Rockefeller disappeared after a trading canoe that he was travelling in down the cannibal coast of New Guinea capsized while he was collecting the wooden carvings for his father’s recently opened Museum of Primitive Art. Several miles off shore, heavy seas swamped his craft. After a night adrift, Rockefeller set out to swim for the distant shore, leaving his companion with the fateful words: ‘I think I can make it…’ He was never seen again.