Myself and Alice Kinsella will be bringing Wake of the Whale down to Dingle Literary Festival this Saturday, alongside such formidable writers as Roddy Doyle, Alvy Carragher, Donal Ryan and Afric McGlinchey.
You can suss out the entire programme here: https://dinglelit.ie/.
Since we’re down in The Kingdom, it seems opportune for me to offer up my tribute to one of that county’s most storied sons and one of the finest polar explorers in history, Tom Crean (to whom the spoken word poem included at the beginning of this piece is dedicated), as well as a few other heroes of mine from over the years.
Crean, whose family pub, The South Pole Inn, isn’t too far away from Dingle (and the wares of which I fully intend to sample while I’m down there), was a local man of great renown.
At the turn of the century, he served in the Royal Navy and eventually participated in three major expeditions to Antarctica, including Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917. This voyage saw their ship, the Endurance, trapped in pack ice (the remarkably well-persevered remains of which were only recently discovered in the Weddell Sea, as detailed in the newly-released documentary from National Geographic: https://youtu.be/563_lBO3wiY?si=pHq7bvsXCY0xEsGDiled).
The Endurance, icebound, captured by photographer Frank Hurley.
The crew endured months of hardship, eventually abandoning the ship and using lifeboats to reach Elephant Island. Shackleton and a small team, which included Crean, then made an incredible 800-mile journey in the ship’s main boat, the James Caird, through heavy seas to South Georgia Island to seek help.
Their port of call was the Norwegian-run whaling station Stromness. After making it ashore, Shackleton, Crean, and the expedition’s captain, Frank Worsley, trekked across the rugged interior to reach the populated northern coast. After a 36-hour journey, they arrived at the Stromness administration centre, known as the “Villa at Stromness” for its relative luxury compared to the rest of the work site.
The Norwegian-run station at Stromness, with the Endurance, berthed at the far left.
(Coincidentally, when Alice first told me about the Norwegian-run whaling station on Inishkea island, which eventually became the springboard for Wake of the Whale, Stromness immediately sprung to mind. So, too, did Captain Worsley’s fitting salutation of their whaler hosts as: ‘men of the Viking brand who … had been weathering the self-same storms through which we had come in our little boat’).
However, this poem honours the epic solo march Tom Crean undertook in February 1912 instead.
“He strode out nobly and finely - I wondered if I should ever see him again.” - these are the words of Crean’s shipmate Bill Lashly, who was with him at the commencement of his hazardous trek.
Tired, wet and starving, Crean ventured out alone into what would prove to be an 18-hour slog across the hellishly cold terrain of South Pole in a bid to ensure the survival of his scurvy-ridden officer, Lt. Edward ‘Teddy’ Evans and the aforementioned Lashly, after they’d parted ways from Sir R. F. Scott’s ill-starred Terra Nova landing party in 1912. He was successful in his efforts if no doubt ridden with exhaustion worthy of Sisyphus himself.
Crean’s bravery, endurance and loyalty to his shipmates in the face of the most merciless circumstances is a beacon of hope for many. For his recognition as a hero, no-one needed to kill, be killed or even left behind.
I wrote this poem in his honour in 2015 after reading An Unsung Hero, Michael Smith’s exhaustive biography of him. In my mind, he stands apart from the many luminaries in Irish history for his sheer dogged efforts ensuring his men’s lives were not lost. When I began planning and working on material for my first album of spoken-word tracks featuring my poems set to music by various musicians I knew and had collaborated with on the Dublin scene, it was a no-brainer not to include the poem. I was also deeply aware of the approaching centenary of the Endurance’s loss and Crean’s partaking in the subsequent journey to Stromness and the ensuing rescue mission; honouring it somehow became paramount to me that year.
As the sessions for the album, by now named Embers and Earth, continued through the spring of 2016 at Silverwood Studios in Wicklow, I was joined in the studio by two other great and no less unsung Irish heroes, Gavin Ralston and Steve Wickham, accompanied me on this track when we recorded it during the sessions for my first spoken-word album in the spring of 2016 at Silverwood Studios in Wicklow.
Steve’s achingly expressive violin proved to be the perfect fit for my words. As I recall, I recorded a vocal track for Tom Crean without intending for it to have any musical backing. However, Gavin Ralston, the owner of Silverwood Studios, listened back to it several times over and then smiled to himself. He told me to sit tight, and then went outside to make a phone call. I hung on in the studio control room, until he returned.
“Steve Wickham says he’ll put a violin track over your vocals,” he told me, casually as you like.
I was delighted.
In many respects, Gavin was like Tom Crean, too: a big man with an even bigger heart. He’d both the engineer’s proficiency and the muso’s ear. Musos loved him, and he’d gigged with everyone from the Waterboys to Sharon Shannon. I remember chiefly his love of music, his enthusiasm and expertise in creating a belter track, and his general big-heartedness from those sessions. Gav was incredibly patient with my lack of experience in the studio and was genuinely fired up to work on the project and make it sound the best it could possibly sound. A true muso-maestro, he also played on several tracks, bringing his prowess as a guitarist to bear. Nor was he ever short of a good joke or anecdote to keep the vibe upbeat.
You can hear Gavin’s gentle strumming beneath Steve’s violin on the track.
Sadly, all good things must end. I didn’t know it at the time, but Gavin was battling cancer. He’d been doing so, on and off, long before I broached the idea of an album to him.
Two years after we recorded the album, his health had worsened. Seeing him rock out onstage with the Waterboys in Vicar Street in April of 2019 was a high point of that year. Steve Wickham and both joined him on stage. The gig itself was held to help raise funds for his treatment.
But by September of that year, Gavin had died. Irish music lost one of its beacons with him.
So, with all this in mind, whether it was Shackleton, Crean or Ralston, I’ll remember a few sung and very unsung heroes with this track and my time in Dingle.
Please give it a listen, and salute their ghosts with me.
Frank Worsley, Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure (London, 1931).
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