POLAR HERO DIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 180, 2 August 1938, Page 7

POLAR HERO DIES.

SAVED TWO LIVES.

THOMAS CREAN'S JOURNEY.

A MEDLEY OF ERRORS

A strange medley of errors was cabled from London announcing the death of "Thomas Screan, who went to the South Pole twice with Captain Scott and once with Sir Ernest Shackleton. He once saved the lives of Scott and Evans by going to the base, a distance of 150 miles, and returning laden with food." .

Thomas Crean (not Screan) did not go to the South Pole, nor did Shackleton. Nor did Crean save the lives of Scott and Evans. He was one of the last supporting party which left Scott 150 miles from the Pole, and turned back with Evans (of the Broke) and Chief Stoker Lashly. It was the lives iof these two men that were saved by Crealrs final dash for . help to' Hut Point, a distance of about 37 miles. This was as desperate a trip for one man as could be imagined and Lashly, who was left to take care of the helpless! Evans, and who' left a diary, tells of jthe anxieties of waiting and of the I relief of hearing the dog team returning J with help and rations. This story is told most graphically in the book issued by Aspley Qherry-Garrard, " The Worst Journey in the World,' , a book in which Lashly's diary is reprinted. The diary was a lucky find, for it was only when Cherry-Garrard wrote to Lashly in the hope of getting some reminiscences of the journey that the diary was produced. Thoughts of Home.

At one stage of the return journey of the little party, as Laehly telle the, story in his diary, "I started to move Mr. Evans thiis morning, but he completely collapsed and fainted away. Crean wae very upset and almost cried, but I told him it was no good to create a scene but put up a bold front and try to assist. I really think he thought Mr. Evane had gone, but we managed to pull

him through. We used the last drop of brandy." It was after this that the two seamen thought of the plan of one going on, and Crean was chosen at his own request. He wae in great peril of falling down crevasses or failing to cover the distance from fatigue, but he reached Hut Point, and a doctor and Dimitri, the dog expert, went back with supplies, and brought in Evans and Lashly, though they had to wait a day till * blizzard subsided. In their extremity the men thought much of what they would eat when they reached civilisation. "Of course," wrote Lashly in the unspoiled etyle of a sailor, "Xew Zealand have got to be anewerable for a good deal; plenty of apples we are going to have, and some nice' home-made cake, not too rich, as we think we can eat more." One of the thinge Dimitri produced from the sledge was a good lump of cake. "We are in clover," wrote Lashly.