Endurance Expedition 1914-16

6 posts

In 1914, the ship Endurance, reached Grytviken at South Georgia. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition would get underway after a month long stay among the whalers at the port.

What none of the Endurance crew realised at this stage was that a failed expedition would enter the history books for the remarkable tale of heroism that still today still leaves those who know about it, dumbfounded at the extremities people would go through in order to save their fellow man.

A central character in this, the greatest tale of survival and rescue in maritime history, was Tom Crean

When Tom Crean was headhunted Surprisingly absent from the timeline of Tom Crean’s story until I got stuck into my research for Crean’s biography, is a man called Joseph Foster Stackhouse. Born in 1873 to a Quaker family in Kendal, the gateway to England’s Lake District, Stackhouse had been a […]

Endurance Expedition 1914-16 General

Joseph Foster Stackhouse – Shackleton’s rival for Tom Crean’s services

Return of Tom Crean and Endurance survivors

On 8th November 1916, the passenger and refrigerated cargo steamer, Highland Laddie, arrived in Tilbury docks in London. On board was Tom Crean and a number of his Endurance colleagues.. Offered free passage from Buenos Aires by the company’s Nelson Line owners, were eleven men who’d set sail on the […]

Endurance Expedition 1914-16

The return of Tom Crean and Elephant Island survivors.

Tom Crean and Sir Ernest Shackleton

Men from different classes who were a class Irish double act. There’s little doubt that song and humour played a vital part in the historic story of survival that brought about the greatest rescue in Polar history and that Tom Crean and Sir Ernest Shackleton were often centre-stage in providing […]

Discovery Expedition 1901-1904 Endurance Expedition 1914-16 Retirement and passing

Tom Crean and Sir Ernest Shackleton