Beschreibung:

Exceptional Naval and Polar Awards from the Collection of RC Witte ‘When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march for thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions at this point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels “the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech” in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.’ Shackleton’s South refers. The important Polar Medal awarded to Chief Petty Officer Tom Crean, A.M., Royal Navy, a veteran of both of Scott’s Antarctic expeditions and Shackleton’s 1914-16 expedition, in all of which the gallant Irishman played a prominent role - one of the last to see Scott alive, and first to discover his body, he afterwards endured all the trials and tribulations of Shackleton’s open-boat voyage in the Thomas Caird to South Georgia, where he accompanied his leader via mountain tops and glaciers to the island’s whaling station: according to one of his daughters, ‘he was a fiercely modest man who never said a word about the Navy after he left’ but Mount Crean in Antarctica today stands as testament to his remarkable contribution to “The Heroic Age of Exploration” Polar Medal 1904, E.VII.R., silver, 1 clasp, Antarctic 1902-04 (A.B. T. Crean, “Discovery”), good very fine £25000-30000 Footnote Originally Ex J. B. Hayward, 1974. At the request of Commander E. R. G. R. Evans, R.N., senior surviving officer of Scott’s last expedition, a duplicate Polar Medal, with a second clasp for Antarctic 1910-13, was approved and afterwards presented to Crean at Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1913, when he also received his Albert Medal. This duplicate Medal is today on display at the Kerry County Museum, together with Crean’s A.M., Great War service, L.S. & G.C. and Royal Geographical Society awards, and bears a third clasp for Shackleton’s 1914-16 expedition. The medal offered above is Crean’s original Polar award. Tom Crean was born near Anascaul on the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry in July 1877, one of ten children in an Irish farming family and, according to certain sources, ran away to sea after a bitter argument with his father in the summer of 1893. Be that as it may, he was indeed enrolled in the Royal Navy in the training ship Impregnable at Devonport later that year and, by 1900, was serving as a Petty Officer 2nd Class in H.M.S. Ringarooma in the Australia and New Zealand Squadron. Here, then, the opening chapter in his remarkable career of polar exploration for, in December 1901, Captain Rich of the Ringarooma was asked to lend support to Captain Scott’s expedition, then gathering at Christchurch, New Zealand, and Crean, on learning that a Discovery seaman had deserted ship after striking a Petty Officer, immediately volunteered to replace him - and was duly accepted. Scott’s first expedition 1902-04 The Discovery departed New Zealand on Christmas Eve 1901 and, on her arrival in Antarctica, Crean participated in the expedition’s first sledging trip on 3 February, in which he quickly established himself as a likeable and dependable character. In fact, as a physically powerful man with an innate resistance to the the extreme cold, he became the perfect sledge-hauler, spending the equivalent of five months in a harness over the remainder of the expedition, all the while flying a distinctive Irish flag from his sledge. And his achievements included participation in the “Furthest South” journey in November 1902 - so, too, his very survival. Scott’s Voyage of the Discov