RAGING RIVER DRAMA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22714, 29 October 1935, Page 11

RAGING RIVER DRAMA

YOUNG EXPLORER'S DEATH FJashetl from Holstcnborg to Copenhagen, a brief message recently revealed the fate of n member of an Oxford University expedition to a desolate part of the west coast of Greenland, and a dramatic, but vain, attempt to rescue him. The victim in the tragedy, Mr Michael Fairless Atter, who went up to Brasenose College in 1933 from Uppingham, where he was captain of the school, was in a canoe on the River Sarfartok with Mr M. G. Dunbar, another member of the expedition, when the frail craft was dashed against a rock, capsized in the fierce current, and sank. Mr Dunbar managed to swim ashore, but. he returned to the aid ot his comrade. He sprang from stone to Stone, with the swirling waters round liim and in the midst of the storm', trying to roach Mr Attcr. He searched about for the rest of the day and night in the storm, but found no trace of the body. He then walked to the expedition's base. The two men concerned in I lie illfated trip loft Copenhagen on June 21 with Mr P. G. Mott and Mr H. O. B. Hayward, the latter being the leader of the expedition. After reaching Holstcnborg they established a base at Sondestrom Fiord, not far away. Mr Atter and Mr Dunbar started up the river in the canoe for a two days' scientific trip on August 15, and it was on the return journey, on the 17th, that the canoe was dashed on the rock. A big hole was torn in the craft. The Sarfartok River, (he biggest on the west coast of Greenland, is swollen with water from melting ice at this time of the year, and the current rushes fiercely along. Mr Attcr's father is a lawyer practising at their home near Wakefield, Yorkshire.