Our Trip to the South Pole
Killarney is a fine old town that has a grand cathedral in Saint Mary’s, the Killarney National Park and plenty of other attractions and shopping. That said, I’ve been in Killarney four times in ten days and have been in the cathedral (the stained glass and the stonework are indeed exceptional), have been to Ross Castle twice and Muckross House once and driven through the National Park twice on horse-drawn jaunties. Not a bad bit of coverage for a wee town of 15,000 souls. As for shopping, I have bought the obligatory Celtic tee-shirt, the wool Donegal cap, and the rams-head walking stick which can double as a shillalah in a pinch. I have given up on finding an Irish pin since that collecting phenomenon seems to have passed this part of Ireland by.
So, when we pulled into the car park with our three caravanning work-horse vehicles, and Gerard poked me and said, “come with us to Dingle”, what could I say. While fourteen of our bravest chose to stay in Killarney in search of their own Donegal caps (now being worn by every male member of the group, but with ever so slight variations in the weave of the wool), four of us lit off for the Dingle Peninsula with Gerard.
The stated mission was formulated by Captain William Farrell, USN (Retired), and was crewed by William Ferrell, Jr. (Trader Joe’s – Active Duty), Peter Jones of Wabash and himself, your loyal scribe. Captain Farrell had completed no less than five tours of duty flying helicopters for the Navy on secondment to the National Science Foundation Antarctica Research contingent. While this was back in ancient history (the 1970’s and so), the polar ice was singing its Shackleton siren song to this particular ancient mariner. He had gone back to the southern continent for added tours of duty in the 1990’s, but was now beyond his flight qualifications and still in need of a taste of what is considered the largest desert in the world. Antarctica, with its average ice sheet of over a mile of average thickness, has only been inhabited by a few humans over the years.
It was “spotted” or suspected by Captain Cook in the eighteenth century but was not set foot on until the nineteenth. It’s barren surface, devoid of obvious life and its harsh conditions, kept most exploratory people away until the the early twentieth century when first Sir Robert Scott and his Discovery mission opened the world’s imagination to the frozen land below. Then, several years later, the privately-funded Nimrod Expedition, led by Ernest Shackleton embarked on its first of three memorable voyages to the mysterious continent. Even though Scott was first, Shackleton second and then Amundsen and eventually Byrd claimed all manner of honor for the exploration and discovery of Antarctica, the Shackleton sagas have captured the broadest general imagination through the power of the pen, describing the hardships they endured on their ill-fated struggles to get there and back safely. But those most in the know about the Historic Age of Antarctic Exploration would attribute the epic trials of Sir Scott is his race with Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, to be first to reach the South Pole.
One of the men who participated in this race on the Scott team was a humble man named Tom Crean, who hailed from the Dingle Peninsula of Western Ireland. Crean attained legendary status for a lifesaving trek across the Ross Ice Shelf, a treacherous distance of thirty-five miles. He made three expeditions to Antarctica including the last with Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance voyage. It was that journey that made him a legend since after 492 days adrift and stranded on the ice, he joined the team that made the heroic and almost suicidal journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, a journey of over 800 nautical miles.
Crean retired to his native Dingle Peninsula in his home town of Annascaul, where he and his wife opened The South Pole Inn. That inn and pub exist to this day and is across the green from a bronze statue of Crean, holding two puppies that he saved during his final polar expedition.
Captain Ferrell needed desperately to pay homage to a fellow Antarcticite, so we all drove out onto the rural and bucolic Dingle Peninsula for a visit. We all benefited from the sightseeing and the distance views of the Ring of Kerry from the north (having spied the Ring from the southern peninsula the previous day), but the visit to The South Pole Inn was the real treat. The other three of us are unlikely to ever visit Antarctica (son Will might be the exception to that assumption as he has the years ahead to conceivably make the trek), so we enjoyed joining a man of adventure like Captain Ferrell, on his quest to the alter of Tom Crean. The Inn itself was entertaining with all the historical and original photographs, but watching Captain Ferrell (a.k.a. Woo) light up as he marveled at every bit of Crean trivia was worth the trip. The inn sports one somewhat “fun-house” element in a cabinet in the pub area that when opened gives off the sound and furry of an Antarctic blizzard. It is great fun to open and close the cabinet several times and watch the faces of the other guests to the pub as they try to figure out how they ended up in the South Pole.
We returned to Killarney by the Wild Atlantic Way, from which we could view the Inch Beach sandbar that extends most of the way across the Irish Sea inlet between Dingle and Kerry. It used to form a complete land bridge until one night when the wild Atlantic got a bit too wild and overtook the sand bar and opened up the inlet for the ocean to reach all the way into Killorglin.
We were reminded that neither the sea nor the other forces of nature that Mother Earth control should be taken for granted. We are all at her mercy and it takes intrepid men like Tom Crean and Woo Farrell to stand that watch to protect us all from the earth’s natural wrath.