Designer Andrew Robinson
Printer BDT International
Process Stochastic lithography
Perforation 14 per 2cms
Stamp size 28.45 x 42.58mm
Sheet Layout 10 (5 se-tenant pairs)
Release date 25 November, 2011
Production Co-ordination Creative Direction (Worldwide) Ltd

We acknowledge with thanks the assistance of Scott Polar Research Institute and Angie Butler.

John Robert Francis Wild C.B.E. known as Frank, was one of the most outstanding Polar explorers of the ‘Heroic Age’. He undertook five Antarctic expeditions under the leadership of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Sir Douglas Mawson and was the only man to experience six gruelling winters in Antarctica. Frank Wild is one of only two people to be awarded a four bar Polar medal and each pair of stamps in this issue represent the expeditions for which he was awarded a bar.

With the death in 1922 of Shackleton, his beloved leader and friend, and his decision to emigrate to South Africa, the reputation of this extraordinary man was largely forgotten.

Frank Wild was born in Skelton, Yorkshire in 1873, the second born of 13 children. His father, Benjamin, a school teacher, hoped he would follow in his footsteps but from the age of 4 Wild recalled his yearning to go to sea. At the age of 16 he joined the Merchant Navy where he remained for the next nine years, often working on “lime juicers for maximum work for minimum food and wages.” His capacity for hard, honest work in the harshest of conditions paved the way for his acceptance into the Royal Navy shortly followed by being selected from 3,000 naval recruits to join Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition of 1901 (2 x 60p).

During a sledging foray in 1902, a young seaman, George Vince, slipped and disappeared over an ice cliff into the sea never to be seen again. Three more of the party nearly met the same fate when Wild, who had hammered nails into the soles of his boots, managed to halt their passage. It was typical of his quick thinking and exceptional capacity to stay calm at all times.

In 1909 Wild joined the Nimrod expedition (2 x 70p) and was chosen to join Shackleton on the attempt on the South Pole. Beating all records they got within only ninety-seven miles of the Pole when forced to turn back. On the return journey, some seven hundred miles of appalling exhaustion and hunger, Wild and Shackleton’s relationship was cemented. “S[hackleton] privately forced upon me his one breakfast biscuit, and would have given me another tonight had I allowed him. I do not suppose that anyone else in the world can thoroughly realise how much generosity and sympathy was shown by this; I do, and by God I shall never forget. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit."

In spite of Scott’s pressing invitations to join him on what was to be his fateful Terra Nova expedition, Wild joined the Australian, Mawson on the Aurora ( 2 x 95p) and took charge of the Western party of seven men, surviving for a year on an ice shelf, named the Shackleton Ice Shelf.

In 1914 he joined Shackleton’s Endurance expedition (2 x £1.15p) in an attempt to cross the Antarctic continent via the South Pole. Eventually the Endurance was crushed and sank in the Weddell Sea and Wild displayed outstanding fortitude and leadership when Shackleton entrusted him with the 21 men stranded on Elephant Island.

On his return, Wild was commissioned Lieutenant in R.N.V.R. and sent to Archangel to supervise the arrival of war materials. In 1918 he was released by the Admiralty to take part in an expedition under Shackleton to Spitsbergen, ostensibly to prospect for minerals but quasi-officially to establish a British presence in the area.

After the war, Wild with his great friend Dr James McIlroy, departed for Nyasaland to try their hand at farming, a venture that showed potential until Shackleton asked them to return to England and join him on the Quest and a foray back into the ice. Wild did not hesitate.

Tragically, Shackleton suddenly died of a heart attack on board and Wild assumed command of the ship. The following year, in 1923, with his new wife Vera Altman, Wild emigrated to South Africa to farm cotton. The farming venture failed, as did his marriage and to compound his difficulties South Africa was caught up in the grip of the Great Depression. Wild moved from job to job, often struggling to make ends meet. The privations he had endured during his expeditions took a toll on his health, yet he maintained the same calm and sagacity that had seem him through his years as an explorer.

In 1931 he married Trixie Rowbotham with whom he spent eight happy years. While working as a store-keeper on a mine in the town of Klerksdorp he suddenly died of pneumonia.

Sadly no-one knew where he was buried or what had happened to his remains; he was forgotten in life and in death, that is until now. After a seven year search his ashes were found in Johannesburg, by his biographer Angie Butler. With the permission of his descendants and the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, in November 2011, Frank Wild is to make his final journey. His ashes will be interred alongside Shackleton’s grave and he will finally be re-united with his beloved ‘Boss’ in the whaler’s cemetery in Grytviken, South Georgia.

Text by Angie Butler, author of ‘The Quest for Frank Wild’.

Источник: Falkland Islands Philatelic Bureau

Серия марок (чист.) [7852]

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