Chapter Sixteen

SOME DAY AUSTRALIA WILL UNDERSTAND

*

With the help of Mr Stefansson and others of my friends in New York and Detroit we have managed to get enough for two aeroplanes of a better and safer type. I have not as yet accepted the American terms and if I do I shall have to carry the American flag, but in spite of all … I will carry the Australian flag as well; some day Australia will understand.

Wilkins’ letter to his mother, November 19251

When Wilkins arrived in America, he was 37 years old. Over the next six years, his life would become a whirlwind of change. He soon discovered that having too much money could sometimes be a bigger handicap than having too little. Wilkins had been expecting a small expedition to explore the Arctic. He wanted two or three men and one aeroplane, but noted, ‘They don’t do things that way in America.’2 His ‘friends’ in New York and Detroit hired specialists in every field, from ground-maintenance crews to publicists.

Wilkins was eventually put in charge of an expedition with two aeroplanes and more than 100 support staff. The whole expedition became a ‘hopeless muddle’.3 Following a procession of dinners, speeches, ceremonies, and even a letter of support from US president Calvin Coolidge, Wilkins got the two aeroplanes as far as Barrow, Alaska, where he was frustrated with constant crashes and breakdowns. After months of setbacks and the death of a reporter, who walked into a spinning propeller, Wilkins finally called the expedition off. He returned to Detroit in June 1926 to face the disgruntled businessmen.

Still determined to explore the Arctic by air to find land suitable for weather stations, Wilkins found new sponsors and, the following year, returned to Alaska with two new aeroplanes. He and pilot Carl ‘Ben’ Eielson made a flight northwest from Barrow, into an unmapped area, and landed their plane on the Arctic ice pack. Wilkins took depth soundings, which revealed that the water below the ice was 7 kilometres deep. He reasoned that land in the area suitable for weather stations was unlikely to exist. Showing that the Arctic was most likely a deep ocean, covered by ice, was an important scientific breakthrough, but it wasn’t headline-making news. Wilkins’ new sponsors deserted him.

Again, Wilkins demonstrated his resolve and, in 1928, returned to Alaska with just Eielson and one small plane he had purchased with his own money. In April 1928, the pair successfully flew from Barrow to Svalbard, the archipelago in the Greenland Sea. It was the first aeroplane flight across the top of the world. They found no new land.

Lorna Maitland was working hard to support her fiancé, and, at the completion of the flight, sent press releases to newspapers promoting Wilkins’ career:

‘Who is he?’ enquired a thousand tongues. And from every corner of the world came an answering cry. The whalers of South Georgia in the Antarctic were full of tales of his doings. Soldiers who had fought side by side with him in the war each had an amazing story to tell of his bravery. ‘Bravest of the brave’, said General Sir John Monash. ‘He saved my expedition’, said Stefansson. And deep in the wilds of the Australian bush the Aborigines rubbed naked shoulders and said, ‘We loved him’.4

But Wilkins needed little help attracting the world’s attention. The flight across the Arctic made him front-page news. As he returned from the north, first to England, and then to America, honours were showered upon him. In England, he was knighted by King George V. When they arrived in New York, Wilkins and Eielson were given a tickertape parade down Broadway. Wilkins’ mother, who was almost 90, had lived to see her wayward son become one of the most famous men in the world. Commenting on his knighthood, Wilkins wrote to his sister:

I am industriously taking advantage of it to fulfil my work in both the North and South Pole areas. The personal equation doesn’t enter into it, except that I have really had enough of actual polar experience and would gladly stay in other climes if my work was done, but there remains at least two more year’s work in the field before I can give it up. [After which] I hope to afford a little time to my private interests and pleasure.5

Curiously, when he was knighted, he immediately chose to be known by his middle name, Hubert, rather than George. He never offered an explanation for this. But, overnight, Captain George Wilkins, the Australian war photographer, became Sir Hubert Wilkins, the international polar explorer. The name change has confused historians ever since.

While the celebrations were in full swing in New York, Wilkins was introduced to Suzanne Bennett, an Australian singer and dancer working on Broadway. Suzanne had been born Suzanne Catherine Evans in Walhalla, Victoria, in 1901. She left the small mining community and moved to Melbourne, where she worked at the Tivoli Theatre. At the age of 15 she married a pilot, Oscar Bennett.* She sued him for divorce in 1920 on the grounds that Bennett had ‘left her without means of support’.6 The action failed, and Suzanne sailed to America three years later, still married to Bennett. Presumably, she had divorced him in America by the time she met Wilkins.

[* Oscar Bennett’s brother, Gershon Bennett, married General Sir John Monash’s daughter, Bertha, so for a period Suzanne Bennett and Monash were related by marriage.]

The latter half of 1928 was a hectic time for the newly knighted Wilkins. While he was being feted in New York, and being seen around town with Suzanne, he declared that having proven there were no islands near the North Pole, submarines could be used as floating weather stations in the far north. It was a ground-breaking concept, and Wilkins explained:

Since water is water, no matter where it is, a submarine could operate under the Arctic ice just as well as under water in the Atlantic. And so it could be used to reach the spot to be occupied by the scientists. Once there it could find some means of permitting the staff to reach the surface of the ice and carry out their observations.7

While Wilkins was imagining exploring the Arctic by sailing under the ice, rather than flying above it, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst offered him $50,000 if he could take his aeroplane to Antarctica and be the first person to fly to the South Pole. Wilkins seized it as an opportunity to raise funds for a potential submarine expedition. Eielson, his trusted pilot from the Arctic flight, joined him and, with a small support crew, Wilkins began planning a trip south.

Meanwhile, Suzanne had realised that attaching herself to a famous polar explorer and gaining the title of ‘Lady Wilkins’ would be a good career move. In September 1928, she announced that she and Wilkins were engaged. ‘Explorer to marry Australian actress’, a newspaper reported:

Miss Suzanne Bennett, the Australian actress, announced her engagement to Captain Sir Hubert Wilkins, the well-known Australian explorer who was to sail from [New York] on his aerial expedition to the Antarctic. Miss Bennett did not give the proposed date of her marriage. When interviewed on the subject by press representatives, Sir Hubert Wilkins refused to discuss the announcement.8

What Lorna Maitland, who had known Wilkins for ten years and had been engaged to him for three of them, made of the announcement is not recorded anywhere.

A few weeks after his ‘engagement’, as he sailed south with Eielson and his aeroplane, Wilkins’ mother died. For more than two decades, Wilkins had sought his mother’s approval, first as a cinematographer, then as an explorer. He had seen her for no more than a few weeks in the previous 20 years, but had written letters to her constantly throughout his travels. It is difficult to gauge how much of a personal loss the death of his mother was to Wilkins, but from the time of her death he sought to make contact with her through the spirit world.

Wilkins was not alone in attempting to communicate with the dead during this period. Belief in spirits gained popularity after the war. The grief at the loss of millions of people — often young men — was so widespread that many people sought a way to somehow connect with dead loved ones. What is more, with the rise of belief in Darwinism and science, they sought spirituality that could be explained logically. Not only did people want to believe that there was another realm of intelligent thought, but they wanted to communicate with it scientifically.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom Wilkins had shown the Hindenburg Line on 20 September 1918, had lost his son in the war, along with many close family members. By the end of the war, Conan Doyle had abandoned writing about his super-logical detective, Sherlock Holmes, and was writing about spiritualism. Wilkins stayed friends with Conan Doyle and, in the 1920s, attended his séances. So, when Wilkins’ mother died, it was a natural step for him to attempt to make contact with her

Wilkins and Eielson reached Deception Island off the Grahamland Peninsula, Antarctica, in November 1928. Wilkins found that the flat, solid ice in the harbour he had seen on the expedition with Cope, and that he expected to use as a runway, was thin, due to unseasonably warm weather. Unable to get a fully laden plane airborne, Wilkins failed to fly to the South Pole and earn Hearst’s $50,000. However, he still managed short flights, and mapped approximately 1,000 kilometres of previously uncharted coast.

On his was back to America, Wilkins wrote to his sister clarifying the news of his engagement to Suzanne:

You have probably heard rumours of engagements and possibly of marriages … but it is all chaff in the wind — no substance to it at all. Just now I am supposed to be engaged to a very beautiful, talented Australian girl in New York. We are good friends, but I daresay you will learn of the engagement being broken off before you get this [letter]. That is, if they put such things in the Australian papers. So far, I am still of the mind to remain the bachelor of the family.9

But Suzanne had other ideas.

When Wilkins arrived in New York, Hearst told him that the offer of $50,000 to fly to the South Pole still stood. Wilkins realised it was his best chance of raising money for a submarine, and began planning a return to Antarctica. He reasoned that if the ice in the harbour at Deception Island was too thin to use as a runway, his next best option was to scrape a flat surface from the rocky ground surrounding it. Wilkins travelled to the Cleveland Tractor Company in Ohio, to purchase a small tractor.

Suzanne accompanied him and, surprisingly, five weeks after telling his sister that he intended to remain a bachelor, Wilkins married Suzanne in a brief ceremony in Cleveland. Why he did so remains a mystery. Wilkins’ diary for the period was filled with copious notes on the specifications and performance of the clever little ‘CleTrac’, while the event that would have a lasting effect on his life and legacy was dismissed with the words ‘got married’. The couple never lived together, and the marriage produced no children.

Wilkins sailed to Antarctica late in 1929, and failed a second time to reach the South Pole by air. He returned to New York still determined to explore under the Arctic ice, and managed to borrow a decrepit World War I submarine from the US Navy. After exhausting what personal money he had saved, he convinced a wealthy American, Lincoln Ellsworth, to become a major sponsor.

Ellsworth dreamt of writing his name into the history books by performing a great feat of polar exploration. He was vain and insecure, and disguised his homosexuality by displaying overt signs of manliness. He had also adopted the western frontier marshal Wyatt Earp as his role model. Ellsworth had previously sponsored two Arctic flights by Roald Amundsen, and now committed $125,000 to Wilkins’ submarine venture.

After a year of cost increases and mechanical failures, the submarine, which Wilkins named Nautilus, was launched in New York in a blaze of publicity. Suzanne, resplendent in a white mink coat, was photographed in the middle of the celebrities — the beautiful and dutiful wife wishing her husband good luck on his latest risky adventure. In private, the marriage was already on rocky ground. Suzanne was constantly complaining that Wilkins was not giving her enough money, while Wilkins was spending what little he had on his quest to explore the polar regions.

At the end of the christening ceremony, when Wilkins was trying to work out how to get his clapped-out submarine as far north as the Arctic ice pack, Suzanne was whining that he had not given her the money for the taxi fare back to her apartment. As the Nautilus sailed down the Hudson River, Wilkins typed a hasty note that could be sent to Suzanne at the next port:

I don’t know how I came to forget to give you the money for the taxi and I hope you understood that the bag was to be left at the office at 7 West 44th Street, where Lincoln [Ellsworth] will call for it.

I am enclosing some money, $30 — that is all I have for the taxi fare and for the despatch of two cables. There is lots of work for me to do and I have one special man on this trip to help me, so we will be busy every day. Just now I must dash off and show the wireless operator about the equipment.10

This pattern of Wilkins sending Suzanne brief messages to appease her complaints, followed by details of an expedition in which she had no interest, became a consistent theme throughout their marriage.

The Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Submarine Expedition managed to get as far north as the edge of the ice pack, and Wilkins got the submarine briefly under the ice, proving it was possible. Other than that, the expedition’s main accomplishment was to leave Wilkins with a moral debt to Ellsworth. And Wilkins believed that debts should be paid.

Ellsworth still wanted to be glorified as a polar explorer, but there were few polar ‘firsts’ left. The only one of note was that no one had crossed Antarctica from one side to the other; much of the interior of the great frozen content was unexplored. To repay his debt, Wilkins promised Ellsworth he would help the American become the first person to cross Antarctica. Ellsworth’s stipulation was that Wilkins should get no publicity from the expedition. Wilkins would write the press releases, but they would have to be sent out under Ellsworth’s name. Wilkins was not to be photographed with Ellsworth, nor was he to stay in the same hotels. In fact, after the successful crossing of Antarctica, Wilkins was not to return to the United States until at least two months after Ellsworth.

Broke, and having to decide between spending his time with his complaining wife in New York, or a vain, insecure American in the Antarctic, Wilkins chose the latter. After signing Ellsworth’s contract, Wilkins travelled to Norway to organise a ship, hire a crew, select an aeroplane, and plan the expedition. Ellsworth travelled to his castle in Switzerland for a holiday.

On 30 May 1933, as he prepared the expedition ship, which Ellsworth instructed should be named Wyatt Earp, the practical Wilkins explained some financial facts to Suzanne:

I am afraid you are going to be disappointed. It was agreed, or so I thought, before I left, that we would not take the house in London and that was why I sent the cable … to renew the lease on the apartment in New York … I am afraid I cannot take the responsibility of maintaining the London house as well. It would mean that I would be binding myself to pay seven pounds a week for the London house, as well as seven pounds a week for the New York apartment, that is fourteen pounds a week for rooms for you alone.

That does not take into consideration anything at all for food, clothing and other expenses … not including what I spend on myself …

I am now living on three pounds ten shillings a week, as much as I can afford … and since you are not able to travel or live with me, to give you four times as much to spend on yourself, as I spend on myself, and live alone, does not make me very happy.

Wilkins sailed the Wyatt Earp from Norway to Dunedin, New Zealand. Ellsworth met the expedition, and saw his ship and crew for the first time. The expedition sailed to the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica, where the plane was damaged before it could get airborne. The expedition was called off, and returned to Dunedin, where Ellsworth immediately left for the United States, leaving Wilkins to sort out the damaged plane, the Wyatt Earp, and the crew. At Dunedin, Wilkins expressed his loneliness, and pleaded with Suzanne to write to him more often:

Goodness knows how many [letters] I have written you.

You must realise while it might be lonely for you to be home alone, it is ever so much more lonely for me to be alone away from home … and when most of my time is being taken up with work. You have little else to do except look after yourself and could well afford time to write to me, while I have to do all sorts of work to earn a living for both of us. And while it is all very well for me to give you some time and attention … I surely deserve at least some thought and a few letters and messages, so long as I keep you in reasonable comfort.11

The indecisive Ellsworth was unsure whether he would make a second attempt to cross Antarctica, and Wilkins explained to Suzanne:

Anyway, I rather compromised myself by not coming straight back to the USA, for I agreed to stay with the boat until I knew just what [Ellsworth] wanted with regard to future attempts in the south and then get the boat started for him. But I do not expect to go south with him again, even if he goes. I am of the opinion that he will go again, but then nothing is certain …

In reality this job has been the most terrible I have undertaken. It has been an awful job.12

At the same time, Wilkins must have suspected that his five-year marriage was failing, because he wrote to Suzanne:

Probably you have run off with someone, but I can hardly blame you if you have. Anyway, if and when you do, let me know. I am no doubt too old and uninteresting to hold your beauty and feel that I cannot give you all the things you deserve. I love you too much to stand in your way of getting all the things you really want to make you happy, so don’t hesitate to make your own plans for your happiness.13

Suzanne’s response to him opening his heart in this manner was to send the balding Wilkins a jar of hair-restoring cream.

Throughout the winter in Dunedin — perhaps due to loneliness, tiredness, and the uncertainty of his future — Wilkins increasingly sought advice from spiritualists and fortune-tellers. And, like most mediums, these people told the superstitious Wilkins what he wanted to hear, which was that he should persist with his work of exploring the polar regions. Wilkins explained to Suzanne, ‘A fortune-teller told me that I was to achieve great success this year and that the way would be shown by the hand of a dead man. I suppose it must be my old friend Professor David.’14 [Wilkins is writing about Professor Edgeworth David, who had travelled to Antarctica with Shackleton in 1907. David was a mentor to both Wilkins and Sir Douglas Mawson. David had died in Sydney three days before this letter was written.]

Perhaps at the instigation of this fortune-teller, Wilkins visited a ‘spiritualist church’ in Dunedin. He first visit was on 2 September, after which he returned to his hotel to write excitedly to Suzanne:

This is the second letter today. It is Sunday night and … I have just come from church — a spiritualistic church. Just a little place in Dunedin and there were only about thirty people there. After the usual service a medium went to the platform and after telling two ladies about some personal affairs and giving them messages, she gave me a message, evidently from the same old man. I think I told you I had described to me by a spiritualist in London — some five or six years ago — an old man with a beard. The medium said she could see a sparkling cross above my head and a blazing square about me. Many spirits are standing near, all willing and eager to help. The old man gave the same message — urging me to go ahead more firmly with my work and my plans and assuring me of tremendous success, which the medium said would be sure to be mine.

She described one man more or less like [Wilkins’ Arctic and Antarctic pilot] Eielson,* whom she said placed his hand on my shoulder and encouraged me to go on. She described him wearing an Eskimo parka — although she did not know the name of the garment — and she said that the man himself was a noble person.

[* Eielson was killed in a plane crash in the Arctic in 1929]

My mother, she said, was also there and said that while [my mother] knew I was not following the work she planned (she wanted me to be a minister), she realised that I could do more good if I went earnestly ahead and did what I was trying to do. As usual the medium said she felt that I knew … what was going on around me in this world as well as in the spiritual world, and that from within my own self, with the help of God, I could accomplish all my desires.15

Suzanne did not reply to the letter and, weeks later, Wilkins was admonishing her again for not taking the time to write.

Lincoln Ellsworth, meanwhile, had decided he would make another attempt to fly across Antarctica. Partly to keep his promise to Ellsworth, partly to earn money for Suzanne to spend, and, perhaps partly because he had no other options, Wilkins agreed to go south again on the Wyatt Earp.

For Ellsworth’s next attempt at immortality, Wilkins, Ellsworth, and the crew sailed the Wyatt Earp to Deception Island off Grahamland, with the intention of Ellsworth and a pilot, Bernt Balchen, flying to the Ross Sea. But when they reached the island, a mechanical fault with the plane delayed the start for six weeks. After it was repaired, Balchen claimed the weather was unsuitable, and refused to fly the plane. Rather than return to New Zealand, Wilkins sailed the Wyatt Earp to Montevideo, Uruguay, from where it was easier for Ellsworth to return to New York. Balchen, having argued with Ellsworth, quit and also returned to New York. By the end of the second Ellsworth expedition, Wilkins had been living on board the Wyatt Earp, almost continuously, for three years. He was exhausted. In March 1935, he wrote to Suzanne from Montevideo:

I am still pretty nervous and rundown more so than I have ever been in my life. There are still a couple of weeks’ work for me typing lists and so forth and getting things in order so that if Ellsworth decides to go on I will know exactly what is needed for next year or, better still, be able to turn the boat over to someone else so that [Ellsworth] can get along without me.

You can depend upon it that I am more fed up on this job than [any other], but as I said before, when one’s word has been given, and a promise made, one cannot argue about keeping it, or suggest it should be broken if the advantage is on your side. So I will just have to go on and bear it no matter what anyone thinks.

Knowing Ellsworth before I took on the job, I knew more or less what I was letting myself in for. So did Balchen, but he decided not to keep his word … I can’t do as he did … it would be no excuse for me to exercise bad qualities just because someone else is.

Perhaps Wilkins was suspicious that Suzanne was seeing other men, because he reiterated his offer to divorce her.

I wonder if, by the time I get back, you will have found some nice young man to take you to Thanksgiving dinners, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised and anyway I wouldn’t blame you because I am getting old and stodgy, and with all your success in the pictures and everything, you will be wanting a young beau. I am getting balder and greyer.16

But on no account was Suzanne going to relinquish the title of Lady Wilkins, which she was putting to good use during the social seasons in New York and London.

Wilkins and Ellsworth sailed the Wyatt Earp to Grahamland for Ellsworth’s third attempt to cross Antarctica. This time, with a new pilot, Ellsworth made a successful flight from Dundee Island, near the tip of Grahamland, to the Ross Ice Shelf. To pay homage to his western hero, Ellsworth carried Wyatt Earp’s cartridge belt, which he had purchased from Earp’s widow. Ellsworth had finally crossed Antarctica — and Wilkins, after five years of work, had fulfilled his promise.

Wilkins returned to America, ready to make another attempt at exploring the Arctic by submarine. He was aware that rising costs and the looming war in Europe would make his plans difficult to realise, but he was as determined as ever. He had already warned Suzanne that she should find work because, ‘as soon as I get free from [Ellsworth’s] job I will have to spend every cent I have on the next submarine expedition’.17

Again, a new avenue presented itself. In August 1937, a Russian pilot, Sigizmund Levanesky, attempted to fly from Moscow to America via the North Pole. When radio contact with him was lost, Wilkins was asked to lead a search for the missing aviator. He agreed, hoping that, if he was successful, the Russians might lend him a submarine.

Before he left for Canada to commence the search, Wilkins met Harold Sherman, who wanted to conduct experiments in mental telepathy. During the search for the Russians, Wilkins regularly sent Sherman ‘thought messages’ from the Arctic. Wilkins would write what he was thinking in his diary and, at the appointed time, Sherman, sitting in his New York apartment, would write down his impressions. Four months later, the two men compared notes. The results were amazing. Sherman had regularly recorded exactly what Wilkins was thinking, and they published their findings in a book, Thoughts Through Space. Wilkins wrote in the foreword:

But doubtless the time will come when a verdict will announce ‘It has now been proven that thought communication, without mechanical aid, is available to those whose minds are trained and whose will is directed toward the betterment of mankind.’18

Wilkins found no trace of Levanesky. At the end of the search, Wilkins travelled to Moscow to collect an Order of Lenin for his efforts and, he hoped, persuade the Russians to give him a submarine. He wrote to Suzanne on 19 February 1938, beginning his letter with his usual hint of sarcasm at her for not writing to him:

I presume I missed your airmailed letter by a day. However, we expect another mail or two in March, and there might be time for an airmailed letter from you to reach me, even if posted after you receive this. But I guess there is not a great deal to write about since you could hardly fill up your letters with accounts of your adventures with your ‘beaus’.

It won’t be long, however, before I see you again for I am intending to end this job by the end of March. By that time I must know whether the Russians are going to help me with a submarine — or ask me to help them — or whether I must get into the job of getting one for myself.19

Wilkins was unable to convince the Russians to hand over a submarine. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, and realising that his chances of getting hold of a submarine were fading, Wilkins decided to return to Australia and make another attempt at instigating an Australian Antarctic program. He convinced Ellsworth that there was glory to be found in the unmapped Antarctic territory previously claimed by Australia. Wilkins, Ellsworth, and a small crew sailed the Wyatt Earp to the edge of Australia’s claim, from where Ellsworth made a short flight inland and declared the area now belonged to America.

When the expedition reached Australia, Wilkins tried to convince the government to buy the Wyatt Earp and put him in charge of an Antarctic program to counter the American claim. At the urging of Sir Douglas Mawson, the government bought the Wyatt Earp, but was undecided about Wilkins. While he waited in Sydney for the government to make its decision, Wilkins wrote to Suzanne on 3 March 1939:

It’s a long time since I heard anything from you and I have not sent many messages. Since coming to Sydney I have been so busy with the transfer of the ship that I have not had time to see anyone. I have not been out to dinner or anything and refuse to answer phone calls. But this morning I finish the job of turning over the ship. Ellsworth is off to America and I can have a few hours rest. Not for long though.

I am going to see if the Australian Government will promise to loan the ship each year to go to the Antarctic and, if they will, I will try and raise money here to take two partners to the south, leaving next October, and have them stay there for the winter. I would not stay with them — only take them down and come back with the boat. If that happens I may not be back in New York this year. On the other hand, if the people here are not interested, I will be back about the end of May. Meanwhile I am storing all my books and reports in Sydney.

If there is no interest at all in this country, I will go to England and Norway to see if I can start the submarine job again, and then, if I find no interest … I will come back to the United States.

Anyway, I expect you have any number of boyfriends to look after you over there.20

The government decided that Wilkins’ plan for Antarctic weather stations was sound, but that the more suitable person to run the program would be Mawson. Wilkins was shattered. In 1925, he had left Australia disappointed and angry that his fellow countrymen did not have the foresight to sponsor his plan for Antarctic weather stations. Fourteen years later, he was rejected again. Wilkins visited his old home at Mount Bryan East, and then sailed for America, vowing never to return to Australia. Except for a short stopover, when he was on board a US navy ship and therefore had no say in the matter, he never did.

Wilkins was in New York when war was declared in September 1939. He immediately offered his skills to the Australian government, but the government had no need for an ageing polar explorer, and declined his offer of service. Throughout World War II, Wilkins worked on unofficial diplomatic missions for the US government.

Some time in the late 1940s, Wilkins met William Sadler, an American doctor and psychiatrist. Between 1906 and 1911, Sadler had treated a patient who, while asleep, apparently channelled messages from an extra-terrestrial intelligence. Sadler recorded the messages, which continued to appear until the 1930s. He showed the messages to Wilkins, who became fascinated with them. In the late 1940s, Sadler decided to publish what he had discovered. Wilkins donated $1,000 towards the cost, and the Urantia Book was published in 1955.

The Urantia Book (the word ‘Urantia’ means ‘Planet Earth’) sought to reconcile Christianity and science. It explained the nature of God in interplanetary terms. According to it, Adam and Eve were early colonists from a planet in another solar system. After various research missions to Earth, it was decided that it was time for Jesus to make the journey. In fact, 775 pages of the 2,097-page book were devoted to the life of Jesus. Other prophets were also making interplanetary journeys. In an era when Christianity was threatened with exposure by science, the Urantia Book explained religion in scientific terms. Wilkins was impressed, and from the time of its publication he always carried a copy of the Urantia Book. In a sense, he became the embodiment of science and religion himself. For the rest of his life, he regularly travelled, both to the polar regions and, in his mind, to the worlds of the Urantia Book, located throughout the universe.

During the last years of his life, Wilkins worked as a consultant to the US Army Quartermasters Department at Natick, Massachusetts, where he designed polar clothing and helped instruct US servicemen in polar survival. On the morning of 1 December 1958, he was found dead in the hotel room he kept at nearby Framingham. His body was cremated at a local funeral home.

To honour his visionary attempt to explore the Arctic by submarine, the US navy, which was conducting its own under-ice submarine tests, took his ashes to the North Pole in the nuclear submarine USS Skate. On 17 March 1959, the Skate became the first submarine to smash though the ice and surface at the pole. In a raging blizzard, the crew held a memorial service and scattered the ashes of the Australian explorer. The USS Skate flew both the American flag and the Australian flag from its conning tower. Wilkins’ promise to his mother to always carry the Australian flag was kept, even in death.