OFFICER'S DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1937, Page 7

OFFICER'S DEATH.

Australian's Worries While In England. BODY FOUND IN CREEK. (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, February 4. A man found shot dead in a creek off Chichester Harbour, a mile from his abandoned motor car, is stated by the "Daily Mail" to be Bernard Arthur Algar Hamill, aged 40, a retired commissioned officer of the Royal Australian Navy, who went to England from Australia last July, leaving his wife and two children behind. His car was first noticed by a woman who saw lying in it a snapshot of a woman and three children. She recognised the woman as Miss Catliff, who had stayed in the district in the summer with her brothers' children. She remembered also seeing the car and knew that it belonged to Hamill, who was the children's uncle. Police faced the problem of Ham ill's having driven 250 miles from Liverpool, where he had been living, then leaving his car and disappearing. However, after a long search the body was found. It was learned that Miss Catliff had became engaged, whereupon Hamill had sent a congratulatory telegram. The "Mail" suggests that loneliness because his wife and children were absent, also unhappiness over a friendship which he feared he had lost and worry over business into which he had put his life's savings may have been among the causes of the tragedy. A Liverpool friend of Hamill's says it was a hard blow to him to leave his wife and children behind but he wished his children to continue their education. He was proud of them and carried their photographs in his pocket.