After the Last Dispatch

They sent word that all was well. Then came the silence.

A note in an Arctic cairn that ends "All well". A carrier pigeon shot down over the polar ice. A woman's voice on the radio: "We are on the line 157 337." Each last dispatch was followed by a silence that rumours, hoaxes and legends rushed to fill.

After the Last Dispatch is a gripping work of narrative non-fiction about twelve of history's great unsolved mysteries: lost explorers, vanished ships and missing aircraft, from the age of sail to the age of the airliner. Edward Devenish goes back to the original evidence-journals, letters, ships' logs, radio transcripts, official inquiries and the reports of modern searches-and separates what the records show from late testimony, false finds and details added long afterwards.

Twelve true stories of disappearance and discovery

• The Franklin expedition - the Victory Point note, the Inuit testimony the Admiralty refused to believe, and the wrecks of HMS Erebus and Terror
• Amelia Earhart - the Itasca radio log, line by line, and the search for her Electra on Nikumaroro
• Flight 19 - how five Navy aircraft became the founding legend of the Bermuda Triangle
• Star Dust - an airliner that vanished over the Andes in 1947, a final Morse message, STENDEC, and a glacier that gave back the wreckage half a century later
• Mallory and Irvine - the last sighting on Everest in 1924, and the finds of 1999 and 2024
• Percy Fawcett - the explorer who disappeared in the Amazon jungle searching for a lost city
• The Andrée balloon expedition - an attempt to fly to the North Pole, and a camp found thirty-three years later with diaries and undeveloped film
• Burke and Wills - the Dig Tree, and a depot party missed by about nine hours
• The SS Waratah - a liner lost off South Africa in 1909 with 211 people on board
• La Pérouse, Leichhardt and Kingsford Smith - a French voyage of discovery, an Australian explorer and a record-breaking aviator, and the few traces each left behind

What the records really show

• Every case begins with the last dispatch: the final letter, note, signal or sighting
• Every myth is traced back to its first appearance in print
• Recent discoveries are included, from DNA identifications to sonar searches and false alarms
• Every case ends with a clear verdict: Found, Partly explained or Open

Some were found decades later, often by people who were not looking for them. Others never were. What remains is often stranger-and less certain-than the familiar story suggests.

Perfect for readers of polar exploration, maritime history and aviation history

If you enjoy true stories of shipwrecks, Arctic expeditions, mountaineering and historical mysteries told with care, this book is for you. It is the second book in the Not as Recorded series and can be read on its own.

For readers who want the evidence taken as seriously as the mystery.