A rescue expedition arrived in 1791, but it found no trace of Lapérouse, his two ships or his 225 crewmembers. Lapérouse reached Australia in 1788, but after leaving Botany Bay his fleet disappeared. After setting sail from Brest, the navigator rounded Cape Horn and spent the next few years surveying the coastlines of California, Alaska, Russia, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. In 1785 France’s King Louis XVI dispatched the explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup Lapérouse on a grand around-the-world mapmaking expedition. Even more amazing, they imply that he eventually joined and perhaps even led a tribe of natives. Dated 1511, the message read: “Miguel Corte-Real, by the will of God, here leader of the Indians.” If genuine, these markings would suggest that Miguel managed to survive in the New World for at least nine years. In 1918 a Brown University professor discovered an inscription on a boulder in Dighton, Massachusetts. The fate of the two Corte-Reals remains a mystery, but there is some evidence that Miguel may not have perished immediately after his disappearance. But while the other two vessels later returned to their rendezvous point, Miguel’s ship vanished without a trace. After arriving in Newfoundland, his three caravels split up and began a frantic search of the coastline. Miguel Corte-Real returned to the New World in 1502 on a quest to rescue his beloved brother. Gaspar was expected to follow shortly thereafter, but both he and his ship were never seen again. After claiming some 60 natives as slaves, he tasked his brother Miguel with ferrying them back to Portugal. In 1501 Gaspar led a three-ship fleet on an expedition to the shores of Newfoundland. In a chilling coincidence, the Portuguese brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real both vanished during separate voyages to the coastline of modern-day Canada. Hervey Garret Smith/National Geographic/Getty Images While the Venus was most likely lost at sea, another theory argues that Bass and his men made it to the coast of Chile, only to be arrested as smugglers and forced to spend the rest of their lives toiling in a Spanish silver mine. He set sail in February 1803 but soon disappeared with his crew in the Pacific Ocean, never to be seen again. When his cargo failed to fetch a respectable price, Bass hatched an audacious plan to travel to South America-then a Spanish territory-on a rogue trading mission. Hoping to strike it rich as a private trader, Bass returned to Australia in the early 1800s on a merchant ship called the Venus. Bass began his career as a ship’s surgeon in the Royal Navy and gained a reputation as a bold explorer after he surveyed the eastern coast of Australia in a tiny ship called the Tom Thumb. The British mariner George Bass is remembered for discovering the strait between Australia and Tasmania, but he is even more famous for vanishing during an 1803 voyage to South America. History Lists: Explorers Not Named Columbus 2. In the years after Fawcett vanished, thousands of would-be adventurers mounted rescue missions, and as many as 100 people eventually died while searching for some sign of him in the darkness of the Amazon. Whatever its cause, the group’s disappearance captured the imaginations of people around the world. Some have even speculated that the men simply went native and lived out the rest of their lives in the jungle. While conventional wisdom suggests the explorers were killed by hostile Indians, other theories blame everything from malaria to starvation to jaguar attacks for their demise. But following a final letter in which Fawcett announced he was venturing into unmapped territory, the group vanished without a trace. In 1925 Fawcett, his son oldest son Jack and a young man named Raleigh Rimmell set off in search of the fabled lost city. During these travels, he formulated a theory about a lost city called “Z,” which he believed existed somewhere in the unexplored Mato Grosso region of Brazil. One of the most colorful figures of his era, Fawcett had made his name during a series of harrowing mapmaking expeditions to the wilds of Brazil and Bolivia. The unforgiving Amazon jungle has claimed the lives of more than one adventurer, but perhaps none so famous as Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 while on the trail of a mythical lost city.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |