David Hirzel has known the name of Tom Crean since first reading the young adult abridgment (Shackleton's Valiant Voyage) of Alfred Lansing's Endurance about the age of ten. He began writing Tom Crean's story in 1995, and eventually in 2011 published Sailor on Ice about Crean's adventures with Scott's Terra Nova expedition, and in 2013 Hold Fast, a continuation of that story. The present volume, Antarctic Voyager, takes the reader all the way back to the beginning of Tom Crean's polar career, and the chance opportunity to go south from New Zealand into a part of our earth that had yet to be explored. This book seeks to explore the unseen forces that shape us in our young lives as they shaped him in his, in ways we cannot know until we have lived them fully. During the course of researching these books, Mr. Hirzel has become the leader of the Hyde Street Living History Players at San Francisco Maritime National Park. He currently writes from Sky Ranch overlooking the sea in Pacifica CA where he designs houses.