Sir George Hubert Wilkins
1888-1958
Australian Explorer, Pilot, and Photographer
Sir George Hubert Wilkins was an Australian explorer of the Arctic and a pilot who is regarded as a pioneer in air exploration. He also contributed to the exploration of the Arctic by submarine.
Wilkins was born in Mount Bryan East, in southern Australia on October 31, 1888. He attended the School of Mines and Industry in Adelaide, where he studied electrical engineering; he also pursued his interest in photography and took up flying in 1910. He married Suzanne Bennett in 1929. Wilkins utilized his skills in photography and flight during the Balkan War, where he served as a newsreel photographer. His work was used in newspapers as well as in movies. Following the end of the Balkan War in 1913, Wilkins began his career in Arctic exploration after he was selected by Vihjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962) to be the official photographer of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, which lasted until 1917. Wilkins was rewarded for his commitment to the expedition by being promoted to second in command beneath Stefansson.
After the expedition was completed in 1917, Wilkins joined the Australian Flying Corps as a photographer during World War I; he was stationed on the French front. While in this position he served as the official photographer of the military history department. His love of flight led him to compete, in 1919, for a $50,000 prize for a successful flight from England to Australia; he did not succeed in this effort.
Wilkins was second in command again for another expedition, this time with the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition from 1920-21. Following this effort, he returned to Antarctica in 1921 with Sir Ernest Shackleton's (1874-1922) Quest Expedition as a naturalist, or one who studies animals and plants. Wilkins was in charge of the Wilkins Australia and Islands expedition for the British Museum in Australia from 1923-25. From 1926-28 he was in charge of the Detroit News Arctic Expeditions. His firstbook, Flying the Arctic, was published in 1928. His second book, Undiscovered Australia, was published in the following year.
George Hubert Wilkins. (Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)On April 15, 1928, Wilkins and Carl Ben Eielson flew from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Spits-bergen, Norway. The team covered a distance of 2,100 miles (3,380 km) in 20½ hours in the first east to west crossing of the Arctic; this flight was regarded as the greatest Arctic flight of the time. On June 14, 1928, Wilkins was knighted by King George V; he received the Patron's medal from the Royal Geographic Society in the same year.
In the same year of his knighting, Wilkins led the Wilkins-Hearst Antarctic Expedition. With this effort, he was the first to fly in the Antarctic and the first to fly over both poles. He was able to determine also that Graham Land was an island and not connected with a continent. Wilkins and Eielson, teamed again with Eielson as pilot, made a number of geographical observations on their 1,200-mile (1,931-km) flight along the Palmer Peninsula. Three years later, in 1931, Wilkins flew around the world in the Graf Zeppelin. He also made the first exploration of the Arctic by submarine, in a vessel named the Nautilus. In the years 1933-39, Wilkins oversaw the completion of four of Lincoln Ellsworth's (1880-1951) Antarctic expeditions. Wilkins served as a consultant to severalbranches of the United States government from 1942, and he consulted with the United States Army Air Force during World War II regarding Arctic clothing. He also consulted with the Weather Bureau and the Navy, and was special consultant to the Army Quartermaster Corps in 1947. He died on December 1, 1958, in Framingham, Massachusetts.
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