ARCTIC AND POLAR MEDALS
The Southern Party on board “Nimrod”
Left to right: Wild, Shackleton, Marshall and Adams
Returning to the U.K., where he resigned for the Royal Navy, Wild undertook an extensive boating trip, but in 1910 he joined a Sir
Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition, which sailed from London in the Aurora in July 1911. Wild was appointed leader
of the Western Base in 1912, where he had charge of seven men on what was named the Shackleton Ice Shelf. They were to have no
contact with the outside world for a year. Some 400 miles of new land was chartered under appalling conditions. Wild and the Eastern
Party journeyed to Mount Barr Smith, a point just 50 miles short of the snow-free oasis discovered by Lieutenant David Bunger some
years later, again earning the respect of his chief who was later to state, 'Wild won the sincere regard of the members of his party, and
the admiration of all for the splendid way in which he executed the difficult task entrusted to him’.
On his return from the Australasian Expedition, he was asked by Shackleton to go South once more, this time as the second-in-
command of the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Accordingly, in August 1914 he sailed with Shackleton from Plymouth in
the Endurance for the Weddell Sea, which was to be the base for an attempt to cross the Antarctic Continent to the Ross Sea via the
South Pole. Tragically the crossing never took place. For ten months the Endurance was gripped in the pack ice, leaving the crew
stranded without any means of contacting the outside world. Eventually the ship was crushed and sank, and for the next five months
Wild, Shackleton, and their 26 companions suffered the most unbelievable privations- frostbite, insomnia and wracking hunger - whilst
retreating over ice which had a tendency to open beneath their feet. Fortunately, Wild, like Shackleton, was at his best in a crisis.
When nearly starving in early, 1916, 'a strange shape appeared, moving deliberately across a nearby section of their old floe. Wild ran
to get his rifle from his tent, when he dropped to one knee and shot. The animal bucked, and slowly sank down on to the ice. Several
men hurried to where it lay - a sea leopard nearly 11 feet long. With one bullet, it seemed, Wild had changed the whole complexion of
their lives. There at their feet lay nearly 1,000 pounds of meat - Shackleton announced that they would feast on the sea leopard’s liver
for lunch.
In April 1916 the shipwrecked explorers launched three rescue boats salvaged from Endurance, and, clearing loose pack ice, reached
Elephant Island. From this desolate spot Shackleton with five men made his famous voyage in one of the boats to South Georgia and
from there organised the rescue operation. Wild pleaded with Shackleton to be allowed to share the dangers of the voyage, but was
given the onerous task of holding the rest of the partv together on Elephant Island for an unknown period of time. ‘The trust reposed in
Wild was fully justified’, for incredibly, not a single life was lost.
On the return of the Expedition to Europe Wild was commissioned Lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. and sent to Archangel to superintend 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.
Awarded his C.B.E. in the New Year Honours of 1920, Wild then went into partnership with the Surgeon of the Weddell Sea
Expedition, Dr. McIllroy, and tried his hand as a planter in Nyasaland, but the invitation of Sir Ernest Shackleton to join a new
expedition proved irresistible and, in September 1921, he sailed South as his second-in-command in the Quest. On Shackleton’s
unexpected death at South Georgia in January 1922, Wild assumed command and continued the voyage until stopped by ice 50 miles
from the Enderby Land Coast, and after some oceanographic work in the South Atlantic, returned home in June 1922.
The following year he published Shackleton’s Last Voyage, and in 1924 was awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical
Society. Wild emigrated to South Africa in 1923, where he died in 1939.
www.dnw.co.uk
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