I believe any explorer sailing from Europe in a ship from at least the seventeenth century onward would have had insurance underwriters to answer to. (Or at least the voyage backer and/or shipowner would.) I’m sure that then as now, the insurers would be determined to get to the bottom of just what happened to the assets in question.
I can think of a few …like Gaspar Cortereal (Portuguese) who never came back from a North American voyage. Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) also never returned-and probably countless others. One interesting one was the case of Colonel Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle, in the 1920’s.
I just finished reading Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone, by Martin Dugard. I nearly didn’t get it, as I thought that Blue Nile and White Nile pretty much covered the great African explorers. However, it’s an excellent and informative read on the subject. Livingstone eventually made it back to England, though in a coffin.
Considering all the exploration Roald Amundsen did, it is perhaps not surprising that he disappeared and his body has never been found. He was not, however, exploring the unknown when it happened - he was on a rescue mission looking for an expedition led by his former friend, later rival, Italian pilot Umberto Nobile. (Nobile was eventually rescued, as were some of the members of his expedition.)
Another interesting case is the Narvaez expedition to settle Florida - from which 4 people survived out of about 650. They were found eight years later on the other side of the continent. Alvar Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors, wrote about his recollections of what happened, and is well known in certain parts of Mexico and Texas.
By the way, I have to say that I’m impressed by your journeys in that region. That’s saying something, since I’m rarely impressed by anybody these days. But then I’m an avid reader of survival and exploration history.
Besides Earhart, there is also Charles Nungesser, who was France’s third most successful fighter pilot in World War I, who disappeared along with Francois Coli in 1927 trying to beat Charles Lindbergh in crossing the Atlantic,
Thanks. It’s a fascinating place, especially in that such wilderness remains within an hour’s flight from Panama City, and that some of it remains effectively unexplored by outsiders. I was the first ornithologist to survey the highest peaks in two of the four main mountain ranges of Darien, the Serrania de Maje and the Serrania de Jungurado. In the second place, our camp was so remote that even my Indian guides had never been there, and had a conclave to decide what to name it.
The “Darien Gap” refers to the roadless area in eastern Panama and western Colombia. (In Spanish it the “Tapon de Darien,” the “Darien Stopper.”) It’s the only stretch between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego that is not transitable by road.
The mountains are very close to the coast along the Caribbean coast, and this is withing the territory of the Kuna Indians, who would be very strongly opposed to any road through here. There are other mountains close to the Pacific coast, and the coast is also broken by large estuaries. So the only feasible route is inland. However, rivers and the giant Atrato Swamp on the Colombian side make road construction difficult.
Just. . .wow. I’ve been fascinated by what might be around the next bend ever since I was a child and have traveled quite a bit, but wilderness of that sort has always necessarily been a vicarious journey. The closest have been safaris in Africa, which are not exactly wilderness.
Also, IIRC the original exploration was for the purpose of determining the feasibility of digging a canal across the isthmus there; so explorers weren’t necessarily looking for a route for a north-south road, but rather an Atlantic-Pacific shortcut.
