Percy Fawcett facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Percy Harrison Fawcett
DSO
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Fawcett in 1911
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| Born |
Percy Harrison Fawcett
18 August 1867 |
| Disappeared | 29 May 1925 (aged 57) Mato Grosso, Brazil |
| Occupation | Artillery officer, archaeologist, geologist, explorer |
| Spouse(s) |
Nina Agnes Paterson
(m. 1901) |
| Children | 3 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Service/ |
British Army |
| Years of service | 1886–1910 c.1914–1919 |
| Rank | Lieutenant-Colonel |
| Unit | Royal Artillery |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
| Awards | Distinguished Service Order 3 × Mentioned in despatches |
Percy Harrison Fawcett DSO (18 August 1867 – disappeared 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer of South America. Fawcett disappeared in 1925 (along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of Jack's friends, Raleigh Rimell) during an expedition to find an ancient lost city which he and others believed existed in the jungles of Brazil.
Life
Early life
Percy Fawcett was born on 18 August 1867 in Torquay, Devon, England, to Edward Boyd Fawcett and Myra Elizabeth (née MacDougall). Fawcett received his early education at Newton Abbot Proprietary College, alongside the sportsman and journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson. Fawcett's father, who had been born in India, was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), while his elder brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett (1866–1960), was a mountain climber, an Eastern occultist, and the author of philosophical books and popular adventure novels.
Fawcett attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich as a cadet, and was commissioned as a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery on 24 July 1886. This same year, Fawcett met his future wife, Nina Agnes Paterson, whom he married in 1901 and had two sons, Jack (1903–1925?) and Brian (1906–1984), and one daughter, Joan (1910–2005). On 13 January 1896, he was appointed adjutant of the 1st Cornwall (Duke of Cornwall's) Artillery Volunteers, and was promoted to captain on 15 June 1897. He later served in Hong Kong, Malta, and Trincomalee, Ceylon.
Fawcett joined the RGS in 1901, in order to study surveying and mapmaking. Later, he worked for the British Secret Service in North Africa while pursuing the surveyor's craft. He served for the War Office on Spike Island in County Cork from 1903 to 1906, where he was promoted to major on 11 January 1905. He became friends with authors Sir Henry Rider Haggard and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the latter used Fawcett's Amazonian field reports as inspiration for his novel The Lost World.
Early expeditions
Fawcett's first expedition to South America was in 1906 (he was seconded for service there on 2 May) when at the age of 39 he travelled to Brazil to map a jungle area at the border of Brazil and Bolivia at the behest of the Royal Geographical Society. The Society had been commissioned to map the area as a third party unbiased by local national interests. He arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, in June. While on the expedition in 1907, Fawcett claimed to have seen and shot a 62-foot (19 m) long giant anaconda, a claim for which he was ridiculed by scientists. He reported other mysterious animals unknown to zoology, such as a small cat-like dog about the size of a foxhound, which he claimed to have seen twice, and the giant Apazauca spider, which was said to have poisoned a number of locals.
Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924. He was mostly amicable with the locals through gifts, patience, and courteous behaviour. In 1908, he traced the source of the Rio Verde (Brazil) and in 1910 made a journey to Heath River (on the border between Peru and Bolivia) to find its source, having retired from the British army on 19 January. In 1911, Fawcett once again left his home and family to return to the Amazon and chart hundreds of miles of unexplored jungle, accompanied by his trusted, longtime exploring companion, Henry Costin, and biologist and polar explorer James Murray. He also developed a theory that the ruins of an ancient city, which he named “Z,” lay hidden in the jungle.
After a 1913 expedition, he supposedly claimed to have seen dogs with double noses. These may have been double-nosed Andean tiger hounds.
Based on documentary research, Fawcett had by 1914 formulated ideas about a "lost city" he named "Z" (Zed) somewhere in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. He theorized that a complex civilization once existed in the Amazon region and that isolated ruins may have survived. Fawcett also found a document known as Manuscript 512, written after explorations made in the sertão of the state of Bahia, and housed at the National Library of Rio de Janeiro. It is believed to be by Portuguese bandeirante João da Silva Guimarães, who wrote that in 1753 he had discovered the ruins of an ancient city that contained arches, a statue, and a temple with hieroglyphics; the city is described in great detail without providing a specific location. This city became a secondary destination for Fawcett, after "Z". (See Fawcett's own book Exploration Fawcett.)
At the beginning of the First World War Fawcett returned to Britain to serve with the Army as a Reserve Officer in the Royal Artillery, volunteering for duty in Flanders, and commanding an artillery brigade despite being nearly 50 years old. He was promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel on 1 March 1918, and received three mentions in despatches from Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, in November 1916, November 1917, and November 1918, and was also awarded the Distinguished Service Order in June 1917.
After the war, Fawcett returned to Brazil to study local wildlife and archaeology. In 1920, he made a solo attempt to search for "Z" but ended it after suffering from a fever and shooting his pack animal.
Final expedition
In 1924, with funding from a London-based group of financiers known as 'the Glove', Fawcett returned to Brazil with his eldest son Jack and Jack's best and longtime friend, Raleigh Rimell, for an exploratory expedition to find "Z". Fawcett left instructions stating that if the expedition did not return, no rescue expedition should be sent lest the rescuers suffer his fate.
Fawcett was a man with years of experience traveling and had taken equipment such as canned foods, powdered milk, guns, flares, a sextant, and a chronometer. His travel companions were both chosen for their health, ability, and loyalty to each other; Fawcett chose only two companions in order to travel lighter and with less notice to native tribes, as some were hostile towards outsiders.
On 20 April 1925, his final expedition departed from Cuiabá. In addition to his two principal companions, Fawcett was accompanied by two Brazilian laborers, two horses, eight mules, and a pair of dogs. The last communication from the expedition was on 29 May 1925 when Fawcett wrote, in a letter to his wife delivered by a native runner, that he was ready to go into unexplored territory with only Jack and Raleigh. They were reported to be crossing the Upper Xingu, a southeastern tributary river of the River Amazon. The final letter, written from Dead Horse Camp, gave their location and was generally optimistic.
In January 1927, the Royal Geographical Society declared and accepted the men as lost, close to two years after the party's last message. Soon after the society's declaration, there was an outpouring of volunteers to attempt to locate the lost explorers. Many expeditions attempting to find Fawcett failed. At least one lone searcher died in the attempt.
Many people assumed that local Indians killed them, as several tribes were nearby at the time: the Kalapalos, the last tribe to have seen them, the Arumás, the Suyás, and the Xavantes whose territory they were entering. According to explorer John Hemming, Fawcett's party of three was too few to survive in the jungle and his expectation that his Indian hosts would look after them was likely to have antagonized them by failing to bring any gifts to repay their generosity. Twenty years later, a Kalapalo chief called Comatzi told his people how the unwelcome strangers were killed, but others have thought they got lost and died of starvation, and the bones provided by Comatzi turned out not to be those of Fawcett. Edmar Morel and Nilo Vellozo reported that Comatzi's predecessor, Kalapalos Chief Izarari, had told them he had killed Fawcett and his son Jack, seemingly by shooting them with arrows after Fawcett allegedly attacked him and other Indians when they refused to give him guides and porters to take him to their Chavante enemies, and Rolf Blomberg said Izarari had told him that Raleigh Rimell had already died of fever in a camp of Kurikuro Indians. A somewhat different version came from Orlando Villas-Bôas, who reported that Izarari had told him that he had killed all three white men with his club the morning after Jack Fawcett had allegedly consorted with one of his wives, when he claimed that Percy Fawcett had slapped him in the face after the chief refused his demand for canoes and porters to continue his journey.
The Kalapalo have an oral story of the arrival of three explorers which states that the three went east, and after five days the Kalapalo noticed that the group no longer made campfires. The Kalapalo say that a very violent tribe most likely killed them. However, both of the younger men were lame and ill when last seen, and there is no proof that they were murdered. It is plausible that they died of natural causes in the Brazilian jungle.
In 1927, a nameplate of Fawcett's was found with an Indian tribe. In June 1933, a theodolite compass belonging to Fawcett was found near the Baciary Indians of Mato Grosso by Colonel Aniceto Botelho. However, the nameplate was from Fawcett's expedition five years earlier and had most likely been given as a gift to the chief of that Indian tribe. The compass was proven to have been left behind before he entered the jungle on his final journey.
Dead Horse Camp
Dead Horse Camp, or Fawcett's Camp, is one of the major camps that Fawcett made on his final journey. This encampment was his last known location. From Dead Horse Camp, Fawcett wrote to his wife about the hardships that he and his companions had faced, his coordinates, his doubts in Raleigh Rimell, and Fawcett's plans for the near future. He concludes his message with, "You need have no fear of any failure..."
One question remaining about Dead Horse Camp concerns a discrepancy in the coordinates Fawcett gave for the camp. In the letter to his wife, he wrote: "Here we are at Dead Horse Camp, latitude 11 degrees 43' South and longitude 54 degrees 35' West, the spot where my horse died in 1920" (11°43′S 54°35′W / 11.717°S 54.583°W). However, in a report to the North American Newspaper Alliance he gave the coordinates as 13°43′S 54°35′W / 13.717°S 54.583°W. The discrepancy may have been a typographical error. However, he may have intentionally concealed the location to prevent others from using his notes to find the lost city. It may have also been an attempt to dissuade any rescue attempts; Fawcett had stated that if he disappeared, no rescue party should be sent because the danger was too great.
Works
- Fawcett, Percy and Brian Fawcett (1953), Exploration Fawcett, Phoenix Press (2001 reprint), ISBN: 1-84212-468-4
- Fawcett, Percy and Brian Fawcett (1953), Lost Trails, Lost Cities, Funk & Wagnalls ASIN B0007DNCV4
- Fawcett, Brian (1958), Ruins in the Sky, Hutchinson of London
See also
In Spanish: Percy Fawcett para niños
- List of people who disappeared mysteriously: pre-1970
