. They reached the whaling station at Stromness. Within months, Shackleton returned and rescued everyone on Elephant Island. Crean returned to Ireland, married and opened a pub in Annascaul called The South Pole Inn. He rarely spoke of Antarctica, even to his own family. He died in 1938, aged 61.