Colonel Percy Fawcett

Percy Harrison Fawcett (18 August 1867 disappeared 29 May 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist and explorer of South America. He disappeared in 1925 (along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of Jack's friends, Raleigh Rimmel) during an expedition to find an ancient lost city which he and others believed existed in the Amazon rainforest.

Life

Early life

Percy Fawcett was born on 18 August 1867 in Torquay, Devon, to Edward Boyd Fawcett and Myra Elizabeth (née MacDougall). The Fawcetts were a family of old Yorkshire gentry ( Fawcett of Scaleby Castle) who had prospered as shipping magnates in the East Indies during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Fawcett's father had been born in India, and was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), while his elder brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett, was a mountain climber, Eastern occultist and the author of philosophical books and popular adventure novels.

During the 1880s, Percy Fawcett was schooled at Newton Abbot Proprietary College, alongside Bertram Fletcher Robinson, the future sportsman, journalist, writer and mutual friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thereafter, he attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned as a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery on 24 July 1886. That 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, Fawcett 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 with the aim of studying 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. Fawcett became friends with authors Conan Doyle and Sir Henry Rider Haggard; the former used Fawcett's Amazonian field reports as inspiration for his novel '' The Lost World''.

Early expeditions

Fawcett's first expedition to South America was launched in 1906 after the RGS sent him to Brazil to map an area of the jungle bordering Bolivia. The RGS had been commissioned to map the area as a third party unbiased by local national interests. Fawcett arrived in La Paz in June. While on the expedition, in 1907, he claimed to have seen and shot a 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. The giant peanuts which he found in the Mato Grosso region were almost certainly ''Arachis nambyquarae'' which has legumes up to 3.5 inches (nine cm) in length.

Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924. He was mostly amicable with the local indigenous peoples 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 Bolivia and Peru) to find its source, having retired from the British Army on 19 January. In 1911, Fawcett once again returned to the Amazon and charted hundreds of miles of unexplored jungle, accompanied by his trusted, longtime exploring companion, Henry Costin, and biologist and polar explorer James Murray. After a 1913 expedition, Fawcett supposedly claimed to have seen dogs with double noses. These may have been double-nosed Andean tiger hounds.

By 1914, based on documentary research, Fawcett had formulated ideas about a "lost city" he named " Z" (''Zed'') somewhere in the Mato Grosso. He theorized that a complex civilization once existed in the region and that isolated ruins might 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 in Rio de Janeiro. It is believed to have been authored by Portuguese ''bandeirante'' , 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".

In Brazil, Fawcett carried a jade statue of a human figure with inscriptions on the chest and feet that he claimed had supernatural powers over the indigenous tribes of the Amazon. He told Ramiro Noronha, a Brazilian general, "by showing the statue, he could exercise an irresistible power over the natives."

At the beginning of the First World War, Fawcett returned to Britain to serve with the British Army as a reserve officer in the Royal Artillery, volunteering for duty in Flanders and commanding an artillery brigade despite being nearly fifty 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. He 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, Fawcett returned to Brazil with his eldest son Jack and Jack's longtime friend, Raleigh Rimmel, 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 travelling 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 indigenous tribes, as some were hostile towards outsiders.

On 20 April 1925, Fawcett's final expedition departed from Cuiabá. In addition to Jack and Rimmel, he was accompanied by two Brazilian labourers, two horses, eight mules and a pair of dogs. The last communication from the expedition was on 29 May 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 Rimmel. They were reported to be crossing the Upper Xingu, a southeastern tributary river of the Amazon River. The final letter, written from Dead Horse Camp, gave their location and was generally optimistic.

The RGS declared and accepted the men as lost in January 1927, almost two years after the party's last message. Soon after this declaration, a large number of volunteers offered 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 indigenous peoples killed Fawcett's party, 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 indigenous 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 unwelcome strangers were killed, (Note: Hemming spells the chief's name 'Comatsi', but most other sources spell it 'Comatzi'.) but others have thought they became 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, 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. Rolf Blomberg

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