That Recent Sonar Image

Okay, so the recent sonar image from Jacobite Cruises was five years old. I updated the article to reflect that shortly after, but it seems the real image has been published in what was deemed a cock up. Original article here.

The image was taken off Urquhart Bay on the 27th April 2014. A zoom in of the screen grab is somewhat indistinct, but it seems to be showing a target hit at about 30 feet down which has a crescent shape that is reminiscent of the crescent shape we see for smaller fish all the time. Note that in the case of fish such as charr or salmon, it is the swim bladder that registers the strongest echo. The crescent shape is caused by the relative motion of the fish to the sonar.

This sonar image is not a small fish. What it is on an initial inspection is difficult to say and I have seen various strange sonar hits from nearly all the cruise companies now. The normal answer from them is to say it is anomalous and I guess that is where I will have to leave it myself!

Thoughts on the Loch Ness Kelpie

Ten years before anyone had heard of a Loch Ness Monster, M. Oldfield Howey published his "The Horse in Magic and Myth" in 1923. It was reviewed in the 4th April edition of the Aberdeen Press and Journal. You can read that review below to which I shall add some comments after.

Note first the comment that "Loch Ness, it seems, was a special favourite with kelpies ..." to which we add our own "Amen". In my book, "The Water Horses of Loch Ness", I collected such accounts and found them well ahead of any other loch with a tradition of the Each Uisge, I was not aware of this book, so am glad to add it to the growing list. Doubtless, others will turn up as the months and years pass.

The other point is the link between the Kelpie and the Boobrie. The shape shifting between the aquatic and the avian is only hinted at in one or two tales, but this reference reinforces that link. It makes one wonder what the folklorists thought the actual basic form of the underlying entity was?

The final thought concerns the idea of the Kelpie spending time on land. This seems as counter intuitive as the idea of a horse spending time in water. Though it is not mentioned here, the main reason for these ventures onto terra firma was as a predator lying in wait, its true intent hidden from the victim and the end as swift as the strike of a cobra.

So why would a creature which reigned supreme in the water be framed as a greater danger out of the water? Why not do the obvious and have it grabbing its hapless victims as they walked by the shore or as they worked in their boats? My own opinion is that real land sightings of these creatures were the kernel for this departure from the obvious modus operandi of a water based beast.

Mr. Howey has his own interesting theory that it was actually native, wild horses that may have seeded the story of dangerous, supernatural equines. However, this idea seems to be limited to the far extremities of the north of Scotland in Sutherland and it is not certain when such animals were ever extant in Scotland.

Though written ten years before Nessie, the two sides of the arguments are still visible. Was it a creature just beyond the ken of men or a simple case of misidentification? Some things seem destined never to change!

Ted Holiday's Little Monster

Back in the 1960s, when the modified plesiosaur theory held sway amongst Nessie believers, we had Ted Holiday and his little monster. The letter below from Ted Holiday to the Inverness Courier on August 16th 1963 laid out his general invertebrate theory and makes for interesting reading (click to enlarge).

However, in 1966, David James gave Ted an article on a new fossil find. This led to a train of thought that produced his main work, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" two years later. That fossil was Tullimonstrum Gregarium, a strange creature found fossilised amongst the carboniferous deposits of the coal strip mines some 50 miles south of Chicago. The first find was made in 1958 by Francis Tully, to whom he lent his name to the fossil ("Tully's common monster").

The resin model below is representative of the small size of this creature which has ranged from three to fourteen inches and you can pick up the occasional fossil on eBay for a reasonable sum. Some fossils also had a suggestion of an orifice below the "paddles" which lent speculation to the "neck" passing prey to this mouth. The creature continues to puzzle palaeontologists as to which phylum it precisely belongs to.

Holiday was convinced this was the solution to the Loch Ness mystery and "bet his shirt" on it in his Orm book. The problems were obvious though and the passage of four subsequent decades of palaeontology has not altered this.

Firstly, the creature is far too small compared to the typical thirty foot of a mature Nessie and even Holiday knew talk of these fossils being larval was a bit of a stretch.

Secondly, these fossils have continued to be only found in the state of Illinois, a long way from Loch Ness.

Thirdly, these creatures have been extinct for about 300 million years.

Morphologically, the basic Tullimonstrum is no Loch Ness Monster. Only two front "paddles" are present instead of the accepted four limbs and it is a favoured interpretation that these are in fact eyes set at each end of a stiff bar structure.

Ted Holiday would try and find parallels with these bulbous structures in the Hugh Gray and Kenneth Wilson photographs as well as descriptions of appendages in such cases as the Spicers. Certainly, the two side objects in the Hugh Gray picture continue to generate speculation, but even if the Wilson picture was not a hoax, I doubt a case for any appendage could be made from it.

It should also be borne in mind that despite talk about lobes on the Spicer beast, Tullimonstrum was most likely incapable of locomotion on land. The alleged lobe on the Spicer monster is another source of speculation. The sceptic suggests a deer's head, the opposite camp has tended to it being the tip of the creature's tail.

So why was Ted Holiday so wedded to this creature, despite the difficulties? Even though the plesiosaur theory had its challenges, it certainly seemed to be far more plausible than this creature. Holiday was certainly an original and lateral thinker who was prepared to think outside of the box, but even this would seem to be a speculation too far.

Eventually, Holiday moved over to the paranormal camp, though it seems he still tried to synthesise his worm theory with this paradigm. Therein lies further problems and one wonders what Ted's final thoughts were before he died of a heart attack in 1979.

Personally, I never quite embraced Holiday's idea of a giant worm. His general proposal of a gastropod of the nudibranch family had its attractions, but the main problem was always size precedence. I don't think species of this class ever exceed one metre in size.

Meantime, reptile, amphibian or mammal advocates could at least point to something big that was living or extinct that indicated size possibilities. Nevertheless, Ted Holiday was an original thinker and if this mystery is to be solved, then it is going to require some more of that type of thinking.

New Sonar Image of Nessie?

I noticed this image appeared on the Highland News today. It was captured on the sonar equipment of the cruise ship, the Jacobite Queen which runs along the top half of Loch Ness. You can read the article here. Jacobite Cruises also mention it here, but currently without further detail.

Somewhat frustratingly, no analysis is done and so one is left wondering what is being looked at. Clearly, the crew who use the sonar are not used to seeing such a trace, hence their curiosity but also their non-commitment to an interpretation. If I may add my own observations, the "753" in the bottom left presumably refers to a depth of 753 feet which places us firmly in the deepest parts of the loch, perhaps around Urquhart Bay. In fact, the maximum depth of Loch Ness is a bit of a movable feast, Wikipedia states it as 744.6 feet but another source states 786 feet. Wrongly configured sonar can record excessive depths.

I have seen several sonar traces presented by cruise operators over the years with interpretations which ranged from "the monster" to "zooplankton on the thermocline". More often than not, a simple "I don't know" is the response. Given that we don't even know if the Loch Ness Monster has a swim bladder, lungs, inflatable humps or no gas filled sacs at all, this would seem the best response.

POSTSCRIPT:

Thanks to regular reader, Jake, it has been established this sonar image was recorded in 2009 when British actress Vicki Michelle was on the Jacobite Queen. The original story is here. Sigh! We had the old Apple satellite image and now this. How about something new, media?

The Surgeon's Photo Eighty Years On

It was eighty years to the day on the 21st April 1934 that the Daily Mail introduced the most iconic image of Nessie to the world. The Surgeon's Photograph as it was dubbed caught the imagination of the world and has ever since been the lead image for the monster.

Almost immediately, the photo gained acceptance amongst the monster hunting fraternity as Rupert T. Gould approvingly included it two months later in his work "The Loch Ness Monster". That was the way it pretty much stayed as Constance Whyte gave it prominence in the 1950s as did Dinsdale in his later works and into a plethora of authors throughout the 1970s and beyond.

As the photograph was scrutinized for further hidden clues, things became somewhat strained as Dinsdale thought he saw a concentric ripple near the object indicating further monster activity. Meanwhile, Ted Holiday, in his book "The Great Orm of Loch Ness" claimed to see monstrous appendages in the shadows which bolstered his invertebrate theory of Nessie. The less well known monster author, Edward Armstrong, made a somewhat better effort in claiming a print defect was in fact a seagull flying past the monster, thus making it about seven foot high. To complete the list, there was also the story from the 1990s by Nicholas Witchell of whiskers being visible on a computer enhancement of the photograph.

Sceptics may chortle at these failed attempts, but in their desire to look more clever than they really are, they too made themselves look a bit silly in hindsight. Roy Mackal, in his book "The Monsters of Loch Ness" pronounced the photograph to be no more than a water fowl. Maurice Burton decided it was perhaps an otter's tail caught in the act of diving, whilst the Linnean Society of London decided the object was a tree trunk thrust to the surface by erupting gases.

To be fair to Tim Dinsdale, he cooled a bit on the photograph in later years, but it was the research of another monster believer, Alastair Boyd, along with David Martin that finally exposed the story behind the picture nearly sixty years after its creation. It seems the whole affair was a model neck stuck to a toy submarine concocted by Marmaduke Wetherell, Christian Spurling, Maurice Chambers and Kenneth Wilson.

I won't go over the details of this oft repeated story, but suffice to say the case is closed for me and the majority of Loch Ness Monster researchers. Some unanswered questions remain, such as the nature of the less well known second photograph of the object submerging. To this day, there is no satisfactory explanation for this, and given the various failed sceptical theories about the first photograph, I wouldn't assume they have a grasp of the situation either. Critics may often accuse "believers" of accepting any old evidence, but I think that ad hominem has been disproved in this case (well, perhaps some still accept the picture as evidence).

But what of the man himself, Robert Kenneth Wilson? In an article from the ANZ Journal of Surgery published in December 2007, some more facts are revealed about him. Born on the 26th January 1899 into a medical family, he developed a love of firearms and joined the Royal Artillery in 1917, only to be wounded in action on the Western Front in 1918 (which left him with a slight limp for life).

Gaining the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1926, he established a practise in Queen Anne Street near Harley Street, specialising in gynaecology. His expertise in firearms led him to be an expert witness in court trials and his expanding collection occupied three walls of a special room at their Highgate residence. The outbreak of war compelled him to donate the guns to the Metropolitan Police as personal armouries were outlawed. He also wrote a book on the subject of firearms.

The Nessie hoax with his shooting partner, Maurice Chambers, was a mixed affair to Wilson. The Daily Mail bought the picture from Chambers for £100 (over £6000 in today's money), but the British Medical Association fined Wilson £1000 for allowing his name to be associated with the picture! This was deemed as advertising and therefore improper for what his wife Gwen deemed a "silly prank" to their children.

It was claimed in this 2007 article that Maurice Chambers had confessed to all in his will after he died in 1944. I have examined a copy of the will obtained through the usual means, but have found no such confession.

Wilson again fought for his country in the Second World War, seeing action in France, Germany and the Far East. For these he was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the Royal Orange Order of the Netherlands.

Having moved to Australasia in the 1950s to continue his medical practice (picture below), he retired in the mid-1960s after a stint with the Australian Petroleum Company. Our short story ends with Kenneth Wilson dying on the 6th June 1969 in Melbourne from oesophageal cancer.

Kenneth Wilson was obviously a brave and talented man, but even he and his co-conspirators could not summon the courage to come clean on a photograph that unexpectedly swept like wildfire around the world. Such is the power of the appeal of the Loch Ness Monster and eighty years on we look back on his part in this appeal with mixed feelings.

Nessie on Land: Predator

It is back to this blog's occasional series on land sightings and there is one interesting aspect to the Loch Ness Monster on land and that is its role as hunter. Of the thirty five alleged land cases I know about, three are reported with an indication of prey being carried away.

Now sightings of a large creature in Loch Ness are interesting, stories of this monster lumbering about on land are even more fascinating. But stories of the monster helping itself to cows, sheep, deer and other animals around the loch boggles the mind and may make some a bit wary of  wild camping along secluded parts of the shore! Critics have often complained there are not enough fish in the loch to sustain a group of large predators, but what about on land? It is now time to indulge in some wild speculation!

The first case of these three is the famous story of the Spicers, though the suggestion of predation here is not so clear. George Spicer had reported seeing something like a lamb on the back of the creature but this was transformed into a tale of the monster carrying off a lamb in its mouth. However, the Spicers had never claimed to have seen the head of the creature. The picture below by the talented Gino D'Achille sums up how the media culture overlaid this sighting into a story of a prehistoric monster carrying off some hapless livestock.

As an aside, I remembered this painting from a book I owned in my youth and it was only a few days ago that I found the book in a charity shop in Edinburgh for a couple of quid. It was Mysterious Monsters by Daniel Farson for those who collect these things.

The second such story is attributed to a Mrs. Eleanor Price-Hughes in 1933. The oldest source for this story comes from sea serpent researcher Oudemans in 1934 who wrote an article on the Loch Ness Monster with these words roughly translated from the Dutch:

1933 (no date). Mrs. ELEANOR PRICE-HUGHES, Stanford, Surrey.

Her husband saw it, coming from a thicket at Drumnadrochit and disappear into the loch, with what appeared to be a baby in its mouth; are not baby seals pinkish?

Commander Gould wrote to me, dated 5th June 1934 thinking it was a mere hoax. On what grounds? Because he believes that the Loch Ness creature is like a giant salamander. This "flesh-colored baby" was probably a big .... ?

The last word is lost on my copy, so could be anything that lives by the loch side (certainly not baby seals). So it was not Mrs. Price Hughes, but her husband who allegedly witnessed this event. I suspect the original source for this story lies in an article or letter written to an English newspaper at the time. It appears that Oudemans accepted this report but Gould did not.

Since the loch is not visible from Drumnadrochit, this story is more likely to have taken place around the rivers feeding into Urquhart Bay just beyond the village. I have scouted around this area several times which is the location for several land sightings. There are pathways winding around the area, though other parts need a bit of an effort to get to.

Of course, the mention of the emotive words "baby in its mouth" may well have motivated Gould to have pronounced this a hoax. Portraying the Loch Ness Monster as a man-eater excites the imagination, but would it do much good for tourism or credible research?

One sceptic suggested this story may have been a seal with a pink salmon in its mouth or a cow with its pink tongue hanging out. However, the credibility of these suggestions is predicated on the witness catching only the briefest and inconclusive of glimpses of the creature. The text of the report suggests otherwise. The creature was seen to emerge from a thicket and disappear into the loch. Clearly, it would help to see the original account, before forming a better judgement.

The third account is similar to the Price-Hughes story. The story is found in Paul Harrison's "The Encyclopedia of the Loch Ness Monster" and though he does not state the source, it seems clear it was a local newspaper report. An anonymous witness described as a "very trustworthy man" was driving north of Foyers at about 5:30 in the morning of 15th May 1971. It is then stated that he saw a large grey animal appear from the woods to his left dragging itself into the loch. In its mouth were parts of an animal, possibly a cow. It was described as lizard like, 30 foot long and 6 foot tall with an oily sheen on its skin.

Sunrise is at about 5am at that time of year and the driver must have been driving south for the creature to appear from his left. I have no idea what kind of livestock grazed around that area in 1971, but if this story was true, it could equally be a deer.

So that is it, three reports or more likely two mentioning a Loch Ness Monster as a land hunter. It is not much to go on, but are they indicative of a behavioural pattern of the creature that is barely known?

First it has to be said that aquatic creatures hunting land based creatures is no big deal. The YouTube clip below of crocodiles taking out gazelles will be familiar to watchers of wildlife documentaries.





Looking more closely at flipper-based creatures, who can forget the spectacular shots of killer whales driving themselves onto land to capture seals?





On a more sedate level but perhaps more relevant is this intriguing clip of catfish sneaking up on pigeons for an unexpected meal.

No doubt there are other examples, but I think I have got the point across that certain species of water based animals are not limited to what they can find in the water to survive. But how relevant is this to the Loch Ness Monster? 

Clearly, there are no reports of any such displays of predation at the loch shoreline. The stories we have here are of the beast moving inland to seek out prey whilst these clips have the predator staying within its preferred domain.

If there is anything to this aspect of the Loch Ness Monster, then it has to be a behavioural trait that occurs at night time. I have already stated my belief elsewhere that Nessie is largely a creature of the dark.  This is borne out by the fact that a higher proportion of land sightings occur in hours of darkness.  

But the question has to be asked why the Loch Ness Monster would take to land at all? What motivates any creature to behave in certain ways? Since animals are primarily driven by the instinct to survive, I would suggest this boils down to the matter of food. The other factor is reproduction, but I see that as a less likely candidate here. In other words, it is not just these two or three stories about the monster with food in its mouth that are relevant, the whole genre of land sightings has "food" written all over it.

Now the first thing to dismiss here is the idea of Nessie chasing cows and sheep around the fields of Loch Ness. It is just not on when you consider the nature of the beast. The motion of the creature on land is described variously as waddling, lumbering and jerking. I suspect even a pregnant cow could easily evade a land bound Nessie.

No, the modus operandi must function along the lines of the animals mentioned above. Just as  crocodiles, orcas and catfish cannot pursue gazelles, seals or pigeons on land, neither can the Loch Ness Monster. Our little gedankenexperiment must also embrace the concept of the ambush.

The ambush can operate in two domains, at the shoreline, like other aquatic predators, or further inland. In both cases, our dark skinned creature lies inert in the darkness waiting for its quarry. At the shoreline, it lies in the shallows as deer come to the loch to drink. Inland, it lies amongst the trees, indistinguishable from the rocks around it.

In this imagined scenario, the long neck of the beast comes into its own. The deer approaches the peat stained waters seeking to slake its thirst. Unaware of the dark mass about six feet away, it is suddenly seized in the leg by a long, sleek neck that thrusts from that black lump. The last thing the deer sees are the receding trees as it is dragged into the loch to a watery death. The ancient Kelpie legend of victims being taken into the loch takes on a new meaning.

The inland version of this is similar in its execution, though since more energy and risk is required in this venture, it makes it seems a less likely episode to me. Not impossible, just less likelier than staying at the shoreline waiting for the victims to arrive. Having said that, the night time hunt by the shore is less likely to be observed by potential witnesses from the road.

As I said, it is speculation, but if there is a Loch Ness Monster, it is a possible one. How much food could land based creatures provide for a monster diet? I cannot say, but an entire deer is a major meal, more than a goodly number of fish.

And what does this mean in practise for the seasoned monster hunter? The frequency of land sightings is down over the decades. Increased fencing, thicker foliage and noisier roads all act as deterrents. But I already have my night vision equipment, I just need to stake out the appropriate beach at the dead of night. Just be wary of those dark rocks which don't quite look right .....

Nessie on the Allies Side!

During World War Two, even the Loch Ness Monster was not immune to the propaganda of the Axis powers. Previously, I had written of a Nazi Germany April Fool about Nessie being captured and displayed in Edinburgh in 1934. Not quite wartime propaganda, but Goebbels went to war on Nessie in 1940 with a dismissive article about the monster being a tourist trade scam. So now you know how to answer in future when anyone asks you what Nessie debunkers and Josef Goebbels have in common.

I also mentioned the Italian spoof about one of their bombers taking out Nessie in 1941 and cryptozoologist, Paul Cropper, sent me further details from this article from "The World's News" of Sydney dated 22nd November 1941. I love the picture of patriotic Nessie cocking a snook at the Fascist plane as its bombs miss her!

Of course, the article is not going to reveal much about the identity of the Loch Ness Monster. However, since this blog tries to be holistic and seek out the folkloric, historical and cultural as well as the analytical and scientific, then such newspaper clippings are always welcome.

The good thing was that Nessie made a triumphant return with a sighting from the 18th August 1941 being reported in the Daily Mail. A Mr. MacFarlan-Barrow, his wife and three children were out in a dinghy when the creature broke surface near Glendoe Pier. It was described as having a long, snake like neck with 15 to 18 feet of body showing in the classic "upturned boat" fashion. For ten minutes, Nessie moved around before it disappeared half a mile from Fort Augustus.

Critics will be enraged that the MacFarlan-Barrow family did not bring their box camera with them and will therefore dismiss the sighting. Josef Goebbels would no doubt have decreed the sighting to be a line of merganser birds. Goebbels himself would nod approvingly at the need for witnesses to be re-indoctrinated, ermmm, re-educated in what they actually saw .....