DEATH IN AFRICA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23431, 22 August 1939, Page 9

DEATH IN AFRICA

ANTARCTIC EXPLORER \ " COMMANDER FRANK WILD CAPETOWN, Aug. 20 The death has occurred at Klerksdorp, South Africa, of Commander Frank Wild, who was the only living descendant of Captain Cook, and a well-known Antarctic explorer. He was 65 years of age. .

Commander Frank Wild was .born at Skelton, Yorkshire. He went to Australia at the age of 15. In 1901 he was selected by Captain-Scott as a member of his expedition to the Antarctic in the Discovery and for the next 21 years his life was chiefly devoted to Antarctic exploration. He .was in five expeditions and spent more than 10 years in frozen seas —a unequalled by Scott, Evans, Shackleton or Amundsen. The Discovery remained in,,the Polar regions until February, 1904;,' and Commander Wild took part in much of the exploration work. By .1907 he was back on the Antarctic ice as a member of the Shackleton Nimrod expedition, which, in the next two years, reached

a point about 100 miles from the South Tole. In 1911 he joined the Australian party under Dr. Maw son in the Aurora which spent two years in investigating the coastal areas of and Capo Adaro, and in 1914 he was a member of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. r. After serving in the world war, Commander Wild went to Central Africa. Thero he heard that Shackleton was going south again and at once started to join him by the quickest-possible route, involving the swimming of three rapid rivers and walking about 100 miles through flooded areas. Shackleton made him second in command of the Quest, the expedition's' vessel. After the death of his leader in Januarv, 1922, Commander Wild took the Quest back to England, where lie was received by the King at' Buckingham Palace and the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society was presented to him. In 1923 lie "wroto "Shackleton's Last Voyage." - Returning to Africa, Commander Wild settled in Zululand find took up cotton-growing. At the end of four years, however, 'his capital was exhausted owing to a succession of ; droughts, and in July, 1929, he became an attendant at an hotel in Northern I Zululand while awaiting the means to ! get down to the coast. In 1922 he had married Mrs. Granville Altmari', whom he had rescued from Russia after her former husband, a Borneo tea-planter, been killed in the war.