Frank Wild's Years
The Heroic Age of Polar Exploration demanded a certain type of character. But they couldn't all be Frank.
Depending on the season in which you read this, there are between one and four thousand human beings on the continent of Antarctica. Not a single one is native. Although this makes it, by a significant distance, the least populated continent on earth (indeed, there are more living human beings currently submerged in the oceans than there are above ground in Antarctica), the number is greater than zero. In world-historical terms, this represents a major increase against the mean.
The scientists and observers who currently make up the continent’s semi-permanent population are aided by a full complement of equipment to support their existence. Modern telecommunications, electric heating, cold-weather gear and, above all, aircraft make access to the antarctic regions comparatively easy and safe. The use of technology has been so transformative for life in the southernmost continent that this entire period of exploration has been called ‘the Mechanical Age’. Its predecessor Age was very different. So much so that its adjective referred not to the type of equipment that supported it, but the type of human being.
We call it the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
This period, roughly covering the middle eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, was the era in which hardy groups of men endeavoured to reach certain polar extremes on ship, sledge and foot. It took an unusual combination of teamwork, perseverance and, frequently, sheer bloodymindedness to get anywhere near the Antarctic ice shelf, let alone the pole. Having done that, the same combination of attributes were required to get back. Actually, a greater amount. Getting back meant doing so with less food, less energy and perhaps fewer phalanges than one might have had on the outbound journey. Twenty-two men died during these expeditions. A further five died shortly after returning. Of these, three are known to have suffered mental ill-health: two died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
These were explorers. Intelligent, scientifically-minded men. The sort of person who would be capable of drawing up a cost-benefit analysis. And yet, they went to the poles anyway. What kind of person is this? The kind that leaves behind a cool biography, that’s who.
Among the coolest of these biographies belonged to John Robert Francis ‘Frank’ Wild, a Yorkshireman who made a habit of going south. He made five Antarctic expeditions, one with Robert Falcon Scott and three with Sir Ernest Shackleton, for whom he served as second-in-command. It reveals something of Wild’s character that two of these trips took place after Scott’s disastrous Terra Nova expedition, in which all five members of the final party lost their lives.1
Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was his and Wild’s first trip since the loss of Scott. That terrible adventure, which has since assumed a near-mythic status in Polar lore, cast something of a pall on the prospect. One putative captain declined to join Shackleton’s trip, describing it as ‘foredoomed’. He might have been onto something.
Disdaining any thoughts of doom, Shackleton’s crew left South Georgia island in December 1914 (a time when Polar exploration might have been considered a relatively safe option for military-aged European men). Pushing into the Weddell Sea, the huge bay that sits slightly to the south east of Cape Horn, Shackleton’s intention was to sail southwards until the Endurance reached Antartica itself.
It seemed that Antarctica was keen to meet them halfway. The crew encountered icebergs in ‘ominous’ numbers and at latitudes more northerly than they would have considered comfortable. A ‘belt of heavy pack ice’ appeared fifteen miles northeast of Saunders Island, forcing Shackleton to take in his ship’s sails and proceed under steam, carefully navigating the battalions of ice. It set the tone for the entire adventure. The Endurance continued southwards, the ice becoming ever more threatening until it surrounded the entire ship. By February the ship was stuck fast in an ice pack. Efforts to dig her out manually proved futile and the crew would have to wait out the polar winter.
Eventually, the pressure of the ice pack proved fatal for the Endurance and Shackleton was forced to order abandonment of the ship. An attempt to march over land to safety proved impossible and the crew were compelled to set off in their lifeboats in search of aid.
The bedraggled explorers made it to Elephant Island, a tiny spot of rock and ice around 500 miles south of Tierra del Fuego. It was a safe enough place to stop, but not safe enough to stay. If the men were to stand any chance of returning to civilisation, a group would have to sail off in search of help.
Shackleton took responsibility for this outbound mission. Taking five of his men in the lifeboat James Caird, his duty was to push out into the treacherous seas to find help. It was a cold, wet, dangerous and frightening journey. Wild, who was given command of the remaining party, had perhaps a harder task: he had to lead the 21 men left on Elephant Island and keep them both alive (difficult) and sane (damn near impossible). He was to do this for four months. In the antarctic winter. With no guarantee of rescue. While they lived on a diet of seal, penguin and seaweed.
Having reached civilisation, Shackleton immediately made efforts to rescue the stranded party. Several attempts were launched but the conditions that had been so threatening to Endurance still prevailed and it wasn’t until Shackleton had secured the use of a Chilean Navy vessel that he was able to reach Wild and his men and bring them home. By now it was August 1916. They had been gone for almost two years.
The ordeal over and safely returned to England, Wild could be forgiven for putting his feet up for a bit. It’d be the human thing to do. That, however, was not the Frank Wild Way. The expedition crew had sailed out from Southampton in the autumn of 1914 and consequently missed out on two years of the biggest war the world had yet seen. Our man Wild had some catching-up to do.
He immediately rejoined the Royal Navy so that he could do his bit. Again, it’d be perfectly understandable for him to take a cushy staff job. Training officer or suchlike. The man was 43 years of age by then. It’s what you do at that age. What did Frank Wild do at that age? That’s right, he opted to take an intensive Russian language course so that he could join a hush-hush mission to Siberia in an allied operation to support the Russian Whites as they attempted to strangle Bolshevism in its cradle.2
Possessing a tenacity for survival that makes the average tardigrade look like a mayfly, Wild saw out the war with his body intact. Approaching the age of 50 and with four polar expeditions and a world war under his belt, he did took the obvious Wildean action and joined his old pal Shackleton for a final go at the South Pole.
For Shackleton, this really was a final mission. He suffered a heart attack before the party had even left its launching position in Rio de Janeiro. Unwilling to let such a matter deter him, Shack led the crew as they sailed for South Georgia. That was as far as he could go. He died in the early hours of 5 January 1922. He was 47 years old.
Command of the expedition fell to Wild, who with typical brio, determined to carry on. He led a somewhat quietened mission, He might have been a brave man, but he was not a stupid one and the rapidly enclosing pack ice must have put him in mind of the fate of the Endurance almost a decade earlier.
Spirits fell. Crewman A. H. Macklin noted in his diary: ’it has been another unpleasant day with all the discomforts of yesterday accentuated, the ship rolling just as heavily and all gear more thickly coated with ice, which is hanging in festoons and stalactites from every possible place. Sprays have been flying over all day and everything in the ship is damp. There is no comfort anywhere except in one’s bunk, and even there it is all one can do to prevent being thrown out’.
At this, the five-time expeditioner Wild displayed his characteristic mordant wit: ‘the man who comes down here for the sake of experience is mad; the man who comes twice is beyond all hope; while as for the man who comes five times…’ His words trailed off. He turned his crew back and returned north, leaving the Antarctic to his memories.
He spent most of the rest of his life in South Africa, working as a farmer, a railway builder and, when times proved difficult, as perhaps the most personally fascinating hotel barman in the world. Married twice (both marriages commencing after the end of his polar adventures), he had no children. He died at the age of 66 in August 1939, just three weeks before the start of the Second World War. It was probably only the fact of his death that prevented him from attempting to sign up again and seek more adventures. Certainly nothing in life seemed capable of stopping him.
Sadly, this illustrates the point made above: Scott’s party were on their return journey when they lost their lives.
Sidenote. The present author’s grandfather was also involved in the Allied operation in Russia and spent his postwar afternoons tipsily describing how he personally witnessed burning buildings from St. Petersburg harbour. No one in the family believed him until the documents were declassified and the official accounts matched his well-lubricated veteran’s one.