SON’S HEROIC RESCUE

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 23 April 1935, Page 5

SON’S HEROIC RESCUE

Crumbling Cliff Hurls Parents to Rocky Shore BODY RECOVERED IN TIDE CORNISH BEACH TRAGEDY

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright). -f ( < : - Received 1.30 a.m. to-day. LONDON, April '22. A 15-year-old boy’s heroism when his parents fell down a 400 ft. cliff marked a holiday tragedy at Port Isaac (Cornwall). Major Robert Hemphill, a former Rugby international, with his wife and. three children, was rambling on the cliffs and, in attempting to photograph a buzzard’s nest, climbed down part of the cliff which crumbled. Major Hemphill fell to the rocky beach. His son, Peter, saw his father fall and shouted to his mother, who approached the edge of the cliff to search for her husband and she, too, immediately disappeared. Peter ran to a look-out hut, smashed the window, climbed in and. telephoned 1 the coastguards. He then clambered down, to the shore, where he found his father dead and afloat in a rising tide.

The boy found his mother unconscious and cut her dress to enable her to breath more easily. Ho then dragged in his father's body and. climbed the cliff to seek help, for which his sister, Sheila, aged 13, already had gone to a, farm two miles distap?/ leaving her younger sister at the cliff top. Coastgus-rds raised Mrs Hemphill, who later died in hospital.