Torquay’s Other History: Percy Fawcett & the Lost City of Z

By Kevin Dixon, on Friday, August 12, 2011

Percy Fawcett: the Torquay born explorer inspired Arthur Conana Doyle and some say is the basis of Indiana Jones

Torquay-born Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett (1867-1925?) was an artillery officer, archaeologist and explorer.

He joined the Royal Geographical Society in 1901 in order to study surveying and mapmaking, and worked for the British Secret Service in North Africa. He became friends with H Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Fawcett’s first expedition to South America was in 1906 when, at the age of 39, he travelled to Brazil to map a jungle area. On that particular trek, he claimed to have seen and shot a 62 feet long anaconda.

Fawcett made seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924, though he took a break during the Great War while he volunteered to lead an artillery brigade in Flanders despite being almost fifty years of age.

In 1925, with funding from a London-based group of financiers called The Glove, Fawcett returned to Brazil with his elder son Jack. The aim of this expedition was to search for the ‘Lost City of Z’. Fawcett had become convinced, through reading ancient legends and historical records, that the fabled city must lie somewhere in the Matto Grosso region.

Nothing more was heard of the expedition after it disappeared into the jungle.

During the following decades, various groups mounted rescue missions without result. It’s estimated that one hundred would-be-rescuers died in more than 13 expeditions sent to uncover Fawcett’s fate.

Incidentally, Arthur Conan Doyle used Fawcett as the inspiration for Professor Challenger in his novel The Lost World, and he has also been proposed as the archaeologist/explorer behind the character of Indiana Jones.