It was a while back that I got my first view of some original sighting reports from the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau which existed from 1962 to 1972. I don't recall if I was looking at an original or a photocopy, but certainly the contents were genuine enough. I was looking at two eyewitness testimonies to the same event of the 13th October 1971 which was of the double hump type, one of the most common genres amongst Loch Ness Monster testimonies. The eyewitnesses were two police officers, Inspector Henry Henderson and Sergeant George Mackenzie.
Both sightings came to the attention of the LNIB who interviewed them and invited them to fill in sighting reports. Each were two pages long with each side consisting of the kind of questions you would expect such as personal information about the eyewitness, their location, distance to object, description of object in terms of appearance and motion, weather conditions, loch conditions and any camera information if a picture was taken (which did not happen).
On the last page is a simple outline map of the loch inviting the witness to place the position of themselves and the object. This is finished off with a signed declaration. Now it has to be said that there are a lot of these reports still held in archives, but they are not available online due to data protection laws. In other words, nothing can be published without the eyewitness' consent (though I suspect if all personal details were simply removed, that would cease to be an issue). Here are the two witness declarations.
George Mackenzie:
At time, date and place overleaf, the witnesses HENDERSON, (report submitted same date) and MACKENZIE were motoring in private car from Inverness towards Fort Augustus. When at point of sighting two black 'humps' wore observed about 'mid-loch' submerging and surfacing, travelling about 10/15 MPH, for a distance of about one quarter of a mile. The object was travelling from west to east.
The Loch was mirror calm and a wash was seen coming from it. It was observed for exactly two minutes, (timed by witness HENDERSON) then it submerged and shortly afterwards waves of about 4ft. in height started to break on the north shore of the Loch, which then returned to its previous flat calm.
The object sighted bore a liking to porpoises or dolphins, but much larger and I am convinced that the two humps were connected and was only part of the whole body.
Henry Henderson:
About 14.15 hours on Wednesday, 13th October, 1971, accompanied by the witness MacKenzie, was motoring from Inverness towards Fort Augustus. About half a mile east of Altsigh Mr. MacKenzie drew my attention to something he had just seen in the loch. I stopped quickly and stood at the roadside above the loch i.e. on the north side.
The first thing noticed was a wave pattern coming towards the shore below us. The water below was flat calm and a 'V' shaped wave pattern was coming in from about the centre of the loch. The first wave would have been about two ft. high. Following the wave outwards I saw two large black coloured 'humps' about 10 - 12 ft. behind the point where the 'V' parted. I would say that there would be at least six to eight feet between the 'humps'. The 'humps' were rotating together and the impression was quite definite that they were connected below the surface.
The objects were visible for two minutes at which time they appeared to go lower and lower in the water and gradually disappeared. The significant point in this was that the water then returned to a flat calm condition. By this time the original wave pattern had also subsided. We waved down two vehicles one of which was being driven by a van - either Morganti or Simonelli from Dingwall. Both he and his son saw the latter part of the sighting.
The other vehicle was a black coloured Mercedes which stopped further eastwards and it is not known whether or not anything was seen by the occupants of this car. The objects gave the appearance of two large seals or dolphins sporting but this was only an initial impression - as time went on it became obvious that the two objects were part of one large animate object.
As it turns out, this multiple eyewitness account was worthy enough to be published by Tim Dinsdale in the 1972 edition of his book, "Loch Ness Monster". I quote from page 150 to 151 and reproduce the sketch from the book:
Later I was to learn that shortly after Miss Turner's experience on 13 October several people had reported seeing humps and a very big V wake from a place eastwards of her sighting point. Among them were two policemen, a sergeant and an inspector. Holly Arnold, the young American who was secretary to the LNI had obtained reports from them, and excellent tape-recordings. She also obtained one from Father Gregory. I listened to them, and realized that in this trilogy of witnesses' reports there might be found the key to modern credibility.
No one could honestly doubt such people, or their ability to describe what they had seen. For this reason it would be doubly important to publish these accounts, exactly as recorded. Police Inspector Henry Henderson, of 208 Old Edinburgh Road, Inverness, Scotland, recorded in his LNI sighting-report form that the estimated overall length of the object was 25-30 ft; it was travelling at 10-15 m.p.h. from west to east in a straight line. It was about half way across the loch, at a point half a mile east of the Altsigh Youth Hostel. It was visible to him and his co-witness, Sergeant George W. Mackenzie, from '1415 hrs. to 1417 hrs.'
The first thing noticed was a wave pattern coming towards the shore below us. The water was flat calm and a 'V' shaped wave pattern was coming in from about the centre of the loch. The first wave would have been about two feet high. Following the wave outwards I saw two large black coloured 'humps' about 10-12 feet behind the point where the 'V' parted. I would say that there would be at least six to eight feet between the 'humps' . . . the impression was quite definite that they were connected below the surface. The objects were visible for two minutes at which time they appeared to go lower and lower in the water and gradually disappeared.
The significant point in this was that the water then returned to flat calm condition . . . the objects gave the impression of two large seals or dolphins sporting, but this was only an initial impression—as time went on it became obvious that the two objects were part of one large animate object. Seen travelling over a distance of about half a mile Sergeant George Mackenzie, of 152 Bruce Gardens, Inverness, filled out a sighting report independently. He said much the same about the experience, although his estimate of size was bigger. He thought the overall length was '30-40' ft. He said that waves about '4 feet in height', caused by the two-humped object, broke on the shore after its submergence. He estimated that both humps were 'five feet' out of the water. Both men said that there were no craft in the vicinity.
Now Tim reproduces a lot of the report even down to the addresses of the men, so I do not think there are data protection issues here as this has been out in the public domain for over fifty years now. He uses the Henderson sketch as the basis for the one in his book and largely relies upon his description because it was longer with additions from the Mackenzie account. As always, it is interesting to compare simultaneous eyewitness accounts to gauge the variance of observational powers.
It is no surprise that the parameters which we may call the abstract parameters show the most divergence between the two eyewitnesses. Namely, distance, height and length. One would normally add speed to that list but the two policemen are in full agreement as to the estimate of 10-15 miles per hour. It may be that knowing that other abstract parameter of time from a measuring device (a watch), they may have noted the object's starting and end positions in relation to memorable points on the opposite shore and calculated it from the simple equation of distance divided by time.
Reversing that calculation gives distance covered by the object(s) as in the range of one third to one half of a mile. As you can see, points of reference are important be they a watch or shoreline markers. In like manner, one would surmise that the near and opposite shorelines would help as reference points for distance. That can be argued though it partly depends on the elevation of the observer. The higher they are above the loch waters, the less effect foreshortening has on estimates. Based on their location statements, I would say they were 40 to 100 feet above the loch.
As to the object(s) themselves, the highest divergence is in the height of the humps with one witness estimating more than double that of the other. Admittedly, such a difference may be understandable at a distance of 600-800 yards but I think this is an incomplete statement for in the original report Henry Henderson states:
The first wave would have been about two ft. high. Following the wave outwards I saw two large black coloured 'humps' about 10 - 12 ft. behind the point where the 'V' parted.
So, the "first wave" at two feet high was the water disturbance at the head of the bow wave and not the humps behind it. As to the height of the humps, Henderson states they were "at least six to eight feet between the humps" and looking at his sketch suggests each hump was comparable in height to that distance.
However, there was only a small difference in the estimated total length of the object if the averages are taken. Looking at Mackenzie's original sketch with his 5 foot height, a ruler can be used to calculate the distance from front of the first hump to the back of the second hump and that gives us a total length of 38 feet which is within his written estimate of 30-40 feet. If we do the same for Henderson's sketch and his 2 foot high estimate, the length using his sketch comes out at only 7 feet, but he added that the head of the V-wake began 10-12 feet ahead of the humps giving a total of up to 19 feet long or 6 feet below his lower range of 25-40 feet.
The last point is regarding the black colour of the objects. Were they inherently black in colour or did the viewing conditions affect this observation? The weather was stated as clear and bright and it was after 2pm in mid-October. If the object(s) were between the sun and observers, then they would be in shadow and darker. So calculating the actual solar azimuth for that day and time gives the line below.
So the sun was just to the right of the observers at an azimuth of 199 degrees and an elevation of 23.5 degrees with sunset four hours away. Therefore the object(s) would be in 20% shade and the day was bright enough to allow the level of light to display its true colour. Naturally, the sceptical explanation would be that they were watching a couple of standing waves. This explanation should be rejected on the following grounds.
- Waves do not produce bow wakes.
- The object(s) submerged.
- The object(s) are too high.
- There was an undefined source of the bow wake ahead of the object(s).
The best known example of the kind of waves being talked about is the Jessie Tait photograph of 1969 as shown below from a tourist handbook. Note the succession of waves which recede in size to either side with a general line of disturbance extending out for hundreds of feet in both directions. The height of the waves is also very low in relation to their length and nowhere near the triangular aspect reported here.
What's not to like from two reliable observers? But the most curious part of all this was Tim Dinsdale's reporting of them. Tim said above: "For this reason it would be doubly important to publish these accounts, exactly as recorded". Well, that was not the case are there is the presence of two ellipses in the recounting denoted by the familiar "..." notation. One ellipsis replaces the statement where Henderson flags down some motorists to draw their attention to this creature. One can understand this omission as it is incidental to the reporting of the object, but the other missing text is:
The 'humps' were rotating together and
The original report page is shown below with the omitted text included.
Now I imagine, like me, Tim perhaps found this statement a bit confounding. After all, how do triangular humps rotate? Inspector Henderson had gone on to say that the movement was akin to seals and dolphins sporting, doubtless a reference to such animals seen in the nearby Moray Firth. Such displays can involve an apparent and brief rotation around an imaginary point below the surface as they surface and submerge.
However, those involve roughly circular surfaces in which features on the skin act as reference points to indicate a different part of the body is coming into view. But a triangular object cannot rotate forward and present a uniform shape to the observer at the same time. Tim's solution is to edit it out as if it was never there and we do not have it all "exactly as recorded". The inference is that Tim decided Henderson had made an observational error but didn't want to say so lest the entire account was weakened.
He may have felt this was justified as Sergeant Mackenzie did not mention this rotation feature and so it was a divergence where agreement on both sides was desired. However, both men do not mention the head of the bow wave ahead of the humps and so this is a weak argument. An omission by one witness is not a contradiction unless the other explicitly said there was no rotation.
The only obvious way rotation can preserve a consistent appearance is for a cone like structure to rotate around its vertical axis but that makes no sense and this is not a feature I have seen reported at any other time. We have been reminded of this rotational aspect recently with the Chie Kelly photographs where she said the object "was spinning and rolling at times", though this was a more spherical appearance.
So what do we do with this? Did Inspector Henderson misword what he was trying to say or did he really see something on the object which gave the impression of "rotating"? If Tim or some other researcher had got back to Henry to clarify his meaning, the problem would surely had been resolved, but that does not seem to have happened. So something for you to munch on apart from the turkey and sprouts tomorrow. Have a Merry Christmas Day when it comes!
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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
