POLAR HERO’S PLIGHT.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17805, 2 September 1929, Page 11

POLAR HERO’S PLIGHT.

COMMANDER FRANK WILD. ! WORKS BEHIND A BAR. Days of great misfortune are being experienced in the Transvaal by Com- | mander Frank Wild, who accompanied both Captain Scott and Shackleton onVtheir Antarctic expeditions. After spending four years in cotton farming tie has lost his 'capital and is now a barman at a hotel in the village of Goller, the most northerly point on the Zululand Railway. He is earning about £4 a month. When he had brought the discovery ship Quest back to England after the j ill-fated Shacklet'on expedition of ( 1922 he went to Northern Zululand and settled in the M’kusi valley. In this fever-stricken district he enj countered great difficulties, notably ! from drought. Most of the other settlers in the district failed, but he was : one of the last to give up. He is quite cheerful in spite of his ill-luck, | but is anxious to retire t'o some place i near the coast. Commander Wild’s career has been a succession of ad- ! ventures, none of which has brought I him luck. He has been in five An tare- ' tic expeditions, and lias spent more 'than 10 years of his life in frozen 1 seas, a record unequalled by either, Scott, Evans, Shackleton, or Amundsen. He is descended from Captain , Cook. Nearly 30 years ago he sailed with [Scott in the Discovery; he was with j Shackleton in the Nimrod, with Mawj son in the Aurora, and with Shackle--1 ton again, as second in command, in the Endurance. After the ship had been crushed in the ice he kept hope and courage alive in the little parly marooned in Elephant Island, and was rescued when food for only two days more remained. On the return of the expedition he was received by the King at Buckingham Palace. When Shackleton was preparing for his last expedition Wild was in Central Africa. To join his friend he swam three rapid rivers and walked 100 miles knee-deep in water. He gives a stirring account of his experience in his book, “Shackleton’s Last Voyage.” Commander Wild married the widow of a Borneo tea planter, whom he rescued from Russia, where she was stranded after her husband’s death during the war.