What Is Nessie? The Long Neck Problem

Steve Plambeck has updated his "The Loch Ness Giant Salamander" blog with further thoughts on how a salamander of suitable size can be harmonised with the sightings record. The article is here. 

One major block to a salamander interpretation is the traditional long neck of the creature. Salamanders do not have long necks. Steve however suggests that the long tail of the salamander can account for this apparent problem. I can see merit in that idea and have no problem believing that a long tail can be mistaken for a long neck by eyewitnesses. The main question is whether this theory can account for all (or a persuadable majority) of such sightings and so we await his next instalment.

Having pointed out the eel-like head in the Hugh Gray photograph over a year ago, I have to admit I have presented myself with a problem as the picture does not seem to offer the possibility of a long neck. The part of the body where the neck is presumed to be is actually obscured by a water cascade shooting upwards. However, the obscured region between head and main body is not wide enough to accommodate a long neck anyway.

So how does that reconcile with long neck sightings and how often are long necks reported by eyewitnesses? Tim Dinsdale in his 1961 book "Loch Ness Monster" conducted a study of 100 reports of which 45% had head-neck descriptions. However, 15 years later, Roy Mackal conducted a more extensive study of sightings for his book "The Monster of Loch Ness". He analysed 233 sightings from 1933 to 1969 and I estimate 70 or 30% were classic head-neck.

The problem here is cherry-picking and I believe there may be a tendency for long neck sightings to be placed ahead of other types of sightings. Over Mackal's sample period of 1933-1969 there is at least 600 documented sightings across the literature. A simple calculation suggests that at worst head-neck sightings would be about 12% of all sightings but it is probably more.

But on the short neck versus long neck issue, one speculation I had was that the neck is somehow extensible. Some vertebrates can extend their necks (or give the impression of it) but it is pretty limited. There are exceptions such as turtles which can extend their necks out to a good proportion of their main body length. Check out this Jeremy Wade clip where the turtle's neck goes out an amazing length!

A truly extensible neck or equivalent is more to be found with invertebrates due to the obvious lack of impeding vertebrae. So can the Loch Ness Monster retract its neck into its body? The answer is "yes" if some eyewitness reports are to be believed. Going back to the invertebrate theory as espoused by F. W. Holiday,he wrote an article for "The Field" magazine of February 1976 entitled "The case for a spineless monster". It's a fascinating read and you can find it in our Rip Hepple archive in the June 1976 issue (No.16).

Holiday mentions two cases thus:

"It's neck went up and down as if on elastic" someone told Commander R T Gould. The head changed shape while you watched. Two Scottish visitors who had binoculars on the monster near Dores told me "From the end of the neck sprouted a head. One second it had no head; then it did have a head".

An intriguing and virtually unknown aspect of monster lore you may well say. I investigated further. The Gould sighting that Holiday refers to is taken from page 96 of the 1934 first edition and recounts the sighting of a Miss K. MacDonald between Lochend and Abriachan on the 1st May 1934. The actual quote is:

The head was quite small. Head and neck undulated up and down "as if by elastic".

That left me slightly confused as Holiday may have somewhat misquoted the text. Was the elastic movement of the neck an illusion brought on by the up and down movement in the water or an actual physical change? The interpretation is ambiguous to me. I could not find the source for the Dores sighting so it may be there in the literature or The Field magazine was its public debut. Perhaps a reader could help here.

However, the saga of the elastic neck does not end there as I stumbled upon another sighting of this genre elsewhere. It comes from the book "The Great Monster Hunt" by David and Yvonne Cooke written in 1969. On page 61 a previously undisclosed sighting is unveiled as Mr. Cooke interviews a man by the name of Kenneth Ross who recounted a strange experience on his boat opposite Invermoriston in 1936.

As they were motoring in their boat they presumed to see a boat nearby but as it approached to within 200 yards a head and neck of several feet was noticed. Taking up his story:

Then all of a sudden this huge glistening body came out of the water and the neck disappeared into the shoulders or into the body of the creature. Then the monster struck the water with one of its floppers and there was a whirlpool and it disappeared.

So in Holiday's account, a head sprouted from the neck and in this account the opposite happens as the head-neck retracts into the body. What are we to make of these two extraordinary and unique reports? Is this a display of retractibilty akin to our turtle above or something completely different? I say that because there does not seem to be much of a head to speak of. If we had more details on the two sightings, a better picture may emerge but two models present themselves. The head-neck retracts like a turtle or this is not a head-neck at all.

The first model appeals but if it is not a head-neck then what is it? I see no reason why this should be a retractable tail unless someone can point to a known precedent in nature? Neither do I think it is a phallus and paranormal advocates could have a field day with subconscious archetypes here (I think of Tom Bearden's work here)!

Could it be a retractable appendage such as a flipper? The Ross sighting above describes a separate flipper but it is possible though I cannot quite think what the advantage of such an ability is apart from protection. The problem here is that the witnesses are presumably correct in placing the "neck" where the neck would normally be in the creature morphology.

So a mystery within a mystery presents itself. Add to this curious feature of humps changing appearance before witnesses' eyes and one wonders how malleable and flexible this creature is (but such wondrous "floating islands" are for another day and another article).

Comments are welcome and if any can find similar instances of retractable appendages send me a comment.

Review of a Recent Nessie Article

Articles on the Loch Ness Monster come and go, some support the idea of a large creature in the loch whilst others dismiss the very notion. In the interest of the human fascination with mystery, others leave the door slightly ajar for future enquiry.

The latest one comes from Benjamin Radford who is a contributor to the LiveScience website. You can find his article at this link. The aim of this article is to critique his article.

Firstly, in reference to St. Columba's well known encounter with the monster in the River Ness, Mr. Radford says that the story is merely:

One of many church myths about righteous saints vanquishing Satan in the form of serpents and dragons.

In fact, the creature in the story is not referred to in any supernatural way and is merely called a "water beast". Doubtless, it is in the interests of Mr. Radford's argument to mythologise the story via the expediency of demonising the animal mentioned but the story offers no such latitude. The suggestion being that this animal is no more mystical than the other animals such as a boar and whale that are mentioned in the same hagiography of Columba. Do we doubt these were animals because something miraculous was associated with them? Of course not. Doubtless the story has embellishments but the animal referred to is presented as real enough and how curious that it appears connected to a loch destined for bestial greatness.

Thus dismissing this story, Radford continues:

In fact, there are no reports of the beast until less than a century ago.

This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Apart from Columba, a "floating island" was stated by Richard Franck to frequent the loch in 1658. A "great fish" was reported in Loch Ness in 1868 by the Inverness Courier and various references to water bulls which should not be presumed to be mythical. After the beast became international news in 1933, various people came forward with their stories of strange sightings going back into the 19th century. Clearly, something strange was believed to inhabit Loch Ness going back over 140 years and beyond. Meantime, Mr. Radford's statement is simplistic to say the least.

Moving onto the Nessie era, Radford talks about the first modern sighting by the Mackays and says this:

The Loch Ness monster first achieved notoriety in 1933 after a story was published in "The Inverness Courier," a local newspaper, describing not a monstrous head or hump but instead a splashing in the water that was described as appearing to be caused "by two ducks fighting."

This is not a true statement. I quote the original article from the Inverness Courier of the 2nd May 1933:

There the creature disported itself, rolling & plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale ..

No head? I suppose. A hump? Sounds like one to me. Mr. Radford may wish the reader to draw a "quack" solution, but this blog won't "duck" the issue. Namely, hump like object and big. You know, this article is beginning to annoy me.

The article then mentions the staple diet of debunkers - The Surgeon's Photograph. It get a couple of sentences but a big reprint of the Daily Mail article outlining the hoax. In terms of word count, it's the main feature of the article. I'll concede that one but a pattern is emerging, debunk the most well known pre-Nessie story, debunk the very first modern Nessie sighting and then debunk the most famous photograph. I guess if you shatter the symbols, you hope everything else will follow in the reader's mind. That might work with those who don't seek a second opinion, but not here.

The article ends with the implication that we should have found this creature by now. Sonar searches, photographs, overwater and underwater surveillance have yielded nothing that would satisfy the author of the article. Reading this gives the impression that science has satisfactorily "scoured the lake". A 2003 sonar survey of Loch Ness is made much of, but when I contacted the manufacturers of the sonar equipment, Kongsberg, about the survey, they said only sections of the loch were surveyed and

what should be noted is that we did not get to survey the entire loch ... there is no system which could survey the loch in one pass ...

In other words, if Nessie is sensitive to sonar (we know dolphins and whales are), it is no problem to step aside from it. As for the non-appearance of Nessie bits and pieces, I'll address that in another article.

After eighty years of continued sightings, a small article like that is not going to end the story (even if it got the facts right). However, another small article like this is more than sufficient to counter it.

Some Thoughts on The Surgeon's Photograph

Another cryptozoological blogger, Dale Drinnon, has put up a post recently on the Surgeon's Photograph which can be found here. As readers may know, this photograph was exposed as a hoax by Alastair Boyd and David Martin in their expose book some twenty years ago as a model neck attached to a toy submarine.

Though most accept this (including myself), others continue to raise questions about the book's theory. Loch Ness researchers such as Henry Bauer and Richard Carter have questioned the theory and Dale is the latest to offer his thoughts and claims that the model would be unstable if fashioned in such a way.

Now I admit that I have my own questions against the theory, but accept that the pros for the case significantly outweigh the cons. But let us look first at Dale's claim that the model would simply tilt over. The picture below (not from the Boyd and Martin book) is a suggestion as to how the model may have looked.

The first thing to note is that the neck is made from a substance called "plastic wood". It was initially suggested that such a substance did not exist in 1934 but this advert from page 103 of the March 1928  "Popular Science" shows it was around and popular as a DIY substance. Looking at the page, it reminds me of the modern "Polyfilla" as an aid for filling in cracks and holes but I am sure it had properties which also made it useful as a modelling substance. In fact, the advert below states that it was useful on model boats "for moulding figure-heads".

Dale describes the head-neck construct as "solid wood" but this is where things get confused. If it was a solid mass then I too would wonder whether the model could remain stable. My own take is that the model was more likely to be hollow in some fashion. In other words, a head-neck was moulded from a handful of this substance which we are told in the above advert "handles like putty" before it "hardens into wood".

But if the model is hollowed too much then (assuming it is a watertight attachment) buoyancy becomes an issue and the submarine would not be able to drag the head-neck underwater. It seems that some trial and error would be involved in finding the right density and the lead ballast strip mentioned in the picture would have been part of the solution.

Was this actually achievable? The problem is no one to my knowledge has tried to reproduce the original construct of plastic wood neck and toy submarine. In fact, modern reconstructions use modern technology in the form of very lightweight Styrofoam to float the object but clearly would not be able to mimic the submerging toy submarine.

However, I don't think such a modern model was intended to mimic such a scenario but rather used to reproduce the original "as you see it" photograph. Could a more 1930s reconstruction act as Christian Spurling said? Nobody knows for sure as I am not aware of any such experiment. I doubt plastic wood is available today but a substitute of similar properties should not be difficult to source. Finding a metallic submarine that submerges underwater may be more difficult. Until then, the door of doubt is left slightly open.

Others have raised questions such as why Wetherell did not expose the Daily Mail after publication and extract his revenge. 

The other open question is the mysterious second photograph. The head in that picture is clearly different to the famous first pose. I speculated whether the hoaxer may have remoulded the head into a "diving position" but since our advert says it hardens into wood on setting, that does not seem possible without snapping off the head. It is pointed out that the wave patterns on the surface are very different to the one in the first picture. This is conceded, but it is also conceivable that a sudden gust of wind can rewrite the surface of the water. The argument peters out to the conclusion that it was just another hoax picture.

Who knows, but to this day I have seen no satisfactory explanation of how this second picture came to be and the expose book offers no clues. The arguments are more to disassociate from the first photograph and then ignore it. It seems we have a mystery within a mystery.

Now I am not suggesting the first picture is a fake but somehow the second is genuine. That would be silly. But there is a "crack" in our knowledge here that need some "plastic wood" to fill it in. It is a given that Alastair Boyd would have asked Spurling about the second photograph. The absence of quotes from Spurling on this subject suggests he knew nothing about it (In Spurling's defence, this suggests he is being truthful about the first picture. After all, if you are going to lie about the first photo, you will keep on lying about the second one.).

So what is the story behind this second photograph? Comments are welcome!

Loch Ness Monster Symposium April 2013

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first sighting of the modern age of the Loch Ness Monster and to mark this milestone a symposium is to be held in the city of Edinburgh on the 6th of April 2013. A variety of speakers have been lined up to talk on various aspects of this enduring story ending with a panel discussion on what the Loch Ness Monster is and is not. The speaker roster is below and the official website is here and if this is not yet up and running try the website of co-organise Gordon Rutter at this link.

Adrian Shine - The biology of Loch Ness and an overview of geography.

Roland Watson - The pre-1933 history of Loch Ness Monster and its folklore.

Paul Harrison - Loch Ness Monster History 1933-1971.

Tony Harmsworth - Loch Ness 1972 to present.

David Martin-Jones - Nessie on Film.

Charles Paxton - Statistical analysis of eyewitness reports.

Gordon Rutter - Photographic evidence of the Loch Ness monster.

Panel Discussion - Hypotheses for the Loch Ness monster: different explanations for the Loch Ness monster as both a non-monstrous and monstrous phenomena: (panel includes Adrian Shine, Paul Harrison, Steuart Campbell and Roland Watson).

The event will be sponsored by Kraken Rum and will be run under the umbrella of the Edinburgh International Science Festival which runs from the 23rd March to the 7th April. The venue will be The Counting House and further details of the event can be found again at the aforementioned websites.

Ticket purchase is essential to attend. To buy tickets, send a paypal transfer to co-organiser Charles Paxton (cgp2@st-andrews.ac.uk) for £20 – no physical tickets will be issued but the printed Paypal receipt on the day we be matched to the attendee list.

While we are on the subject of Loch Ness Monster symposiums, I would say this is the fourth event to bear that title.  The word "symposium" itself comes from the Greek word for a drinking party which seems appropriate considering the event is sponsored by a rum manufacturer and some form of alcohol will no doubt flow later. These ancient events would be held to debate, recite or celebrate events or works. I guess the drink lubricated the smooth running of the event and the "symposiarch" would decide on the strength of the drink served up depending on the type of event. Who will have that task in April is uncertain!

As far as Nessie is concerned the most famous symposium was the one that never happened in 1975. The word was out that Robert Rines and his team had got close up head, neck and body pictures of the creatures and various people from scientific and academic backgrounds were to be invited to a symposium in Edinburgh under the chairmanship of Sir Peter Scott and the sponsorship of the Royal Society to discuss these images.

Unfortunately, the media interest began to move into hyperdrive and it was felt it was not possible to conduct such a gathering in the midst of such clamour and it was cancelled. The pictures were finally shown to the world at a meeting in the Houses of Parliament to a varied audience. I remember it well and the press description of the body and long neck as looking like "bagpipes in a snowstorm"!

Personally, I like the look of the body-neck picture as evidence but the gargoyle head never struck me as being in accord with eyewitness descriptions of a small head that was almost a continuation of the neck.

After that, the first real and best symposium was held at the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh on July 25th 1987 which was organised by the Society for the History of Natural History and the International Society for Cryptozoology. The proceedings of the meeting were published in two parts in the centenary edition of the Scottish Naturalist and contained contributions from various leading lights of the Loch Ness mystery including Tim Dinsdale, Henry Bauer, Adrian Shine, Roy Mackal and Robert Rines.

But it was not for another twelve years that the next symposium was held at Loch Ness itself. This was held on the 10th July 1999 at the Drumnadrochit Hotel and was hosted by Gary Campbell of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club. the speakers over that weekend were Gary Campbell, Loren Coleman, Henry Bauer, Gordon Rutter (who is co-organising this latest event) and Ian Cameron (witness to a famous sighting in 1965). An article from the BBC news website of the time is at the end of this article (original link).

Unlike the other symposiums, this one has a distinct local flavour as all the speakers reside within Scotland. However, no such restriction applies to the audience, so all are welcome in April if they can make it - and get one of those limited tickets!

I will be speaking on the pre-Nessie era of the Loch Ness Monster (prior to 1933) and will be drawing on the research that produced my book "The Water Horses of Loch Ness", but expect some new material as well!
 


Nessie hosts hunters
 

The shores of Loch Ness play host this weekend to a major gathering of monster hunters from around the world. 

Delegates from as far afield as Japan are flying to Scotland for Saturday's first formal gathering of Nessie hunters. 

One of the most controversial debates will be on the famous - or infamous - Nessie photograph that became known as The Surgeon's Picture.

This classic image taken in 1934, showing what appeared to be a long serpent-like neck and head coming out of the water, was later proved to be a hoax.

But respected US cryptozoology researcher Richard Smith will argue that the evidence used to prove the alleged hoax may be flawed. 

Gary Campbell, President of the Inverness-based Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club said: "It should lead to a lively discussion. 

"Richard's findings don't agree with the analysis carried out in 1994 so it might be that the surgeon's photo was real all along." They are complemented by Edinburgh based zoologist Gordon Rutter and retired Highland detective Ian Cameron, who witnessed the longest Nessie sighting on record. 

 The conference, "Loch Ness 1999, an International Cryptozoology Symposium", aims to find a new way forward in the search for creatures like the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. 

Mr Campbell added: "I am delighted at the numbers coming for the conference. We have delegates attending from all over the world as well as a good turn out of local people as well." 

Delegates will hear from top US Bigfoot author Loren Coleman and Professor Henry Bauer or Virginia State University.

The Lachlan Stuart Photograph (Part Four)

On the 15th July 1951, readers of the British newspaper, the Sunday Express, were greeted with the sensational headline below. Coming to this final part of the Lachlan Stuart case reminds me to look back at what has been written on this blog. The first two parts introduced the story from 1951 and went into the allegations made against Stuart by Richard Frere. This evidence against the photograph was rejected on the grounds that it was inconsistent and contradictory.

The third post examined the claim that the sun was visible in the photograph and was hence taken in the evening rather than the morning as claimed. This was dismissed as unlikely based on the position of the alleged sun in the picture being inconsistent with the date the picture was taken.

In fact, I have been asked why I am critiquing the critics' arguments instead of positively discussing the arguments for a Loch Ness Monster in the picture. In my opinion, that is not a valid point. If I think someone's arguments against a picture are weak or simply wrong, then I will point them out. Now it is acknowledged that such dismantling does not prove the object in the picture is our legendary monster but there are two points to be made.

Firstly, such arguments against this or any other evidence weakens it in the eyes of those who read it but do not have the resources or inclination to dig deeper. The counter-arguments presented on this blog will inform readers more and allow them to make a better judgement.

Secondly, moving a photograph out of the "proven hoax" category into the "inconclusive" category is good enough for me. After all, how am I or anyone meant to prove that the object in the picture is a plesiosaur, giant salamander, outsized eel or paranormal tulpa? Again, I leave readers to form their own opinion.

So putting aside the claims about Richard Frere and an evening sunset, we are left with only one final objection, which is the issue of the shallowness of the waters around Whitefield and the corollary that such conditions are amenable to a hoax (such as our oft mentioned hay bales). That parts of the shore are shallow has been on the record for over a century and Constance Whyte, who was at the scene of the photo within days, acknowledged this in her book "More Than A Legend" in 1961 (p.12):

Mr. Stuart thought too from its movements and ability to manoeuvre in comparatively shallow waters that the creature must be propelled by limbs as well as a powerful tail.

However, despite her examination of the location and the witnesses, she did not come to the conclusion that the shallowness of the water was a problem and stated (p.10 of 3rd edition):

I could not put forward this photograph with more confidence if I had taken it myself.

Likewise, after blazing the photograph across their front page on the 15th of July, the Sunday Express sent two journalists up to Loch Ness days later to conduct their own investigation. Their names were Brendan Kemmet and John Quigley and the fruit of their labours was a follow up article in the next edition of the 22nd of July (banner headline below with picture of the Stuart family).

Whyte, Kemmet and Quigley were on the shore examining the area and assessing the story against what they saw. It is to be noted that none of them saw the alleged hay bales that Richard Frere claimed to have seen behind some shoreline bushes less than two weeks later. If they had, we can be sure Stuart's story would not have appeared in Whyte's book and the Express would have quietly dropped the story whilst asking for their money back.

The journalists cross-examined Taylor Hay and Lachlan Stuart and could not shake the men's testimonies. Stuart himself said he was prepared to swear on oath what he had told them and at the end the two journalists headed back to London to prepare their article of vindication.

Steuart Campbell, in his book "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence" suggests Taylor Hay may not be as real a person as made out when he cleverly points out that "Taylor Hay" sounds similar to the phrase "Tale Of Hay" but the fact that Hay spoke to Kemmet and Quigley suggests he is a real person.

The leading Loch Ness spokesman of that time, Maurice Burton, states in his book "The Elusive Monster" that he spoke to Lachlan Stuart the following September and tells us he visited the site to take some comparison photographs for what he describes as "the most important" photograph. He comments:

I have made a number of comparisons, both on the lochside below Whitefield and with photographs taken during my visit to Loch Ness, of objects of known size and known distance from the shore, and I see no reason to modify the estimates of size made by Mr. Stuart.

However, it is unlikely that Burton met Stuart at Loch Ness. Witchell's "Loch Ness Story" tells us that both men were guests on a BBC television panel program on the Loch Ness Monster which was broadcast on the 26th September 1951. So it is more likely that Burton met and talked with Lachlan Stuart in London and his visit to the Whitefield site was nine years later when he visited the loch in 1960 to gather material for his forthcoming book.

Burton's own conclusion is that the photograph belongs to the "phenomenon associated with the term Loch Ness Monster" and says "we have to  look elsewhere than among the prehistoric animals to account for it". I take that to mean Burton thinks there is a perfectly normal and rational explanation for the photograph but had not made his mind up as to which one was most appropriate!

A SHALLOW ARGUMENT

So much for the initial investigations of the time. But going back to the shallowness of the waters of Whitefield, these depths were surveyed in 1903 by Sir John Murray as part of their general survey of Scottish lochs. Their survey map for Whitefield is shown below.

If we look at the depth of the loch at the point where the path up to Lachlan Stuart's croft meets the main road, then the depth is 68ft (~21m) at 175ft (~54m) from the shore. The actual profile of the loch sides underwater is a gradually descending "lip" which then steeply drops to the loch bottom at some distance out. What that depth may be at varying locations up to that distance can only be known by going in and testing the waters.

In that light, a recent set of photographs was taken by Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor. You can see his results at this link (it might be an idea to keep a separate window open on that page as it is discussed here). The bottom line of Dick's article is that the Lachlan Stuart photograph is technically not difficult to reproduce using hay bales.

Now to employ a phrase Dick once used on another website (below), I have to be the harshest critic of the evidence presented against this photograph.

That is my position exactly. I am open to the possibility [of things waiting to be discovered - Ed.], but I have to be the harshest critic of the evidence presented to avoid being lumped in with the absentee gullible bloggers. 

Looking at Dick's analysis raises one obvious question to me - why didn't he reproduce the original photograph?

By that I mean, why he didn't line up the two bales of hay with two of the original humps and (for lack of a third bale) have his colleague stand in the position of the third hump? The closer to the original picture, the greater the visual impact. Dick would know that as a photographic expert.

But instead we have a picture of a man with two small hay bales either side of him occupying less than half the area occupied by the three Stuart humps. Though Dick says the aim of the experiment was not to reproduce the original photograph, I say "Why not?". It is unclear from Dick's statement whether it was a case of his team "would not" or "could not" reproduce the original photograph. It is further unclear whether an attempt to move the haybales further to the right would result in them disappearing under deeper water and render the whole experiment questionable.

Dick says his experiment proves that Lachlan Stuart's ducks or humps do not metaphorically line up. Unfortunately, neither do his humps.

Perhaps a better photograph will turn up. But even then it should not be assumed that this was the spot where the photograph was taken. In fact, no one knows where the exact spot is and guesswork would be involved depending on one's initial assumptions (e.g. did Stuart hoax the picture or not). When I was there last October, I took a series of photographs over a length of about 60 metres which could also equally be spots where the picture could have been snapped. This series could have been extended for a lot further as progress is made southwards down the shore.

But the problem with the pictures I present above is that each successive hump would be further out from the shore and more difficult to keep at a "hump-like" height above water. I present my own two overlays here and wonder if hay bales could stay high enough in those locations? Note the second photo is panned further out from shore to show the overlaid humps further out.

The other issue is the distance of the objects. I asked Dick how far the bales were from the shore and he gave a range of 7 to 12 metres. However, Steuart Campbell, who also has some skill in photography has this to say in his book "The Loch Ness Monster - The Evidence" (p.32 of 2002 edition):

Making certain assumptions about the camera, it can be shown that if the objects are in the water they are about 21m away and about 6m long overall. From the fact that the camera was aimed at Urquhart Castle we know that it was pointed at about 45 degrees to the shore; this puts the nearest object to the shore still 11m from it. At that distance the water is too deep for it to be a rock.

This however puts the rightmost hump even further out. I emailed Steuart and asked him how he came by these results and he kindly sent me his original calculations. These put the rightmost hump at just over 15m from the shore. In summary, at an estimated distance of 21 metres, this is potentially three times as far away as the low end of Dick's estimate.

If  Steuart Campbell's calculations are correct, Dick Raynor's humps are too close and probably in the wrong place. Moreover, if the objects are 21 metres away, his haybales would appear smaller at that distance and smaller than Stuart's humps. It's all about assumptions and I suspect you pick the ones which suit your case. Once again, let the reader make his own mind up.

Elsewhere in the article, Dick continues to advocate Richard Frere's "confession". We have dealt with this elsewhere.

EVENING OR MORNING?

His final point is the persistence with claiming the photograph was taken in the evening. Again, we dealt with the alleged evening sun in the picture, but Dick doesn't mention this as he takes another tack. First, he states that his evening photograph (in which you can see the sun) is similar in shadows to the Stuart picture and claims this is proof that the Stuart picture is an evening picture. My first reply to this is that the Stuart picture is actually brighter than his reconstruction shot and for some reason the Stuart picture he uses is a bit darker than the one I have below which is taken from Constance Whyte's book. It all depends which version you use from what book/website/etc.

Secondly, Dick can prove his is an evening shot because the sun is visible. In Stuart's picture, no evening sun is visible. Along these lines, Dick Raynor takes the commercial photographer to task who developed the Lachlan Stuart film for advocating a morning time for the snap. You can read Dick's argument at his website.

Not having expertise in photography but at the same time not being satisfied that Dick's explanation about orthochromatic film was the only (let alone the best) explanation, I sought opinion and advice from those who also have some skill in this area. That indirectly includes the man who developed the Stuart photograph, John MacPherson via both Express articles. He says:

The film appeared to be perfectly normal  in every way. Mr Stuart said he took the snap at 6:30am and the picture of the monster was dull enough to have been taken at that time. The negative development took nearly twice the normal time owing to the light conditions at the time of the exposure.

Unlike the rest of us who debate this subject sixty years later, Mr. MacPherson had access to the negatives and the best prints and he gives his opinion on the poor clarity of the hills in the second Express article:

I know something about times and lights, and I also know the locality where the picture was taken. I would say that the film was perfectly consistent with a 6:30am snapshot. It was not a very good picture. These little box cameras have limited performance. In this case the camera seems to have been moved.

You can disagree with MacPherson if you wish, but you cannot deny he was closer to the subject material. The phrase "limited performance" offers a clue to a simpler reason for the poor light levels in the photograph. Consumer cameras at that time were indeed limited in their performance. A look around the Internet for 1950s cameras gives an entry level camera that would be simple in the extreme. Indeed some would offer only one setting for aperture and shutter speed that reminds me of those disposable cameras you pick up for your kids these days. Others might have two or more settings which elicits two speculations.

It is to be noted that Lachlan Stuart had limited knowledge of photography as he states that the camera had a spool winding problem which had to be corrected by his wife after each exposure. According to the second Express article, there were five previous exposures on the film and these were family snaps. If we assume these were taken in typical summer afternoon light conditions, then it is possible that when Lachlan Stuart ran down the hill in haste to take his picture, the shutter speed was set for sunny afternoon conditions rather than the early morning. This would, of course, result in an underexposed picture lacking the desired details of the remote hills.

Speculation number two kicks in for a camera with only one setting for aperture and shutter speed. You bring that into an early morning situation and again the picture could be underexposed. So the issue here is not low light levels due to a late evening shooting but low light levels due to an inadequate combination of aperture size and shutter speed.

But, as pointed out by those I emailed, underexposed film can be compensated for at the development stage (but I am told with an increase in contrast and graininess). Fair enough, let us assume that was done - though I wonder how this increase in contrast and graininess contributes to a lack of detail in the picture. One other opinion raised was that the film may be fogged due to the camera being inadequate. In that light, I requote MacPherson:

It was not a very good picture. These little box cameras have limited performance.

In other words, the lack of details could easily be not down to dark conditions, but it being a rubbish camera. This is further exacerbated by two facts from the Express articles. Firstly, Lachlan Stuart states that the winding mechanism on the camera was faulty (confirmed by Quigley). Secondly, he said it was bought for him "many years ago" by his wife. Could it be this already old and decrepit camera was further bashed in some way which damaged the winding mechanism but also affected the exposure mechanism in a way that would always render pictures less than they should be? In the light of these observations, I don't think one is compelled to consider an evening setting for this photograph.

WOODEN POSTS

There was one more minor mystery concerning this location which is of more historical interest. When the Loch Ness and Loch Morar Project had a look at this photograph and its location around the early 1980s, they mentioned seeing fence posts in the water indicating the shallowness of the shoreline. When I was there I saw no fence posts and assumed they had long gone (though admittedly I only looked along a few hundred metres of shoreline).

However, a look at ordnance survey maps from various years reveals no piers at Whitefield. What could these wooden posts have been? An answer was perhaps forthcoming in a 6 inch to the mile map from 1862 which reveals a potential boathouse in that vicinity long ago. The boathouse is the grey rectangular box on the shore above the big letter "C". It is also located opposite where the small forestry road from Stuart's croft would have met the main road.

There is a further confirmation of this by the presence of old stone steps at the very same location which I photographed (below). Clearly, if you have a boat house, you will need ease of access via a path and steps from the main road.

What this boathouse looked like exactly we may never know but there are old boat houses still around the loch such as this one at Knockie near the Horseshoe crag (© Copyright John Allan and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence - original link here).

And these ones ... (original link).

The boat house posts were gone when I visited in 2012. They were still visible thirty years earlier but what was their condition in 1951 when Lachlan Stuart took his picture? Were they higher and did they extend further out? This raises one final question since Dick seems to have taken his picture around the same location. If he had been transported back to 1951 and taken the picture from the same spot, would boathouse posts have appeared in it - unlike Lachlan Stuart's picture?

CONCLUSIONS

I have probably written more words on the Lachlan Stuart photograph than all the Nessie books on this picture put together. Whether that amounts to a hill of beans or not is down not to me or any other presumed "expert" on this subject. It's down to what you (plural) think of it.

The mystery and, perhaps to some extent, the reality of the monster is not driven by "experts" but by the collective attention of the public who have held it in their consciousness for decades. Therefore, the veracity of the Loch Ness Monster does not depend on whether the Lachlan Stuart photograph is a genuine mystery or not. As far as I am concerned, the creature continues to make its way through the murky bottom silt and hopefully this blog will make its way to the next subject in this most fascinating of mysteries.

Seal Seen 50 Miles Inland

In a previous article on the monster spotted several times on the Beauly Firth (which the River Ness connects with Loch Ness), we wondered about how easy a creature could get up the River Ness to our famous loch.

Now only a couple of weeks later we hear of a seal in England which has forged 50 miles inland to a local lake. The YouTube clip is below.

Note how it tackles a river bank against the water flow. If a seal can do it, what about a Nessie? Mind you, the seal seems to have needed the river to be in spate. The BBC report is below (original link here).

Seal seen at Drayton Lakes Reserve - 50 miles from sea

 

A seal is thought to have swum more than 50 miles (80km) along a flooded river to an RSPB nature reserve, where it was filmed "hopping" into a lake.

The marine mammal was filmed in a YouTube clip, published on Sunday, in a lake at Fen Drayton Lakes Reserve, in Swavesey, Cambridgeshire.

Graham Elliott of the RSPB said it was a "surprising" but not unique sighting.

"You occasionally get seals in the River Ouse near St Ives but I've never known of one here before," he said.

"The surprising thing was to see it leaving the river and hopping over the bank, entering the gravel pits area."

Thought by experts to be a common seal, the footage shows the seal battling to cross a barrier to get into a lake on the RSPB site.

The 29-year-old man who captured the footage said he initially thought he had seen a dog when he approached the area while on a walk with a friend at about 13:45 GMT on Sunday.

The designer, who wanted to be known as Robjn, said: "At first sight, I thought it was a dog in trouble but as it came up for air I could see it was a seal. 

"It was swimming up a ditch that links to the Great Ouse. In the video, it is swimming from the ditch up into the flooded field.

"It had a few tries at different points of climbing the bank but in the film was the successful attempt. After that point we didn't see it again."

Water levels have remained high following recent heavy rain in the area, leading to the river flooding nearby fields.

Mr Elliott said the creature could prove to be a "great visitor attraction", although it has not been seen since the footage was taken.

"If anybody does see it, we'd love to hear the news," he said.

"It was probably just exploring new views."

Mr Elliott said the RSPB would monitor the situation and there was no apparent cause for concern.

"It's perfectly happy in the lake with plenty of food to sustain it. It's not a threat to any other wildlife and hopefully it will find its way out the same way it came in," he said.

"If it can't, we'll then consult with the RSPCA to make a decision on what will happen next."

Another Car Accident at Loch Ness

I sometimes wonder if drivers are indulging in more Nessie watching that road watching as the road to the Castle is not exactly difficult to navigate. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. From the Inverness Courier 31st December:

FIVE people had a miraculous escape when the car they were travelling in went off the road and plunged 100 feet into Loch Ness.

The single vehicle accident happened shortly after 9.30 this morning when the cer was travelling on the A82 between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston.

The stretch of road where the accident occurred has some of the highest points above the loch with almost vertical drops in places.

Emergency services including police and ambulance attended but amazingly all five occupants of the car escaped relatively unscathed despite the 100 foot drop from the road to Loch Ness.

They were all taken to Raigmore Hospital where they were treated for minor injuries. Their names have not been released.

The A82 was closed for a short while around 1.00pm while the car was recovered from the water and winched back on to trhe road and taken away on a breakdown truck.