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 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 WWI 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 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. In December 1928, Wilkins and Eielson took off from
Deception Island, one of Antarctic's most remote islands, and made the first successful airplane flight over the continent. 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 5-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. 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 WWI. 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 ==