It was a story that had always stuck in my mind back in the 1970s when I read it as a kid in Nicholas Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story". At the end of chapter five, it is briefly stated that:
Beppo, a famous circus clown went for a dive in the loch and was dragged out delirious, mumbling about "unseen eyes" looking at him from slimy black depths ...
Without further information, I jokingly assumed that this person had jumped into the loch for some clownish publicity, getting some good propulsion from those long clown shoes only to see something which was far from humorous looking straight back at him before he scrambled back to the surface. It turned out to be more complex than that as I attempt to do it more justice today.
Witchell had been summing up the hunt for the Monster up to the end of the 1950s, when this incident occurred. It was an in-between decade as wartime austerity drew to a close by 1954 and prosperity and hence tourism grew into 1959. The first book for twenty three years on the subject was published in 1957 by Constance Whyte which stoked new interest in the creature. The following year, the BBC came to the loch to produce the first serious documentary on the subject and a Herman Cockrell took some pictures of the beast during a kayak expedition. This prompted a Peter MacNab to come forward with his own mysterious photo from 1955.
Participation was on the rise again which leads us to August 1959 when the famous Bertram Mills circus came to Inverness. After a week of performances there, it was decided to mount a diving operation to look for the monster. The Inverness Courier from the 18th August 1959 sets the scene for the events of Friday the 14th:
John Newbold, a 31-year-old circus clown from Staffordshire, had a narrow escape from death when wearing a frogman's suit and aqua-lungs, he dived into Loch Ness on Friday morning to see if he could find some evidence of the existence of the famous Monster. Newbold, known professionally as Beppo, had been appearing at the Bertram Mills Circus at Inverness last week, and on Friday he went with Mr Bernard Mills on the latter's 35-ton motor yacht Centaurus, to Dores Bay. An experienced high-diver and swimmer, he had made several practice dives in the previous few days before Friday's attempt. As a precaution, the skipper of the yacht, Mr John Bruce (48), of Campbeltown. took up position in a motor boat, not far from the place where Newbold made his dive, and a member of the crew, Mr George Nicholson (34), of Southampton. was nearby in a rowing boat.
The picture at the top shows Newbold in his frogman equipment prior to the dive. This was printed in the Aberdeen Press and Journal on the 15th August, which relates what happened next:
Johnnie ... had plunged into the eerie, dark waters of the "hoodoo" loch in his frogman's outfit. When he surfaced, he collapsed unconscious. He is detained in the Royal Northern Infirmary, Inverness, for observation after having received a sedative. His condition last night was "satisfactory". It was a chance in a thousand that saved Johnnie's life. As he went unconscious after making a desperate attempt to grab the side of a small rescue boat, he was caught by the little finger as his limp body was slipping back into the water.
The Press and Journal photographer who accompanied the dive took this picture as Newbold attempted to get out of the water. The Courier article added its own words as shown below.
Newbold, whose breathing apparatus permitted a 13 minute dive, was submerged for about ten minutes, and when he surfaced Bruce saw that something had gone wrong. He brought his boat to Newbold, and managed to get a hold of him. Nicholson moved over, but their attempts to bring Newbold aboard were hampered by the aqua-lung equipment. Eventually a rope was put round him, and he was brought aboard the yacht. He was semi-conscious and delirious, and the yacht put about, and went back to Dochgarroch Pier. Newbold was rushed by car to the Royal Northern Infirmary, where he received treatment and was detained overnight, leaving hospital on Saturday afternoon.
The drama of the situation was further captured as Newbold lay on the deck and was heard to mutter the words "The water, the water. I'll make it. I'll make it" amongst other incoherent words. As the crew watched, the Journal states that he then "threw out his arms as if trying to get to his feet". As he "shivered violently" he was wrapped in blankets and put in the bunk as they raced to shore.
So what had happened down below in the murky depths? Months later, in late March 1960, the popular Australian magazine "Weekend" published an article entitled "He Fought the Horror of Loch Ness" accompanied by a dramatic illustration of Newbold tackling a tentacled beast in something reminiscent of a giant octopus attack from "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas". I have not seen the illustration, but if anyone can find it, I will include it with thanks!
The Press and Journal article did not go down that path as it related how the men on the surface tracked the air bubbles, counting the minutes towards the thirteen minute limit. It was not until about the eleventh or twelfth minute that Newbold "shot to the surface". The newspaper speculated that he dived too deep, for too long and had ascended too quickly. Given the seriousness of the situation, light-hearted speculation about monsters would seem out of place.
On his discharge from hospital, the Inverness Courier correspondent got some information from a now more lucid Newbold:
Newbold stated on Saturday that he had had a frightening experience. He had dived to a depth of about 30 feet, and then went down a further 30 or 40 feet. It was very dark below, but he noticed something which appeared to be a thick ribbon of white-coloured slime, and he went to investigate it. It was very eerie and forbidding, he said, and looking up he could see no light at all. He had the impression that eyes were watching him, and he went straight to the surface, and remembered nothing more until he recovered consciousness in hospital. Newbold added that he doubted if he would ever again make another attempt to dive into Loch Ness, and he certainly would not do it alone.
At a depth of about seventy feet, one is pretty much surrounded by darkness. In fact, disorientation may set in without a frame of reference such as the touch of the bed or sides of the loch. Quite what made him think he was being watched may be the paradoxical psychology of utter blackness - who can see who in darkness? Having said that, one presumes John had some kind of torch with him, though it is not stated as far as I know. Finally, a newspaper local to Newbold, the Staffordshire Sentinel, spoke to him for its 17th August edition:
He went down to 30ft., levelled out, and then plunged another 30ft. to look for his prey. Suddenly he noticed the water all around him was black and the only thing he could distinguish in the gloom was a patch of whitish coloured slime ahead of him. He swam towards it, and as he was about to start investigating it he suddenly had "a queer and most frightening feeling." He looked up, but could see no shadow on the water. That decided him to get out of the water quickly, and experts now believe that his state of semi-collapse was brought about by surfacing too quickly.
But what about that lurid Australian article? It was discussed in "The People" newspaper for 28th March 1960 which quoted this account from down under:
He suddenly realised there was a certain slimy something between himself and the surface. When he pushed against it the object turned with the motion of a fish. The magazine went on:
"It was then that something like the tentacle of an octopus gripped his right leg. The object was long and slimy and about the circumference of a man's leg. The armlike object was twisted twice around his leg and the leg was growing dead from lack of circulation. Newbold could not move it, and terror began to grip him as he felt himself being taken into deep water."
The article goes on to describe how, eventually, Newbold, gasping for breath as his air supply failed, managed to free himself from the monster's grip and shoot to the surface. It also describes how doctors who examined Newbold's right leg found "a vicious red circle from the ankle to just below the knee."
And how he was given treatment in a decompression chamber to prevent an attack of "bends", the dangerous condition suffered by divers when they surface too rapidly.
Douglas Jack, the author of The People article, tracked down John Newbold in Stafford, who told him:
I don't know where the Australians got their story from. Apart from the fact that I saw dense layers of slime about 70 feet below the surface, nothing else happened. There was no tentacle around my leg and no injury. The only struggle I had was getting myself to the surface before my last gasp came. As I may one day go on tour in Australia, I can only hope that people who have read this nonsense about my dive won't think that I am the hoaxer.
Jack confesses that he does not know how that version of the story reached Australia. No one seemed to know, either in Australia where the article was inspired, or in London. So ends the story of John Newbold and what do I personally make of this account? It is perfectly reasonable to see how the foreboding darkness and diminishing supply of oxygen is enough to explain what happened that day. If there was a large creature lurking nearby, we and he are none the wiser.
But the one objective thing that requires an explanation is what is called "slime" floating seventy foot down in the darkness. The various accounts describe it as "a thick ribbon of white-coloured slime", "a patch of whitish coloured slime" and "dense layers of slime". What we normally understand by slime is the mucus that coats animals such as eels, frogs and snails which offers various advantages in locomotion, protection and so on.
That outer layer of slime, like the skin underneath can be shed by certain animals at certain times. How that relates to John Newbold's account is not certain as the size and extent of the slime is not described. Bigger animals leave bigger slime trails or sheddings but there should not be much floating around in that dark area of water seventy feet near the thermocline. Small amounts of detritus from small fish may float around but ribbons of slime is a different matter and dense layers of slime sounds off the scale. Moreover, fish tend not to shed slime unless in a stressful situation.
So this is perhaps a bit of a puzzler in and of itself unless it is not slime but looked like it from a distance. Was it entanglements of decaying vegetable or organic material, fecal matter or some garbage dumped from a boat? Explanations such as masses of algae bloom do not count in such an oligotrophic lake. We weren't there and so if John Newbold said it was slime, I'll accept that. There was some news a while back of some whitish organic material found in the loch, but I could not find details. If anyone has information on that, I will add it here.
Tentacles may not have gripped our terrified diver but Newbold saw something which still needs explaining.
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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
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