Frank Wild in final journey out of Shackleton's shadow

Karen Bowerman -

Frank Wild was the right-hand man to Sir Ernest Shackleton, joining him on several of his Antarctic expeditions.

But is he finally stepping out of the great explorer's shadow, as his ashes make a poignant journey south ?

Almost 100 years ago, the famous polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to try to be the first to cross Antarctica.

He failed, but his ill-fated expedition on the Endurance, which began in 1914, is now seen as one of history's greatest stories of survival and leadership.

But while much has been written about Shackleton, his second-in-command on that voyage, a Yorkshireman called Frank Wild, has been largely overlooked by history.

At least, until now. Wild's relatives recently accompanied him on his final journey to Antarctica, as they took his ashes to South Georgia, to rest next to the grave of Shackleton, the man he affectionately referred to as "the boss".

The 18-day voyage retraced the disastrous Endurance expedition and ended in a final reunion of two great polar explorers.

The two men shared several trips to Antarctica, including the Nimrod expedition in 1907-09 which brought them to within 100 miles of the South Pole, a record at the time.

But within weeks of setting sail in early 1915, the Endurance was trapped in ice and 10 months later it was crushed, a moment recounted by Wild in his recently re-published polar memoirs.

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