A RARE first edition book signed by a trail-blazing polar explorer with York family roots has sold for almost £10,000.

The limited edition copy of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1909 book, The Heart Of The Atlantic, fetched £9,810 at Sotheby's in New York.

Frank Wild, who as a child lived in Wheldrake, near York, and whose mother came from Sheriff Hutton, is among those who signed the book.

His name stands alongside the autograph of every shore party member of Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition of 1907 to 1909.

Whitby-based publisher Caedmon has printed a biography of Frank Wild by author Leif Mills.

Managing editor Cordelia Stamp said: "Frank Wild was very much Shackleton's right-hand man. There is no doubt that the two men were very close."

The valuable auction item, one of only 350 copies printed, is much sought after by collectors and historians.

It is one of 624 rare books owned by a Californian collector that went up for sale this week.

The 1907 to 1909 expedition travelled to New Zealand on Shackleton's ship The Nimrod before heading to Antarctica, where the group located the magnetic South Pole and climbed Mount Erebus.

The voyage came before Shackleton's ill-fated return to the South Pole in 1914 on the ship Endurance, when his group became stranded and the ship was crushed by ice.

Shackleton died on board the Quest on his fourth expedition to the Antarctic in 1921.

Frank Wild's father, Benjamin, who came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, married Mary Cook, of Sheriff Hutton, in 1868.

Their son Frank - real name John Robert Francis - was born in 1873 at Skelton, near Guisborough.

Benjamin Wild was a school teacher and at one point during Frank's childhood taught at a church school in Wheldrake.

His son went on to become one of the Irish Antarctic explorer's best friends and trusted companions.

- Channel 4's two-part drama Shackleton, which starred Kenneth Branagh and was screened last January, cost £10 million to make and was one of the channel's most popular recent dramas. Its first part, on January 2, drew 3.6 million viewers.

Updated: 12:04 Wednesday, May 22, 2002