Killed In N. Guinea

Bruce Fahnestock, Well-known Pacific Scientist

LIEUTENANT Bruce Fahnestock, an American well known in the Pacific as an expert on the languages, habits, and music of Pacific peonies, was killed in New Guinea, on October 18.

A “New York Times” correspondent, Mr.

Darnton, also lost his life.

With his brother, Captain Sheridan Fahnestock (also now serving in New Guinea), Lieutenant Fahnestock made many expeditions to the Pacific, the last with an American Museum of Natural History expedition, between February and October. 1940, in the “Director II,” a three-masted. 137 ft. auxiliary schooner, which had formerly been used in the liquor trade in the days of American prohibition, and which the Fahnestock family had purchased in 1938.

After leaving North American waters, the “Director” ran into a storm near Cuba, lost two sails and was forced to stay six weeks in Panama undergoing repairs. It then sailed on to Malpelo Island, where four of the party landed to check navigation charts—the first visitors to the island since 1860.

From there they went to the Galapa gos Group. Tower Island and Charles Island, and on to Tahiti, via the Mar quesas Group. In Tahiti they remained a month, while Mr. Bruce Fahnestock recorded native music. In Fiji, which they reached after a month spent in Samoa, he took a large number of photo granhs of carved rock inscriptions, which \yere later identified in America as “almost identical with designs engraved on stones found in India.”

He left the expedition in Fiji and returned to America, but the rest of the party went on to New Caledonia, via Conway Reef, to collect, in the interior, flora and ornithological specimens for the New York Museum of Natural History.

Early in October. 1940, they arrived in Brisbane, remained a week or so, and then started out for the Barrier Reef, where they hoped to make further scien tific collections. However, disaster over took them, and on October 18 they ran on a reef four miles from the pilot sta tion outside Gladstone, and in spite of all efforts to get the ship off with tugs, she became a total wreck.

Mr. Sheridan Fahnestock, who was in charge, said later that the expedition’s equipment, including 20,000 dollars’ worth of hydrographic equipment, was lost, but charts of the Pacific, which had been made for the British Admiralty and the United States Hydrographic Office, the insect collection, native music recordings and material on bird habitat groups, were saved.

Men like Lieutenant Bruce Fahnestock, .who gave unstintingly of their money, time and energy for the advancement of the natives of the Pacific, can ill be spared, and his death is a great loss to science and civilisation.