How Aidan gave new life to forgotten Irish explorer

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets a Galway actor whose new book reveals the story behind his 16-year role as legendary Tom Crean

When Aidan Dooley came across the name Tom Crean in London’s Maritime Museum in 2000, it was the Galway actor’s first encounter with an almost unknown historical figure. And it was an encounter that would change his life.

Aidan, who lives in England, but is originally from the Claddagh in Galway City, has now written a book. Travels with Tom Crean; Antarctic Explorer, in which the former bank official charts his 16-year journey with the Kerry explorer .

Tom Crean (1877-1938) voyaged to the South Pole three times between 1901 and 1916, winning a medal for bravery and performing heroic, even insane deeds to save the lives of his companions. Yet, by 2000 he was just a footnote in history.

That year, the Maritime Museum in Greenwich was hosting an exhibition on Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, to mark the 100th anniversary of Scott’s Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic (1901-04).

Aidan, who worked as an actor in the Museum, was asked to create and perform a 20-minute educational piece to accompany it. This would showcase the difference in leadership skills between the two great explorers. Crean had twice travelled to the Antarctic with Scott (also on the Terra Nova expedition from 1910-13) and once with Shackleton (Endurance 1914-16). That was the great era of polar exploration, as Britain competed with other European empires for glory in the world’s most remote regions.

Aidan was fascinated by Crean, who was reared on a farm outside the tiny village of Annascaul, and realised that there was more to this Kerryman than being an adjunct to the Scott-Shackleton story.

But the actor had been given a brief. In any case, details about Crean were thin on the ground at that stage, despite the fact that he’d spent more time in the Antarctic than either Scott or Shackleton.

Initially, Aidan delivered a short, straightforward piece for the Museum, giving visitors an insight into how the explorers survived as they travelled in unchartered Antarctic territories at temperatures of minus 40 degrees.

By coincidence, at around the same time as he began presenting that show, the first biography of Crean’s life, written by journalist and polar expert Michael Smith, was published by Collins Press. Reading it confirmed Aidan’s belief that Crean was extraordinary.

For instance, during the Terra Nova expedition, he undertook a solitary 58-kilometre trek to base camp to rescue an ill comrade, which saw him receive the Albert Medal for Lifesaving.

On the Endurance trip, he was one of six men who sailed 1,500km through icy water to organise a rescue for companions who were trapped on an island by ice floe.

Armed with this knowledge, Aidan began to modify his show.

“I thought how fantastic this man had been and the injustice that he hadn’t been recognised. I started telling the Scott and Shackleton story but through Crean’s eyes, and after another six months, I started piecing the performance as we know it now,” he says.

In 2000, Aidan was performing four shows a day at the Museum, for visitors of all ages, so he knew what was required to hold the attention of a diverse crowd.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.