Eugene Savoy

Sep 24 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

ECCENTRIC religious opinions, including his belief that his son, who had been killed in a landslide, was Christ on His second coming, hindered the glamorous man’s quest to be accepted as one of the world’s greatest explorers.

But the dashing looks, swept-back long hair and a luxuriant moustache, which would have recommended him to any casting director as the perfect Colonel Custer, led to his billing as “the real Indiana Jones” in the popular press.

Eugene (Gene) Savoy, born in Bellingham, Washington, was fascinated by the Incas, the mystical and mysterious ancient civilisation, which flourished in Peru before the arrival of the Spanish.

And in 1964 he discovered Vilcabamba at the Plain of Ghosts, the last stronghold of the Incas retreating before the conquistadors. It was a magnificent discovery by the cowboy-hatted adventurer, who had served as a gunner on a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber with the Naval Air Service during the war in the Pacific.

Leading to this, Savoy had studied for the priesthood at the Roman Catholic University in Portland, Oregon, but was advised by a Jesuit scholar to widen his understanding of other faiths, such as Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism.

After graduation, Savoy worked as a journalist, becoming editor of the quaintly named Lombard Booster. But travel stirred in his heart and, with his brother, Bill, he formed the Expeditionary Society, setting off for Peru in 1955.

In the coming years, he would discover some 40 towns and cities, and these were written about in his many books and articles, though his activities were frowned upon in certain academic circles.

The search for spiritual enlightenment fed much of his work and he began the New Age Christian Church. In 1962, thousands of people were killed in the Pico Huascaran landslide, including his three-year-old son Jamil, whose birth he believed to have been the second coming of Christ.

This experience influenced his subsequent writing, though to many his greatest triumph came in 1969 with his building and captaining of the Feather- ed Serpent, a totora-reed raft, which he sailed along 2,000 miles of coast from Peru to Meso-america, to advance his theory that the civilisations of Mexico and Peru had contacted each other.

In later years, Savoy was greatly in demand as a speaker. He married three times and had four children.

Eugene Savoy, explorer; born May 11, 1927, died September 11, 2007.