On Saturday, January 23, 1954, the Hemingways left Nairobi, Kenya in a Cessna piloted by Roy Marsh on a trip to see Murchison Falls in Uganda when Marsh crash landed, per The New York Times. The plane avoided a crocodile-infested sandpit and landed in scrubland with minor damage to the plane but with no radio to call for help, per “Ernest Hemingway: A New Life.” They spent the night swarmed by mosquitoes and fearing attacks from wild animals. Hemingway alleged his wife’s snoring attracted a herd of elephants. “We held our breaths about two hours while an elephant 12 paces away was silhouetted in the moonlight, listening to my wife’s snores,” he told the United Press. “There were lots of hippos and crocs wandering around the river bank.”
Read Related Also: Portuguese Police Apologize to Parents of Missing Toddler Madeleine McCann
A rescue plane flew overhead the next day and located the Cessna but reported that there was no “sign of human life” at the crash site, which prompted some newspapers to erroneously report the Hemingways as presumed dead, per another United Press report. By then the three castaways had hitched a ride with a boatload of tourists.
