“Perhaps because the romantic fiction writer Jules Verne had written in a fanciful manner about Captain Nemo sailing his submarine under the Arctic ice, many otherwise open-minded people scoffed at my project as a wild dream.”

After learning he had failed to raise money to mount an expedition to Antarctica, Wilkins was on his way back to Australia when he was contacted by his old friend, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who had led the expedition to the Arctic in 1913. Stefansson told Wilkins that businessmen in Detroit wanted to sponsor exploration of the Arctic using aeroplanes. Wilkins would be the ideal person to lead it.

Wilkins arrived in America in December 1925, and was put in charge of the Detroit Arctic Expedition. The well-funded expedition took two planes and a large team to Alaska, but a series of crashes meant little exploring could be done. A year later, Wilkins returned with two new planes, and a smaller team. He made pioneering flights, landing to prove the Arctic was a deep ocean covered by a thin layer of ice.

In 1928 he returned to the Arctic again and, along with pilot Carl ‘Ben’ Eielson, became the first person to fly a plane across the top of the world. Wilkins was suddenly world famous. He was knighted in June 1928 and chose to be known as Sir Hubert, rather than Sir George.

Using his fame to gain sponsorship, Wilkins and Eielson took their lightweight plane south and, in December 1928, they became the first people to fly in Antarctica. They explored and mapped the Antarctic Peninsula.

Wilkins returned north. In August 1929, he was a passenger on the Graf Zeppelin airship on its historic around-the-world flight.

He also married an Australian actress working on Broadway, Suzanne Bennett. Later in the year he returned to Antarctica and further explored the area around the Antarctic Peninsula.

Having explored the Antarctic Peninsula by air, Wilkins realized he needed more sponsorship and long-range planes to explore the rest of the continent. At the same time, having discovered the Arctic was a deep ocean covered by thin ice, he believed a submarine would be the best way to explore it.

American newspaper publisher, William Randolph Hearst offered to sponsor Wilkins to take a submarine to the North Pole. Throughout 1930, Wilkins prepared a World War I submarine to go under the ice and cross the Arctic Ocean, stopping to surface at the North Pole.

Wilkins named his submarine Nautilus, and this expedition left New York in June 1931. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean to England, before sailing north to Norway. Constant mechanical breakdowns and a mutinous crew put the expedition behind schedule, but Wilkins still managed to reach the Arctic ice and take the submarine beneath it. It was another world first. He failed to reach the North Pole and returned to Norway. The expedition was considered a failure.

In addition to the sponsorship, Wilkins had put his entire savings into the Nautilus Expedition and was now financially ruined. He immediately sought sponsors for another submarine expedition to reach the North Pole. But sponsors were difficult to find with the world in the Great Depression.