CANOEIST’S DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 November 1939, Page 9

CANOEIST’S DEATH

DEPTH CHARGE EXPERIMENT. LONDON, August 30. The death of Robert Francis Stevens, 27, of Frant-road, Tunbridge Wells, who was found dead in an overturned canoe in the River Ouse at Rodmell, near Lewes, Sussex, on August 11, with a gunshot wound in the head, was accidental.

This was the verdict at the inquest at Lewes yesterday. . Murder was originally suspected, but the coroner, Dr. E. F. Hoare, ruled that out as inconceivable. The weapon was a home-made one constructed with a length of piping and said to have been an attempt to make a "depth charge.”

Sidney Agar Stevens, the father, said that his son had no occupation and lived with him. He last saw him alive on August 2 or 3, when his son left for Earcombe Mills, near Lewes. He intended to go down the River Otise to the estuary at Newhaven in a collapsible canoe. He had no worries.

The trip was preliminary to going to Portugal and Spain, for which, he understood, his son was to be paid. His son had never had a firearm since he was in the Artists’ Rifles,. He read such books as Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and not novels.

Dr. C. G. Sinclair, of Lewes, said that in his opinion the shot had been close to the head. There was no question of drowning. Mrs. Isobel Dora Stevens said that when she saw her son off from Tunbridge Wells he was bright and happy. On August 7 she received a postcard from Newhaven saying that he had been fishing and had got very wet. He always went away for those lonely holidays. Mrs A. Jacobs, of Southboroirgh, said that Stevens picked up a piece of pipe in her garden and said he wanted to make a depth charge with it. The weapon produced was like the pipe he took.

P.c. Whitewood said that Stevens’s body was found in the partly submerged canoe. 1 The top of the head was blown away and his mackintosh had a large stone in each pocket. In the river near the canoe was found a piece of piping about sin. long to which was tied a piece of rope about 12ft. long. The piping had a bent- nail at one end and was found to be an improvised weapon. About 71b og stones were packed between Stevens’s clothes around the waist and others were in the pockets of his shorts.

Supt. A. Holloway said that only a flight tap was needed to explode a cartridge in the home-made weapon. The Coroner said that the “Heath Robinson” weapon was just the sort of thing that might be used as an experimental depth charge/ .