Getting it wrong gracefully
When Professor Maciej Henneberg said in 2011 the Somerton Man was definitely HC Reynolds you have to respect his professional anthropological perspective. Yet when Professor Derek Abbott said in 2022 the Somerton Man was definitely Carl (Charles) Webb no opinion was sought from professor Henneberg by the media.
But there was always a missing step in the story of HC Reynolds — like who was he? He had an American ID card and it has been speculated he was a purser handling the money on a ship. But it was assumed he was from Tasmania and the trail ran cold.
But by using facial ID technology (like Pimeyes and OpenCV) we can find a match.
Looking at the match on the right there is one clue digitalnc. It suggests that HC Reynolds was an American student in North Carolina. The image looks like it is from a college yearbook.
There was also a record in Melbourne of a HC Reynolds — Hubert Cyril Reynolds who was an accountant who lived in Jolimont. There is a logic that a ship’s purser would become an accountant.
Hubert was business partners with a famous Australian football player Tom Fitzmaurice. He was famous in Essendon and Footscray but had a big interest in becoming a hotel proprietor and so formed a company with Hubert called Phoenix Hotels. Perhaps they aimed to rebuild hotels from the ashes. But their relationship was short-lived. Perhaps Hubert was caught with his fingers in the till.
Hubert died on the 3/12/1960 and was cremated. There is no evidence as yet that Hubert was married in Australia or was born in North Carolina. But it is more likely than professor Henneberg’s certainty he was the Somerton Man. But I will be graceful in accepting an alternative solution.
There is also the possibility that professor Henneberg was onto something seeing a relationship between Carl Webb and Reynolds. It might explain the reluctance of SAPOL, the Australian police, to confirm Carl Webb as the child of Richard August and Eliza Webb.
