LEFT: Book cover
RIGHT: Author Hartley Neita

Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

WHEN HARTLEY Neita was 10 years old, five Jamaica College students went missing on a daring hike from Kingston over the Blue Mountains into Portland.

Nearly six decades after, Neita has written The Search, a historically accurate account of an event which fascinated a Jamaica where communications were very different from they are now.

The book was presented on Wednesday, June 18, at the Jamaica College Old Boys' Association's annual banquet, and will be officially released on Tuesday, July 1.

"I was living in the country at the time. There was only The Gleaner and the Jamaica Standard," Neita told The Sunday Gleaner. Despite there being no radio and no television, though, "the whole Jamaica was galvanised. People came from as far as St. James and St. Elizabeth, to search for them", he said.

They weren't lost

Douglas Hall, Donald Soutar, Trevor Hastings, John Ennever and Earl Gray were lost for two weeks, after setting out on a trip which should have lasted five to six days. "They were lost, even though they said they weren't lost," Neita said.

While the St. Andrew end of the mountains was well known, the side going over to Portland was not. The trek had been made by only two sets of persons, one including then headmaster of JC, Reginald Murray. However, as the boys were hiking in the Easter holidays, they did not see the need to tell their headmaster of their plan.

They had been on previous hikes and, on one trip to Sugar Loaf Mountain decided to make the big trek.

He found out though, when the hiking party missed its deadline and worried parents went to Jamaica College. Neita said Murray, an experienced hiker, immediately organised search parties.

Neita said that the searchers took carrier pigeons with them, to relay messages back to Kingston, while amateur radio operators set up on top of the Carib cinema to communicate with others high in the mountains. Messages were also sent to higher powers, as Neita said "the churches were open every day. When they were found the bells were pealing".

Still alive

For the book, Neita spoke with the only one of the five who is now alive, Donald Soutar, Earl Gray's daughter Heidi, Don Mills and David Coore, among other persons. In addition, "the book is replete with references to what appeared in The Gleaner".

When Hartley Neita went to JC, shortly after the events that eventually led to The Search, he did his fair share of hiking. Flamstead, Newcastle and Guava Ridge were among the heights he reached. However, he did not go to the Blue Mountain Peak. "I don't know if there was an unwritten rule," he told The Sunday Gleaner.

The Search is published by the Jamaica College Foundation and will be available at the Hope Road school.

Hartley Neita has written Hugh Shearer - A Voice For The People and his Donald Sangster - The Forgotten Prime Minister will be out later this year.