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Percy Harrison Fawcett DSO (18 August 1867 – disappeared 29 May 1925) was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist and explorer of South America.
Jul 13, 2007 · Fawcett - or Lieutenant Colonel Fawcett to give him his full title - was born in Torquay in 1867 and went missing in South America in 1925, while on a quest to find the hidden city known as 'Z.'...
Dec 29, 2017 · Percy Fawcett joined the army immediately after school, with a commission in the artillery in 1886. The next 20 years involved garrison duty in Ceylon and postings in Malta and England.
- John Hemming
A young man of 19, he joined the British army for what would become a 20-year career in the military. About halfway into his service, he put his army surveying training to work by accepting a position with duties in South America.
- Fawcett Got A Taste For Adventure Early on in Life
- Fawcett Explored The Jungle For Nearly 20 Years
- Fawcett Was A Decorated War Hero
- Fawcett Devised The Idea of The Lost City of Z
- Z’s Possible Existence Was Reinforced by An 18Th-Century Document
- Fawcett Struggled to Raise Funds For His Expeditions
- Fawcett Attempted One Failed Expedition to Find Z in 1920
- Fawcett and His Companions Disappeared in The Summer of 1925
- The Mystery of Their Disappearance Was Never Solved
- It’S Thought The Lost City Might Have Been Real After All
Fawcett attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned as a lieutenant of the Royal Artillery in 1886, aged just 19. He served in Hong Kong, Malta and Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), and later worked for the secret service in North Africa and for the War Office in Ireland. He counted the adventure writers H. Rider Haggard and Ar...
In 1906, Fawcett travelled to South America for the first time in order to act as an independent cartographer, creating a map of the border area between Brazil and Bolivia at the behest of the Royal Geographic Society. Between 1906 and 1924, he made a total of 7 expeditions into the Amazonian jungle to complete mapping projects, tracing the source ...
Fawcett’s time in South America was interrupted by the outbreak of World War Onein Europe. He returned to Britain to serve in the Royal Artillery, commanding a brigade despite being nearly 50 years old, which was then deemed the upper age limit for military service. Mentioned in despatches by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig3 times and awarded the Di...
Like many of his contemporaries, Fawcett was of the opinion that the native peoples he met were members of uncivilised societies, or ‘savages’. But, unusually for the time, he did believe that their ancestors had been the builders of sophisticated societies, artistic treasures and complex civilisations. Early histories of South America written by S...
In 1753, a group of Portuguese bandeirantes (literally ‘flag carriers’, but normally a group of explorers, adventurers and fortune-hunters) supposedly discovered the ruins of an ancient city deep in the province of Bahia. Their findings were recorded in a document known as Manuscript 512, kept at the National Library of Brazil. The existence of suc...
Convinced that Z, and potentially a lost civilisation, existed, Fawcett tried to raise funds in Britain after the war for his endeavour. He met with derision from archaeologists and experts. They believed the Amazon could not sustain the kind of large-scale population Fawcett was talking about, dubbing it a ‘counterfeit paradise’ and dismissing the...
In 1920, Fawcett embarked on a solo expedition, accompanied by just pack animals, to try and find Z. Years of experience traversing the jungle meant he was confident in his own ability. However, after being struck down by a debilitating fever and being forced to shoot his animals, he aborted the mission and returned to civilisation. Despite the fai...
The final expedition by Fawcett in his attempt to find the Lost City of Z departed in April 1925. Having found financial backing in London, Fawcett enlisted his oldest son Jack and Jack’s best friend, Raleigh Rimell, as his companions on the expedition. With years of experience behind him and confident that he had 2 fit, loyal companions with him, ...
2 years after their disappearance, the Royal Geographical Society declared the party officially lost, sparking multiple volunteer attempts to find them. Many assumed that the most obvious explanation was that the Fawcetts and Raleigh had been killed by local indigenous peoples, whilst others thought they had become lost and eventually died of starv...
Later in 1925, after Fawcett had disappeared, Europeans discovered the archaeological complex of Kuhikugu for the first time. The complex, which included around 20 towns and villages spread over 7,700 square miles, was subsumed by the jungle some time in the 16th century. The memory of the civilisation was preserved through oral traditions: the inh...
- Sarah Roller
Born in 1867, Fawcett had joined the army as a young man and rose among the ranks. He mastered cartography and after World War I (1914-18) decided to leave the army and focus his remaining years on some of his youthful passions.
Sep 1, 2023 · Public domain image supplied via Wikimedia Commons. In 1901, Fawcett joined the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). His time with the army had taken him as far as Hong Kong and had fostered a thirst for travel and exploration.
