伝記
He grew up in North Vancouver BC.
He operated a business out of Horseshoe Bay (Mercury Marine Services) which included water taxis, tug boats and marine salvage. Many of the large ships coming into Vancouver harbour, as well as B.C. ferries and private yachts, had their magnetic compasses adjusted by Frank.
He enjoyed many happy days exploring the coast on his beautiful ketch, Omega.
逸話
He was the captain of the Brigadier Sutherland Brown, an army vessel that ran up and down the west coast supplying army outposts. On the morning of Mar. 6, 1945, the Sutherland Brown was docked at the army dock at the foot of Cardero. Wright and a skeleton crew of three were aboard. A half-mile away, at Pier B-C at the foot of Granville Street, sat the SS Greenhill Park, a 10,000-ton freighter that was bound for Australia. It was being loaded with lumber, and its holds were already weighed down with a catch-all cargo of newsprint, sunglasses, jars of pickles, crated airplanes, fertilizers, distress flares, barrels of 60-proof whisky and 1,985 drums of sodium chlorate, a chemical sometimes used in the making of explosives. Minutes before noon at that day, smoke began to curl out of the Greenhill Park's No. 3 hold. There was a fire. It was later believed that a group of longshoremen were siphoning whisky and someone had lit a match in the gloom. The fumes ignited. The explosion, at 11:59 a.m., blew the ship's bridge 30 metres into the air. The ship's funnel collapsed. The concussion shattered windows as far away as Georgia Street and people thought the Japanese were attacking. The ship's five holds, transformed into giant mortars, lobbed pieces of cargo all over downtown. Pickles pattered down onto the dock. Rolls of newsprint shot high into the air and unraveled like streamers. Sunglasses landed as far away as Lumberman's Arch. A tablecloth from the ship's salon fluttered down onto the Shell Oil barge in Coal Harbour. Distress flares shot off like Roman candles and floated down with their parachutes open. The Greenhill Park and a barge next to it were set ablaze by burning lumber and chemicals. Eight men died. Wright and his crew, seeing this, set off in the Sutherland Brown and steamed toward the burning freighter.
He backed the Sutherland Brown in, and from the aft deck had his mate throw a line onto the Greenhill Park. It caught. The Sutherland Brown started to tow the Greenhill Park away from the dock. All the while, Wright would later tell friends, an army dispatcher from the command office was ordering him and his crew away from the burning freighter.
He threatened him with court-martial if he disobeyed. Wright turned the radio off. Farther out into the harbour an army tug came alongside and caught a line on the Greenhill Park, too, and the two boats tried to beach the freighter on the North Shore. But the ebb tide was too strong and they couldn't tow it against the current so they let go the lines. The Greenhill Park drifted out the First Narrows and went aground near Siwash Rock. It burned for three days
