The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [10]
Crean (standing) and Cheetham
The “Irish giant” and the diminutive “veteran of the Antarctic.” Crean had sailed on the Terra Nova and Discovery with Scott before joining Shackleton on the Endurance.
“Well Sir, I was very weak when I reached the hut,” Crean wrote in a letter to a friend. He was a hard man to rattle. Earlier in the same expedition, after an exhausting trek across fragmented sea ice with the ponies, Crean and his two companions had prepared their dinner. By mistake, a bag of curry powder was taken for cocoa. “Crean,” recalled his tent mate, “drank his right down before discovering anything wrong.” But tough though he was, Crean broke down and wept when, at 87° south, only 150 miles short of their goal, Scott informed him and his companions that they had not been selected for the honor of continuing with him to the pole.
A number of the sailors aboard the Endurance had formerly been trawlerhands in the North Sea, as brutal an occupation as could be imagined. Little suggests they were sympathetic characters, and one of them, John Vincent, previously a sailor in the navy and a trawlerhand off the coast of Iceland, would turn out to be a problematic bully. Of the two stokers, William Stephenson was a former Royal Marine and officer's servant, and Ernest Holness, the youngest of the sailors, was “a York-shire lad,” and considered—by Lees, at any rate—to be “the most loyal to the expedition.”
Four of the sailors were particularly liked. Timothy McCarthy was a young Irishman in the merchant service, known for his ebullient good humor and gift for repartee. Walter How, a Londoner, was only three weeks back home from a stint abroad when he applied for a position with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton was impressed with his recent experience aboard the Canadian Auxiliary Survey Ship, working only miles below the Arctic Circle off the coast of Labrador. He was also of a cheerful disposition and a good amateur artist. William Bakewell joined the expedition in Buenos Aires. He had been a farm laborer, logger, rail worker, and ranch hand in Montana before becoming a seaman at the age of twenty-seven. When his ship the Golden Gate ran aground in the River Plate, he and his mate Perce Blackborow wandered the docks of Buenos Aires looking for a way to England and came upon the Endurance.
George E. Marston
The expedition artist was described by a former shipmate as having “the frame and face of a prizefighter and the disposition of a fallen angel.”
“It was,” he said, “love at first sight.” On learning that she belonged to the famous polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and that he was seeking a replacement crew, the two young men presented themselves for consideration. Pleased with Bakewell's experience with sailing ships, as opposed to steam, Shackleton hired him (it may not have hurt his chances that Bakewell, the expedition's only American, posed as a Canadian, seeking a colonial's advantage). But Blackborow was turned away when Shackleton decided he had enough men. Aided by Bakewell and How, Blackborow stowed away in a clothing locker in the fo'c'sle. The day after the ship left Buenos Aires, he was discovered and dragged before Shackleton. Hungry, frightened, and seasick, the young man was subjected to an eloquent tirade from “the Boss” that impressed all onlooking seamen. In the end, Shackleton leaned close to Blackborow and said, “Do you know that on these expeditions we often get very hungry, and if there is a stowaway available he is the first to be eaten?” This was correctly interpreted as official acceptance of his presence, and Blackborow was signed on as steward to help in the galley, at £3 a month. In fact, Shackleton came to regard the quiet, conscientious Welshman as highly as any member of the crew.
One of the oldest men was Henry McNish, known by the traditional nickname for ship carpenters as “Chippy.” A blunt-spoken old salt from Cathcart, outside Port Glasgow, he stirred misgivings