De Lesseps

A Canadian farmer with a team of horses tugged the wreckage of an airplane out of the St. Lawrence River. In the cockpit were found a watch and a pair of socks. A wing section, 13 feet long, washed up elsewhere. Of the flyers no trace.

From S-D-A, large letters on the cockpit and from the watch, the flyers were known to be Count de Lesseps and his mechanic. They had flown away to gather data for map-making for the forestry service. There had been fog. Both had had life preservers.

Count de Lesseps, noted in aviation news for many years as expert flyer, is son of Ferdinand de Lesseps,* canal builder.

*In 1879 DeLesseps collected delegates and money, and formed a company to cut a canal through Panama. Attempting a sea level canal, work proceeded for seven years, could not cope with the Culebra Cut and Chagres River. The management was characterized by "corruption rarely equaled in the history of the world." In 1887 plans were changed; work started on a canal with locks. In 1889 the company went bankrupt.

When the first financial scandal burst in 1892 De Lesseps was convicted of misappropriating money. Fifty million pounds sterling had vanished. Sentence was later remitted because he had only too sanguinely desired to repeat the triumph he had achieved for France in building the Suez Canal in Egypt.