Hartley Neita, ContributorFour men and three boys who became lost a few days ago in the Hellshire Hills in south St. Catherine for 12 hours, were rescued by the Jamaica Defence Force Air Wing after making frantic calls to the police, using cellular phones.
The report reminded me of the many days and nights of trauma experienced by Jamaicans from Negril to Morant Point when five Jamaica College schoolboys, Douglas Hall, Donald Soutar, John Ennever, Teddy Hastings and Eric Gray, were lost in the Blue Mountains for over two weeks, causing what was the most massive manhunt to have ever taken place in Jamaica.
The five left the school on Wednesday, April 5, 1939, for an Easter weekend hike to Port Antonio via the Blue Mountain peak. They were expected to reach the Portland capital in four to five days, and had enough rations to last them for this time. They were last seen in Mavis Bank on Holy Thursday, April 6.
Jamaica College boarders had been hiking for years from the school to the various Gaps and the Peaks of the Blue Mountains. The headmaster, Reginald Murray, spent most of the school's holidays walking through the hills from Hardwar Gap to Guava Ridge. During the school terms, too, boys who boarded at the school, hiked the hills at weekends accompanied by their teachers; learning how to live during the two-day/three-night hikes on sips of water, and knowing which wild fruit they could eat. The hills on the St. Andrew and St. Thomas side of the Blue Mountains were therefore well-known to the five boys.
When the alarm was signalled, first to begin the search were the British soldiers, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, stationed at Up Park Camp. They erected a signal station at the peak and a receiving station on the roof of the Carib theatre in Cross Roads which was then the tallest building in the Corporate Area. They were also joined by radio ham operators (including Lloyd Alberga of the Palace Amusement Company). Carrier pigeons were also taken by search parties to fly information to Kingston.
Troops of scouts from Port Antonio and as far as Montego Bay, and members of the police force also joined in the search. By the 14th of April, the fathers and other elder relatives of the boys joined the headmaster Reg Murray in a search, while their wives and other female relatives travelled by road to Port Antonio to wait with anxious hope for their boys.
There was no local radio station at that time. And of course, no cellular phones, no walkie-talkies, no CB radios, and no television station. In any case, very few Jamaicans owned radios. It was The Daily Gleaner, which informed the public of the day-to-day search. The newspaper sent teams of reporters and photographers into the hills, and it was the first time the vast majority of Jamaicans were reading and seeing photographs of what was then "virgin" country. The reporters enjoyed literary licence to describe (and exaggerate at times) about the thick jungle of the mountains, and the danger from the yellow snakes, agoutis and the precipices over which the boys could have plunged to their deaths.
My brother and I were wakened at five every morning, half hour earlier than usual to go to the police station to wait for his copy of The Gleaner which was delivered there by "the Gleaner man" from Kingston.
There were also no helicopters at that time, and no Air Jamaica Express. So Pan American Airways in Miami was contacted and the Government waived the island's flying regulation so that one of Pan American's flying boats could fly low over the area to try to see the boys and also drop packages of food and drink by parachutes.
Men from Gordon Town, Papine, Matilda's Corner, Dallas and other villages in east St. Andrew and west St. Thomas, formed groups and found guides to take them into the mountains.
The school holidays were over after a week and some of the older boys volunteered to hike the hills to search for their school friends. School rules were also relaxed to allow the boarders to sit up later than usual each night. They were also joined by older boys from Kingston College, Wolmer's, Calabar and St. George's on the weekend of April 16.
Then at last. On April 20, the five boys stumbled on a farm owned by a Clifton McKenzie on the bank of the Stony River. He took a note they wrote on a two-hour walk to the Fruitful Vale Post Office, six miles away. There the Post Mistress sent a telegram to her head office in Kingston. She also telegraphed other post offices. The Railway Station Master in Port Antonio also informed his colleagues at the stations on the lines to Kingston, Montego Bay and Frankfield.
Next day, reports from The Gleaner's correspondents told of scenes of islandwide joy, the ringing of church bells and services of thanksgiving.
Glory, glory, hallelujah! It was all's well that ended well.
