Tom Crean

Tom Crean (1877-1938), known affectionately as “the Irish Giant” by his shipmates, was a member of three expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration (1897-1922), distinguishing himself on all three and awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving for his solitary 56 kilometer walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans. Crean with an unbanded dublin, possibly the Peterson 120 B Long, on the Endurance Expedition, February 1915 The iconic photograph of Crean seen above shows him with an unmounted dublin, and since the release of a Crean commemorative dublin in K&P’s Great Explorers Collection almost twenty years ago there’s been a growing conviction that he smoked a Peterson. The Crean commemorative seen below is the largest of all the dublin shapes in K&P's catalog, and among my favorites for being so. Being Irish and proud of being so, Crean must have smoked Peterson pipes—or so goes the story in my head. In fact, a close examination of the readily available photos of Crean smoking a pipe, it does seem probable that at least two of the pipes he was photographed with on his Antarctic travels were Petes. Crean (age 25) smoking what may be a Peterson Coronation Cad aboard the Discovery, September 1902 Born in County Kerry, Crean was one of eleven children and enlisted in the Royal Navy at 16, where he went through the ranks to able seaman, when he volunteered to serve under Robert Falcon Scott on the Discovery Expedition of 1901-04. Scott’s second-in-command described Crean as having “a fund of wit with an even temper which nothing disturbed.” In the Discovery crew photo he's seen smoking an incredible short bulldog which looks like nothing so much as K&P's "Coronation Cad" from the 1906 catalog. This shape has been seen on the estate market a few times and always elicits gasps of awe--certainly a shape that deserves to be reinstated! K&P’s Coronation Cad (1906 catalog), the ultimate full-chamber Peterson P-Lip Nosewarmer   Crean's attitude and work ethic was noticed by Scott as well as his peers, so that he was among the first recruited for the Terra Nova expedition of 1910-13. That expedition would see Crean win the Albert Medal and lose his friend and commander Scott, who didn’t survive their attempt to reach the pole. It’s also the first time he’s spotted with what looks like the Peterson 120 Long he's almost certainly photographed with later on. Crean (right) from a photo of of the Terra Nova crew, October 1911 In 1912, Crean single-handedly rescued two of his comrades, Lieutenant Evans and Bill Lashley, in an epic journey of 35 miles from the base camp at Cape Armitage on Ross Island to the Evans-Lashley campsite. Crean is seen in the photo below, taken shortly after his return, smoking a large bent billiard. I’d like to say it’s a Pete, but there’s no corresponding period shape I can find in the catalogs. It looks like nothing so much as…