Richard Mason (explorer)

Richard Maurice Ledingham Mason (28 March 1935 – 3 September 1961) was a British explorer and the last British person to have been killed by an uncontacted indigenous tribe.

Biography

Early life and first expedition

Mason was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex. He was educated at Westerleigh Preparatory School St Leonard's (the school was evacuated to Black Hall in Avonwick, Devon, from 1940 to 1944) and later in 1948 Lancing College, and then read medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford. While at university, he became involved with the Royal Geographical Society and made friends that would share his love of exploration. In 1958, with fellow Oxford undergraduate Robin Hanbury-Tenison, he set out on his first expedition, which involved traveling by jeep 6,000 miles (9,700 km) across South America at its widest point, east to west from Recife, Brazil, to Lima, Peru. They were the first explorers to make this journey.

Second expedition and death

In 1961, with the aid of the Society once again and additional funding from the Daily Express newspaper, Mason organized his second, and more ambitious expedition to South America. This would involve the exploration and mapping of the 1,100-kilometre (680 mi) Iriri River, a tributary of the Xingu in central Brazil, then believed to be the longest unexplored river in the world. He took with him fellow Oxford graduates, John Hemming, who was deputy leader of the expedition, and Christopher "Kit" Lambert. The three young men would be going where no Western man had been before.