Sir George Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar (31 October 188830 November 1958), commonly referred to as Captain Wilkins, was an Australian polar explorer, ornithologist, pilot, soldier, geographer, and photographer. He was awarded the Military Cross after he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers during the Battle of the Hindenburg Line, and became the only official Australian photographer from any war to receive a combat medal. He narrowly failed in an attempt to be the first to cross under the North Pole in a submarine, but was able to prove that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap, thereby paving the way for future successful missions. The US Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959.

Early life and education

Hubert Wilkins was born on 31 October 1888 at Mount Bryan East, South Australia, the last of 13 children in a family of pioneer settlers and sheep farmers.

He was educated first in his home town, and then at the Adelaide School of Mines.

He moved to Adelaide as a teenager, finding work with a travelling cinema.

Career

Wilkins moved to Sydney, where he worked as a cinematographer, before moving to England, where he became a pioneering aerial photographer while working for Gaumont Studios.

His photographic skill earned him a place on various Arctic expeditions, including the controversial 1913 Vilhjalmur Stefansson-led Canadian Arctic Expedition.

World War I

thumb|upright|Captain Wilkins, 1918

In 1917, Wilkins returned to his native Australia, joining the Australian Flying Corps in the rank of second lieutenant. Wilkins later transferred to the general list and in 1918 was appointed as an official war photographer. In June 1918 Wilkins was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts to rescue wounded soldiers during the Third Battle of Ypres. He remains the only Australian official photographer from any war to have received a combat medal. The following month Wilkins was promoted to captain and became officer commanding No.3 (Photographic) Sub-section of the Australian war records unit.

Wilkins's work frequently led him into the thick of the fighting and during the Battle of the Hindenburg Line he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers in an earlier attack, directing them until support arrived. Wilkins was subsequently awarded a bar to his Military Cross in the 1919 Birthday Honours.

When Australian World War I general Sir John Monash was asked by the visiting American journalist Lowell Thomas (who had written With Lawrence in Arabia and made T. E. Lawrence an international hero) if Australia had a similar hero, Monash spoke of Wilkins: "Yes, there was one. He was a highly accomplished and absolutely fearless combat photographer. What happened to him is a story of epic proportions. Wounded many times ... he always came through. At times he brought in the wounded, at other times he supplied vital intelligence of enemy activity he observed. At one point he even rallied troops as a combat officer ... His record was unique."

After the war

thumb|Detroit Arctic Expedition, 1926

After the war, Wilkins served in 1921–22 as an ornithologist aboard the Quest on the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition to the Southern Ocean and adjacent islands.

On 15 April 1928, a year after Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic, Wilkins and Eielson began a trans-Arctic crossing from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Green Harbour, Spitsbergen, arriving after 21 hours of flight time and a five-day layover on Deadman's Island (Likholmen) off of Spitsbergen's northeast coast. For this feat and his prior work, Wilkins was knighted, and during the ensuing celebration in New York, he met an Australian actress, Suzanne Bennett, whom he later married. flying along the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Now financed by William Randolph Hearst, Wilkins continued his polar explorations, flying over Antarctica in the San Francisco. He named the island of Hearst Land after his sponsor, and Hearst thanked Wilkins by giving him and his bride a flight aboard Graf Zeppelin.

Nautilus expedition

thumb|Jean Jules Verne and Suzanne Wilkins in 1931

In 1930 Wilkins and his wife, Suzanne, were vacationing with a wealthy friend and colleague Lincoln Ellsworth. During this outing Wilkins and Ellsworth hammered out plans for a trans-Arctic expedition involving a submarine. Wilkins said the expedition was meant to conduct a "comprehensive meteorology study" and collect "data of academic and economic interest". He also anticipated Arctic weather stations and the potential to forecast Arctic weather "several years in advance". Wilkins believed a submarine could take a fully equipped laboratory into the Arctic.

Ellsworth contributed $70,000, plus a $20,000 loan. Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst purchased exclusive rights to the story for $61,000. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute contributed a further $35,000. Wilkins himself added $25,000 of his own money.) Wilkins renamed her Nautilus, after Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The submarine was outfitted with a custom-designed drill that would allow her to bore through ice pack overhead for ventilation. The crew of eighteen men was chosen with great care. Among their ranks were U.S. Naval Academy graduates as well as navy veterans of World War I.

Wilkins described the planned expedition in his 1931 book Under The North Pole, which Wonder Stories praised as "[as] exciting as it is epochal".

The expedition suffered losses before they even left New York Harbor. Quartermaster Willard Grimmer was knocked overboard and drowned in the harbor.

Wilkins was undaunted and drove on with preparations for a series of test cruises and dives before they were to undertake their trans-Arctic voyage. The Nautilus was towed to Ireland on 22 June 1931, and was taken to England for repairs.

On 28 June the Nautilus was up and running and on her way to Norway to pick up the scientific contingent of their crew. By 23 August they had left Norway and were only 600 miles from the North Pole. It was at this time that Wilkins uncovered another setback. His submarine was missing its diving planes. Without diving planes he would be unable to control the Nautilus while submerged.

Wilkins was determined to do what he could without the diving planes. For the most part Wilkins was thwarted from discovery under the ice floes.

Wilkins had to acknowledge that his adventure into the Arctic was becoming too foolhardy when he received a wireless plea from Hearst which said, "I most urgently beg of you to return promptly to safety and to defer any further adventure to a more favorable time, and with a better boat."

Wilkins ended the first expedition to the poles in a submarine and headed for England, but was forced to take refuge in the port of Bergen, Norway, because of a fierce storm that they encountered en route. The Nautilus suffered serious damage that made further use of the vessel unfeasible. Wilkins received permission from the United States Navy to sink the vessel off shore in a Norwegian fjord on 20 November 1931.

Despite the failure to meet his intended objective, he was able to prove that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap, thereby paving the way for future successful missions.

Later life

Wilkins became a student of The Urantia Book and supporter of the Urantia movement after joining the '70' group in Chicago in 1942. After the book's publication in 1955, he "carried the massive work on his long travels, even to the Antarctic" and told associates that it was his religion.

On 16 March 1958, Wilkins appeared as a guest on the TV panel show What's My Line?

Recognition

Wilkins was the first recipient of the Samuel Finley Breese Morse Medal, which was awarded to him by the American Geographical Society in 1928. He was also awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Patron's Medal the same year.

Wilkins was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1930.

Death and legacy

Wilkins died in Framingham, Massachusetts, on 30 November 1958. The US Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959. The Navy confirmed on 27 March that, "In a solemn memorial ceremony conducted by Skate shortly after surfacing, the ashes of Sir Hubert Wilkins were scattered at the North Pole in accordance with his last wishes."

Collections and projects

His wife Suzanne inherited the farm at Montrose, Pennsylvania, as well as her husband's collection of films, photographs, papers, and various other artefacts were stored indiscriminately in around in 200 boxes in a barn. There were no children of the marriage. Suzanne subsequently lived with a man called Winston Ross for over 30 years, who inherited the farm and contents upon her death in 1974. Ross married Marley Shofner, who had two sons to previous husbands, and the pair, who did not understand its value nor knew much about Australian history, began selling some of it to fund their lifestyle. In 1985, they sold a large batch to the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, which was setting up a polar archive at the time. After the couple's deaths in the 1990s, Shofner's sons inherited the farm and what was left of Wilkins' collection. They sold the farm and the material moved elsewhere.

Australian businessman and adventurer Dick Smith bought Wilkins' 1939 Chevrolet station wagon from Ross and Shofner and had it shipped to Australia. In 2024 he donated it to the National Motor Museum at Birdwood, South Australia, for public display. In 2023, Emma McEwin, great-granddaughter of geologist and polar explorer Douglas Mawson, presented the lecture, "explor[ing] the personalities and backgrounds of both Hubert Wilkins and Douglas Mawson". In 2025, Dr Richard Harris, patron of the Wilkins Project and known for his part in the 2018 Thai cave rescue of a group of stranded schoolboys, discussed "his mission to encourage young people to unlock their inner explorer". Wilkins Coast, and the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica are named after him. The airport at Jamestown, South Australia, and Sir Hubert Wilkins Road at Adelaide Airport as well as the Wilkins Highway in the mid-North of South Australia are also named in his memory.

Species

A species of Australian skink, Lerista wilkinsi, is named after him, as is a species of rock wallaby, Petrogale wilkinsi, first described in 2014.

Wilkins is briefly portrayed by actor John Dease in the 1946 film Smithy (1946).

Works

  • 1917
  • 1928
  • 1928
  • 1931
  • 1942 with Harold M. Sherman: Thoughts Through Space, Creative Age Press. Republished as

See also

  • Thomas George Lanphier, Sr.

References

Further reading

  • ; US edition. The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins Hero of the Great Age of Polar Exploration. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006.
  • Voyage of the Nautilus, Documentary 2006, AS Videomaker/Real Pictures
  • Australian War Memorial Entry for Sir George Hubert Wilkins (archived)
  • Register of The Sir George Hubert Wilkins Papers
  • Sir Hubert Wilkins biography from Flinders Ranges Research
  • In Search of Sir Hubert Short bio on Sir Hubert Wilkins
  • The 1931 Nautilus Expedition to the North Pole
  • The Papers of George Hubert Wilkins at Dartmouth College Library