True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

Disappearance of Percy Fawcett

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 that he and others believed existed in the Amazon rainforest.

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's father had been born in India, and he 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.

During the 1880s, 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, as a Cadet, 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 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) the RGS sent him to Brazil to map a jungle area at the border with Bolivia. The RGS had been commissioned to map the area as a third party unbiased by local and national interests. Fawcett arrived in La Paz in June. While on the expedition in 1907, he 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 several locals.

Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924. He was mostly amicable with the locals through gifts, patience, and courteous behavior. 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 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. After a 1913 expedition, Fawcett 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 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 of Rio de Janeiro. It is believed to be by Portuguese Bandeirante João da Silva Guimarães [pt], 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".