Saturday 26 May 2007

Year 13 meet an Antarctic explorer...

If you were asked to name a famous Antarctic explorer, chances are it might be Robert Falcon Scott or Ernest Shackleton... But probably not this man!

The Yr 13 geographers though, were lucky enough to "meet" Tom Crean - sometimes referred to as the "Unsung Hero" of Polar exploration, via a videoconference with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich last week.

Crean, who grew up near Annascaul, a small village in Co. Kerry, was part of three major South Pole expeditions - Discovery and Terra Nova with Scott, and Endurance with Shackleton. Unlike Scott and Shackleton, who both died on expeditions, however, Crean returned to Annascaul, where he married Nell and opened a pub called the South Pole Inn. He died in Annascaul in 1938, from a burst appendix...

2 comments:

Alan Parkinson said...

There's a picture of the South Pole Inn at Annascaul in County Kerry, which Tom Crean bought when he returned home here:
http://www.geographypages.co.uk/spole.jpg
Tom was a forgotten hero - I recommend Michael Smith's book all about him: "An Unsung Hero" - a lot of this was down to the fact that he wasn't an officer...

Miss Ellis said...

Thanks GeoBlogs! I will add the book to my increasingly long list - only just finished "Welcome to Everytown"!!