A century after Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition, Courtmacsherry in Co Cork honored the man of their own who supported Scott on the epic trek. Dr Clare O’Leary, the first Irish woman to reach the South Pole, unveiled a statue of Patrick Keohane, the Courtmacsherry member of Scott’s expedition, the West Cork Times reported Monday.
The sculpture of Keohane will stand on the Seven Heads Walk between Broadstrand and Blind Strand, near where Keohane was born in 1879, according to the West Cork Times.
The celebration of the “forgotten hero” also featured a song specially composed for the occasion. Keohane’s descendants and Michael Smith, author of ‘Great Endeavour,’ a book about Irish Antarctic explorers, attended.
Keohane was part of the first support group in the push to the pole. According to ‘The Worst Journey in the World,’ by his fellow expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Keohane fell into eight cravasses in only twenty five minutes on the support group’s planned retreat to Cape Evans. He “looked a bit dazed” after the crevasse debacle, Cherry-Garrard wrote.
Keohane was also among the search party that ventured back to find Scott’s group, which had disappeared. Keohane and his group found the frozen bodies of Scott and two others on November 12, 1912.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.pmunited | Aug 23, 2012, 08:38 PM EDT
Will check it out the next time I am home.
edmundburke | Aug 22, 2012, 01:42 PM EDT
Fair play to Mr. Keohane and descendents, but I feel that the more amazing story is that of Tom Crean of Anascual, Co. Kerry, who survived BOTH the Scott expedition and the Shackleton expedition. On the fateful Scott expedition, he was not chosen to go the final, fatal distance to the Pole, but was instrumental in getting his team back to base. In the famous Shackleton expedition, he crewed the three-man launch captained by Shackleton over thousands of ocean mile to Georgia Island and climbed the mountainous island to find an outpost that could rescue the remaining crewmen in Antartica. The stories are well told in the ten year old book, Tom Crean, Unsung Hero.