The BBC go to Loch Ness and meet Alex Campbell

 

It was on Sunday the 21st August, 1938 that the BBC broadcast to radio listeners a report on their trip up north to investigate the Loch Ness Monster. It was a 25 minute slot just after 10pm entitled "Fact or Fiction? The Loch Ness Monster" and the Radio Times described it thus:

FACT OR FICTION? 

The Loch Ness Monster 

A Feature Programme from Edinburgh about Scotland's world-famous monster, supposed to be living in Loch Ness, Inverness-shire. With an historical survey of such monsters in the district, traditional speculations on that existence, and accounts from eye-witnesses, recorded by the BBC Mobile Recording Unit. From material supplied by Lieut.Commander R. T. Gould.  An epilogue by E. G. Boulanger, director of the Aquarium of the London Zoo.

Produced by John Pudney

The tradition of a monster - giant serpent or giant lizard - inhabiting the fathomless waters of Loch Ness is at least twelve hundred years old. According to St. Adamnan, who died in 704, St. Columba saw it while on his way to convert the King of the Picts. It has been seen many times since. In 1871 a Mr. Duncan Mackenzie saw a dark, humped creature swimming very fast with an undulating motion. It was seen again in 1903 and reappeared in July, 1930, since when it has been seen (or is alleged to have been seen) a number of times by numerous witnesses, some of whom will come to the microphone this evening. Pictures of some of the witnesses whose voices you will heat will be found on page 9. At the end of the programme E. G. Boulanger will reply with a statement of the case against the monster's existence. 

The year of 1938 was a year on a downward slope for events at Loch Ness. The co-mingling of hype and reality four years before as people of various shades and intentions thronged at the loch was over. The world was becoming more distracted about another great war with Germany. Indeed, the tension concerning Adolf Hitler's claims over the German speaking region of Czechoslovakia was heightening over the weeks surrounding this BBC programme.

I don't know if the BBC were there in the monster fever year of 1934, but better late than never. A promotional page was also printed showing some of the main characters for this production. The picture below that shows their recording van parked up beside the loch ready to interview and record the various testimonies from eyewitnesses.

Now I was previously opining how I would love to have heard this 82 year old radio programme from long ago when I got an email from a fellow enthusiast, Michael Delos. He pointed out that the BBC news website had published excerpts from that programme back in September 2019! Happy days, so I went over to the webpage which you can find here and listen to as well. The length is only about a tenth that of the original but it can help us with the eyewitness accounts. There is also credit due to another cryptid fan, Gary MacEwan, who sent me the scans of the Radio Times article. Teamwork.

So let us look at some of the eyewitnesses who were spoken to. The first was a Miss Janet Fraser who saw the creature from the Halfway House tearoom some five years before. You can see here below facing up to a ponderous looking microphone. Readers may recall her name as a subject of a recent article on this blog entitled "The Long Necks of 22nd September 1933" which you can find here. The available radio excerpt mentions this account but the Radio Times also alludes to a sighting she had two years later and to that we will go as we reproduce the account from the Scotsman newspaper of the 24th June 1935 in which she and over a dozen of customers at the Halfway House tearoom had another long necked sighting. The more witnesses, the better I would say.

Another interviewee was Dom Basil Wedge of the Fort Augustus Abbey (below), who we are told saw it with his school pupils during a Natural History class, which seems eminently appropriate as they witnessed one of nature's most talked about mysteries. The actual contents of his account proved somewhat elusive. Constance Whyte, in her 1957 book. "More Than a Legend" merely mentions him in passing saying that his account does not add to the evidence already set out in her book.

I do not see his account anywhere else, though I am sure it will be in some unspecified Highland newspaper of the time and so we rely on the audio excerpt in which he describes seeing three humps in a line moving north westerly at a great speed. Up next was Duncan MacDonald, who was the proprietor of the garage beside the Invermoriston Pier. We are told that he had seen the beast on no fewer than five occasions. Now we could not find all five of these accounts in our clippings archive, but we did find two of them, both taken again from the Scotsman newspaper. The first is from the 10th May 1934 edition and the other from the 1st March 1938 which are shown below.

The first account is the standard single hump appearance which forms the main class of eyewitness accounts, in this case twenty feet long by four foot high and probably observed from the clearing at Inchnacardoch Bay. I say a standard sighting, but what would we give just to be privileged enough to be witnesses to a "standard" sighting! The second account from four years later is a bit mind boggling when he estimates another back sighting to be about ninety feet in length!

The parallel account from the Inverness Courier does not state this size but rather states its length as "very, very long". Now we may laugh, as Mr. MacDonald suggests, after all, this implies a creature over one hundred feet long if we include the submerged parts. Some, because of this, may further suggest he merely saw a large windrow or wind slick which can appear darker than the surrounding waters. However, windrows do not submerge, move around and turn ninety degrees to present their broadside.

Is (or was) there a monster of such huge proportions in Loch Ness? No other account comes close to stating such a length. There was an account from June 1950 by a C.E. Dunton who described two thirty foot coils separated by up to thirty feet giving us ninety feet, but we can take these to be two creatures. Was Donald MacDonald's creature actually two creatures or did he just overestimate by a factor of two to three times?

This is where we enter the world of statistical outliers. By that I mean descriptions of the monster which are unique to just one or two cases or are contradictory to the general corpus of sightings. So, this ninety foot description is unique to the corpus of accounts, but it is not contradictory to them. We can have statistical outliers that can be both unique and contradictory or one of them. For example, a hypothetical account which describes the beast as displaying a forked tongue like a snake would be unique but not contrary as no one else has given an account which could contradict it.

However, if someone described a creature which had only two fore-flippers and no rear flippers would not only be unique but contrary to the general eyewitness accounts suggesting four limbs. A claim of a ninety foot creature does not disallow smaller creatures of thirty to forty feet and the converse would be true. But, no one else has ever described such a huge creature which begs the question how it managed to evade the sight of everyone else for the last hundred years?

This suggests Mr. MacDonald got this estimate wrong and we should not add the likelihood of a hundred foot creature to our theoretical frameworks for the creature. Nevertheless, what is merely being said is that the tail should not wag the dog, so to speak. If further analysis suggests he may be right, it should not be shot down in an uncritical manner.

We then move onto a younger eyewitness by the name of Patrick MacDonald who is shown below being interviewed by John Pudney. We are told by the Radio Times that he only saw the monster for a few seconds, but like Mr. Wedge, I cannot find the lad's account anywhere, though it may yet languish in a remote newspaper article somewhere. However, he is on the audio excerpt and it turns out he is the son of Donald MacDonald and he saw the creature as it were looking like "an island" in the water before submerging.

Finally, in terms of eyewitnesses, we have no such problem with John MacLean and his twenty yard sighting from June 1938, which is well covered in the literature. But we have already covered the revealing picture below in this previous article, so we will not dwell further on it except to say he is also on our radio excerpt from the BBC website and it would have been recorded only weeks after his sighting.You can see John being interview by the BBC journalist, John Pudney, below.

Such were the accounts and the BBC report is an important part of the Loch Ness Monster archive and I am glad it is preserved, though how one can get to hear all of it is another matter. Which brings us onto the matter of Alex Campbell. You can see him on the right talking to one of the BBC technicians in the recording van from the Radio Times article and is likely the oldest picture of him. Alex is presented in the programme as the journalist who was the first to report on the reappearance of the monster in 1933.

In the BBC website audio excerpts you can hear him talking about his involvement:

I knew it was a good story, something quite out of the ordinary. I puzzled my brains on only one point. In what word could I refer to the creature? At last, monster suggested itself and that is how I introduced the "Loch Ness Monster" to the newspaper world.

Now how does this figure in the history of Alex Campbell? I have not heard all the 1938 programme and add that as a caveat, but it is to be noted that Alex Campbell is not mentioned as an eyewitness, which suggests he was still sticking to the script that his neck and hump sighting of September 1933 was only cormorants to keep his monster-averse employers happy their important Loch Ness water bailiff was not off his rocker. However, this account shows that he was content to be revealed as the journalist who reported on these matters.

When was the earliest date we know he felt safe to admit he had seen the monster? One date is suggested by the Time Magazine dated October 8th, 1951. It reported on a recent TV programme also made by the BBC which styled the question of the monster's existence as a courtroom drama in which various witnesses were called before a judge. One of those witnesses was Alex Campbell who declared "I have seen it myself". What account that was I cannot tell.

Constance Whyte recounts in her book six years later that Campbell admitted to six sightings but there is an anomaly in the same book as his first sighting is recounted anonymously, presumably at his request. So perhaps even then he was not as open and transparent as he may have wished to be. 

So the BBC went to Loch Ness in 1938. They recorded eyewitnesses for their descendants to hear a lifetime later and I wonder what they would have made of that. Like that generation, the monsters seen are likely dead now. We seek their descendants also.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Otterly Ridiculous

 

Back in January, I wrote a piece on the famous close up sighting by John MacLean and how new information concluded he was very unlikely to be fooled by what his critics claim was just an otter. That article is here and I always thought it was a bit ridiculous that an experienced observer such as John would mistake a three foot otter for an animal estimated to be twenty foot long. 

So it was no surprise that despite writing that piece that one of the regular naysayers popped up on Facebook a week or so ago claiming ... it was just an otter. Perhaps they believe that repeatedly saying these things make them true. One person replied saying he saw some otters at Loch Ness recently and they are easily recognisable. But since sceptics proclaim there is no Loch Ness Monster, no matter what anyone says, it has to be something else. 

So it was by a convenient coincidence that three otters were recently spotted in the River Ness which flows north from the loch. If you go to the Press and Journal link, you can see a video of them cavorting or feeding in the river. The river is about two hundred feet wide at this point which puts these otters about the same distance as the creature seen by John MacLean. A snapshot below shows one of them breaching the water.

The similar distance is where the similarities end as the movement of the otters popping in and out of the water rapidly is nothing like John MacLean's 20 footer. Of course, they were recognised as otters and that is no surprise. They look rather small and that is because they are rather small. Yet somehow if they are transported ten miles down to the loch, they magically become monsters. Watch the video and tell me how these can be re-imagined as twenty foot monsters?

So, sceptics, please stop insulting the intelligence of numerous eyewitnesses with your condescending views about their observational skills. Why don't you just say what you want to say and call some of them liars instead of nonsense about otters, seals or deer? We can concur with you if such observations were made at a mile away or for two seconds or in fog or heavy rain. But then again, no one is going to see an otter at a mile away. Sixty feet? That is a different matter.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Books on Nessie and Sea Serpents

 

It has been a while since a Nessie book has been published. The last two were in 2019 and nothing in 2020, which was a bit of a surprise considering the extra time people had on their time during various coronavirus lockdowns. But Ken Gerhard was at work in 2020 researching his own Essential Guide to the Loch Ness Monster with a foreword by Steve Feltham. The promotional text on amazon.co.uk read thus:

For centuries, the Scottish Highlanders have told of great water beasts said to inhabit particular lochs and burns. The most famous of these is, of course, the Loch Ness Monster, or ‘Nessie,’ said to be twenty to forty feet long – far larger than any freshwater animal known to exist in the murky, fathomless lake. In this essential primer, world famous cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard presents the most accurate and indispensable information that’s been gathered with regard to the Loch Ness Monster – the best evidence supporting its existence, consensus expert opinions up to this point, the most compelling encounters, and really everything you need to know about the subject in order to become Nessie knowledgeable.

In addition, Gerhard discusses other celebrated aquatic cryptids, including Champ, Ogopogo, and so-called sea serpents. The reader will get answers to questions such as: Could they really exist? What do they look like? How many are there? Are they dangerous? Where are the remains? Finally, Ken makes an argument that these elusive creatures may be descended from a line of ancient whales, believed to have gone extinct millions of years ago. For centuries, the Scottish Highlanders have told of great water beasts said to inhabit particular lochs and burns. The most famous of these is, of course, the Loch Ness Monster, or ‘Nessie,’ said to be twenty to forty feet long – far larger than any freshwater animal known to exist in the murky, fathomless lake.

In this essential primer, world famous cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard presents the most accurate and indispensable information that’s been gathered with regard to the Loch Ness Monster – the best evidence supporting its existence, consensus expert opinions up to this point, the most compelling encounters, and really everything you need to know about the subject in order to become Nessie knowledgeable. In addition, Gerhard discusses other celebrated aquatic cryptids, including Champ, Ogopogo, and so-called sea serpents. The reader will get answers to questions such as: Could they really exist? What do they look like? How many are there? Are they dangerous? Where are the remains?

Finally, Ken makes an argument that these elusive creatures may be descended from a line of ancient whales, believed to have gone extinct millions of years ago. For centuries, the Scottish Highlanders have told of great water beasts said to inhabit particular lochs and burns. The most famous of these is, of course, the Loch Ness Monster, or ‘Nessie,’ said to be twenty to forty feet long – far larger than any freshwater animal known to exist in the murky, fathomless lake. In this essential primer, world famous cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard presents the most accurate and indispensable information that’s been gathered with regard to the Loch Ness Monster – the best evidence supporting its existence, consensus expert opinions up to this point, the most compelling encounters, and really everything you need to know about the subject in order to become Nessie knowledgeable.

In addition, Gerhard discusses other celebrated aquatic cryptids, including Champ, Ogopogo, and so-called sea serpents. The reader will get answers to questions such as: Could they really exist? What do they look like? How many are there? Are they dangerous? Where are the remains? Finally, Ken makes an argument that these elusive creatures may be descended from a line of ancient whales, believed to have gone extinct millions of years ago.

Now Ken is better known for his other cryptozoological adventures in North America and beyond, but he has turned his investigative eye to Scotland as well as some other lake cryptids. His theory that the monster may be a descendant of some ancient whales reminds me of Roy Mackal's zeuglodons, which he favoured at some point, so it does have some pedigree behind it. I am not inclined to that idea myself, but I will hear him out when I get a copy of the book. 

Looking at the preview on Amazon, the book actually extensively covers the whole range of sea and lake cryptids and so is not purely a book on the Loch Ness Monster, I would say just under 30% is devoted to my favourite cryptid. Ken did communicate with me by email asking questions which I was happy to answer and I know he is a believer in the beast, so he is off to a good start.

In the meantime, I note his arty cover bears a resemblance to this one from the 1970s. Both nice pieces of Nessie artwork and Ken's book is also on amazon.com.

A second book which has come to my attention is "Sun, Sand and Sea Serpents" by David Goudsward which focuses on the seas around Florida and the Caribbean. I hope to dip into that book at various points and its back cover text reads from amazon.com:

Ever since Columbus spotted mermaids, sea monsters, and mystery lizards in the New World, sightings of a diverse array of marine cryptids have continued unabated in the waters of Florida, the Southeastern coast, and the Caribbean. Dinosaurs, mermaids, and sea serpents in a range of colors and lengths, along with monster sharks, mystery seals, and giant penguins, all seem to have made the tourist-friendly waters of the region their home. In Florida, it became a running joke that the tourist season officially started when the first sea serpent report appeared in the newspapers.

What's behind all the reports? Hoaxes? Some certainly are. Yellow journalism? Yes, sometimes. Misidentifications? It's pretty common. A way to drum up business?  Shocking, but true. But in that mix, there are probably some unidentified animals as well. David Goudsward digs up the original sources and interviews to sort fact from fiction, and tells some fascinating stories along the way. 

Certain cases I will be reading up on are the famous Pensacola case of 1962 which alleged some fatalities. This case grabbed my attention as a youth back in the 1970s when I read it in Dinsdale's "The Leviathans", if I recall correctly. The case of the three toed monster also has my attention as I believe the Loch Ness Monster is three toed, although I suspect our American three toes has some deception involved.

So, plenty of reading ahead of me in the months ahead.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Long Necks of 22nd September 1933

 

Illustrated London News 13th January 1934

Was Friday the 22nd of September 1933 an auspicious day for Monster Lore when something happened for the first time? According to Loch Ness expert, Adrian Shine, this was when the classic long neck made its first appearance in the loch waters (see link). Sure, some couple from London had previously reported a grotesque sight with a writhing neck on land, but in the monster's prime domain, it had finally raised its imposing long neck and small head.

And not only that, witnesses were treated to not one but three reports of long necks that day. Or was it one long neck? The story begins at about 9:30 in the morning. Water Bailiff, Alex Campbell looked out on the loch from near his cottage to behold a sight he later described as prehistoric. 

Suddenly my attention was drawn to a strange object that seemed to shoot out of the calm waters almost opposite the Abbey boathouse ... the swan like neck reached six feet or so above the water at its highest point, and the body, a darkish grey glistening with moisture was at least 30 ft. long. I gauged this carefully in my mind's eye by placing two ordinary rowing boats of 15 ft. overall length end to end, and I don't think I was far wrong, because I have had lots of experience of that sort of thing, because I have lived on the shores of the loch all my life - apart from the last war years.

Still watching and wondering if I would have time to run for my camera, I heard the noise of the engines of two herring drifters (they call them trawlers in England) which were proceeding down the lower basin of the Caledonian Canal, which enters the loch almost alongside the Abbey boathouse. The animal certainly must have heard, or sensed, the approach of these vessels too, for I saw it turn its head in an apprehensive way, this way and that, and, apparently being timid, it then sank rapidly out of sight, lowering the neck in doing so, and leaving a considerable disturbance on the mirror-like surface of the loch. The animal would have been some 400 yards from where I stood, possibly less, and I had a very clear view of it which lasted several minutes.

The sketch above of what Campbell saw was drawn for reporters who came up some weeks later. But the monster was not finished for the day as it submerged and swam up the loch in close tandem with the two trawlers, apparently not so frightened by them as it kept to its natural element deep below. By 11 o'clock in the morning, one and a half hours later, it stopped and surfaced for whatever reason these dark denizens feel the compulsion to stop. This was just north of the village of Invermoriston almost in a line with the Halfway House, a tea room built by the Altsigh river to take advantage of the increased traffic on the now widened and improved Inverness road. That's about seven and a half miles from Fort Augustus as the monster put in a leisurely four and a half knots (about 5 mph).

Time for another display as more than half a dozen witnesses stopped their activities to gaze from the balcony upon this awesome sight as the sun continued to shine brightly upon a calm loch. The Inverness Courier reported the events four days later as follows:

Miss Fraser, the proprietrix of the tea room, the "Halfway House," which occupies an excellent position overlooking the loch. near Altsigh. told a Courier representative that on Friday, about noon, she and upwards of half-a-dozen people, including two ladies from the Parsonage, Glen Urquhart, who were having tea at the time, watched the creature disport itself for almost fifteen minutes. The loch being dead calm and the sun shining strongly, they watched the "monster" raise its head, then its back (which seemed to consist of two very pronounced "humps") above the surface of the water, and calmly proceeded to amuse itself by swimming about the loch.

Two steam drifters, which were passing, did not appear to cause the creature any concern, and from this it seems possible that the "monster" is now becoming quite reconciled to their presence, for up to within the past few weeks its always seemed to take fright and disappear on the slightest provocation. 

Other eyewitnesses were Mr and Mrs Simpson, who live at Altsigh, and their daughters and Mr George Macqueen, an A.A. scout, who patrols the Fort Augustus-Invermoriston road, and who saw the creature opposite Port Clair. Mr Macqueen said that when he saw the "monster" it was just like an upturned rowing-boat but it was travelling at a great speed.

It is interesting to note that on almost every occasion on which the "monster" been seen the weather conditions were the same as on Friday - calm and bright. It would be interesting to learn whether the crews of the drifters which were proceeding to Inverness noticed the "monster" on Friday, as the Altsigh witnesses think that they could not possibly failed to have seen it.

Miss Fraser's Sketch

Miss Howden's Sketch

Mrs Fraser's Sketch

To these we can add the following sketch done for The Scotsman newspaper dated 15th November 1933 where one of the Halfway House ladies describes a frill or mane attached to the neck.

Lt. Cmdr. Rupert T. Gould tells us in his 1934 work on the monster that the creature was about 1000 yards from the witnesses, or about halfway across the loch and somewhat to their right with the sun behind the creature. Eyewitness sketches are shown above and his interview with some of them adds more detail and he refers, as usual, to the monster as "X":

[X] remained in view - without much change of position, but rising and sinking slightly from time to time - for some ten minutes. The head and neck rose almost vertically out of the water. Miss Fraser concentrated her attention upon these; and their general appearance, by her account, was that of "a mythical creature." The head was slightly "dished" - "like a terrier's," she put it - in front; and at the junction of the head and neck, when facing her, she noticed a kind of frill, which she described as like "a pair of kippered herrings."

She also noticed what appeared to be a large glittering circular eye in the head, in the position in which one would expect an eye to be situated. X moved its head from side to side, and the "eye " appeared to move with the head. [I am of opinion that this "eye" was produced by irradiation, or reflection - see above, as to the sun's position.] The head and neck rose and sank periodically; moving more or less vertically in doing so.

Miss Fraser only remarked the head and neck; but Miss Howden also noticed two humps, and " something indefinite" which might be a "tail." The colour of head, neck and humps was dark; but in the bright sunlight it might have been anything from dark-brown to dark-grey. Mrs. G. Fraser also saw the head and neck, two humps and an indefinite tail. She first noticed a splashing in the water, at one end of what appeared to be a "long stretch of glittering silver," showing up against the (comparatively) dark surface of the water.

Then the head and neck rose slowly out of the water at the opposite end, remained in view for a minute or so, and then sank. They reappeared, and slowly rose higher, than before, while two humps appeared close behind them. The splashing from the tail end had ceased by this time, but the " silver streak " was still visible. The head turned slowly from side to side. X did not appear to be discomposed by a vessel passing on the far side of the Loch, but ultimately headed towards Invermoriston, moving quite slowly. 

It finally sank and did not reappear, having been almost continuously in view for over a quarter of an hour. Mrs. Hobbes (and a friend, Miss Mullock) saw what she described as "two shining eyes, separated by a dark perpendicular line." She took it, at first, for a steamboat with its lights showing. They left the balcony, and drove in their car to a point from which they hoped to get a closer view; but by that time X had finally submerged.

Mrs. Fraser told Gould that she noticed one of our trawlers near the monster but Gould failed to track down the vessel. The Monster pressed on northwards, leaving a clutch of bemused people in its wake. Three hours later, at about 2 pm, it was the turn  of Mr. D. W. Morrison and others to be dazzled. These people were at the Balnafoich residence perched high on a hill near Dores. The house was about 600 yards from the shore and 250 feet above the loch. The animal was a similar distance from their shore as the sun continued to shine and it was at the end of its hike, turning back the way it came. Gould continues again, quoting Morrison's letter to him:

It was heading towards Fort Augustus, and passed in front of the observers, from right to left, at a speed of some 15 miles per hour (13 knots). At its nearest approach, it was roughly 950 yards away; and it submerged when approximately 2,200 yards 241° from Balnafoich, having been in sight for some four minutes.

When it sank, a trawler was in sight about a mile away, steaming towards Inverness along the far side of the Loch. X looked like " a huge caterpillar," and appeared to move "with an up-and-down motion, and not the lateral motion you would expect in a giant eel. ... The portion of the body above water was in a series of humps, with water spaces in between. I should say that there were about seven humps, some possibly two feet above the water-line, and with Nos. 3, 4 and 5 more prominent than the others as if indicating the larger girth of the body amidships

I regret that I am unable to say how these portions of body compare in proportion with the water spaces, and there is no point in my guessing. My drawing, however, seems to represent it fairly, as I saw it. The head I should describe as 'snake-like,' similar to an adder and tapering. It would, however, be approximately the same bore as the neck, which appeared to be at right angles with the water when raised. . . . The head was not apparent unless raised. ... My camera had been left in my car at the top of the drive - about 300 yards away. ... I debated fetching it, but was unwilling to give up my view of the creature, which might in the meantime have disappeared, and again I knew that at that distance it would have appeared only as a speck, if that." 

Altsigh to a point parallel to Balnafoich is 12.5 miles, so our creature was again averaging about four knots (4.5 mph). It is at least consistent in this one thing, though it put in a final spurt of 16 mph according to Mr. Morrison. In some ways, this day was the real debut of the Loch Ness Monster - in terms of its iconic pose, thrice seen for emphasis. Within a short time, the national press was picking up the story and sending their journalists north. The legend was beginning to solidify into a certain form.

COMMENTS

The location of each sighting is denoted on the map below from Alex Campbell's at the bottom to D. W. Morrison's at the top with their times in parentheses. The question you may be asking is whether this was indeed the adventures of one large thirty foot creature? 

The main objection leveled against this view would be that the sketches of the eyewitnesses look different enough to suggest different creatures. However, when one considers that the four different sketches to the Halfway House incident refer to the same creature, then this argument is not compelling. If eyewitnesses to one event cannot produce the exact same sketch, then why should others to potentially the same creature at other locations and times?

I would further suggest that if the witnesses were asked to sketch the boats which were in the vicinity of their sightings, these would be recognisable as boats, but they too would have degrees of variation to them. Such is the imperfection of eyewitness testimony; but let us not allow the sceptics to own this subject. Yes, eyewitnesses are imperfect recording machines, but not to the extent scepticism wishes to impose upon them. At 400, 1000 and 1250 yards respectively, there is certainly increasing scope for some error. But we must also remember that the presence of the trawlers in all three events provided useful frames of references for our eyewitnesses to make a determination of the large size of the creature.

But what about the sketch by Mr. Morrison which shows six humps? It is perfectly acceptable for us to go from Campbell's single hump to Howden's two humps, but reconfiguring from two to seven seems a stretch. I thought about this and noted that Morrison's sighting was the furthest at over 1200 yards. Was it possible he had misinterpreted some of the water turbulence behind the monster as low lying humps? I think that is a possibility, though what was behind the long neck could also have been a combination of one or two humps with waves.

Then we come to the matter of Alex Campbell. Poor old Alex Campbell, he does get some flak from the critics. When Adrian Shine stated that this was the first long neck in water event, he was referring to the women at the Halfway House as the first witnesses to the long neck of Nessie in her natural habitat, he would have discounted Campbell's account as cormorant misidentification, because that is what Campbell himself admitted to at one point before recanting. Mind you, Adrian would be classing every other sighting that day as misidentification.

Constance Whyte's 1957 recounting of Campbell's sighting places it on our date of 22nd September. The fact that he mentions two trawlers and the Inverness Courier account from the Halfway House also mentions two trawlers tends to corroborate this date. So Alex Campbell appears to be the first person to see a long neck in water, perhaps. I have written a previous article on Alex Campbell's sighting and why it should not be dismissed at this link. 

AND FINALLY

Having noted Adrian's statement that the women at the Halfway House were the first witnesses to a long neck in the loch and my counter that Alex Campbell claims the prize, it turns out we are both wrong. As I came to the end of this article, I double checked some old paper printouts I had made from the microfilm rolls of the Inverness Courier held by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. A clipping was discovered from the 2nd September, which relates how Mrs Barbara Macdonell and Mrs. A. Sutherland at Port Clair watched a 30 foot creature from less than one hundred yards away with a huge flat head and "wriggly" neck plus a single humped back.

So the prize goes to to these two ladies, but it only takes a little gloss off that special day about three weeks later when the Loch Ness Monster went on a tour of the loch before a dozen or more gaping humans. The earlier sighting was just a dress rehearsal, the big show came on the 22nd September.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

More on the Rip Hepple Nessletter Archives

 

As readers will know, a digitized archive of Rip Hepple's Nessletter has been available on this blog for some years, all you do is click on "Rip Hepple Newsletter" to the right. But recently I have been talking with Isaac Koi about getting another site to run these letters. That is the Swedish Archives For the Unexplained who asked if Rip's Nessletter could also be put online.

Naturally, that required Rip's permission who I put in contact with them and he gave them the nod not too long ago. Rip also said that the remainder of his newsletters run which I have not published could be done by both of us. The current run on this blog comprises issues 1 to 120 in 1995, but I will add the rest in due time, but they can be viewed at the AFU. So, follow this link to access Rip's archive at the AFU or follow them here, that's your choice.

Thankfully, a full hard copy set of the Nessletter is also held by the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. So it looks like all the bases are covered to preserve this important work. What we now need is a subject index, which is something I have been working on and off for some time.

It is uncertain whether there will be another Nessletter, so again we thank Rip for those Ness Information Service newsletters which he faithfully produced for over forty years. They were initially written to plug the gap left by the dissolution of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, but they went beyond that plugging a general gap in Loch Ness Monster news and views as that generation of monster hunters disappeared and their books with them.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Interesting Blog on Nessie Postcards

I am an avid collector of postcards to do with the Loch Ness Monster and general views of the loch from the Castle and all along the shore. The way our favourite beast is depicted is a source of amusement with a tinge of sociology thrown in while the places shown from over a century old give some insight into olden days. They can also come in useful for research when considering eyewitness locations from the past.

So Leigh Penman emailed me to tell me about a new blog on Nessie related postcards he has started with discussions on selected postcards. If you are interested in such postcards and the history behind them then have a look, his blog is at this link.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Nessie Turtle Theory

My fellow Nessie believer, Henry Bauer, has been in the news recently as his latest views on what the Loch Ness Monster could be has gained some attention. Henry has moved away from the popular plesiosaur theory to consider whether the monster could be an ancient, unknown species of the giant turtle. Henry actually published this theory as a paper back in March 2020 for the Journal of Scientific Exploration and you can read his original paper here. 

Now as to the actual theory, the idea that Nessie could be some large form of sea-going turtle has been going around since the very first year of 1933 (see link). When Hugh Gray's famous photograph was published in the Scottish Daily Record, a Major Meikle wrote to the 8th December 1933 edition of the paper commenting on how much the hump and the head to the right of the picture looked like a "leathery or green turtle". He differed from Henry in that he thought a known species of turtle was sufficient to explain the new story from Loch Ness.

Now one could imagine that the head in the Gray picture (below) could resemble a turtle's head, though my own preference is fish like. However, the tail to the left is much longer than any known species of turtles swimming the seas just now. Nevertheless, it is an unknown species of turtle with some adaptions over the vast ages that Henry has more in mind.

Back in 2013, I also wrote on a TV documentary entitled "The Loch Ness Monster Revealed" from the Discovery Channel which speculated upon a possible variant of turtle that was dubbed the plesio-turtle which sounded more like Henry's speculated beast. They produced the theoretical image below with the outstretched neck which did not look that different from some known species such as the snake necked turtle (below). One has to be reminded that though such species have Nessie like features, they are significantly smaller than our denizen of the loch.

Other factors in this hypothetical turtle's favour are the long times they can spend underwater, even absorbing oxygen from the surrounding water and controlling their metabolism to even hibernating underwater. The high oxygen content of the loch also favour creatures who employ such biological devices. The fact that we do have very large turtles in the fossil record also confirms that no unrealistic gigantism is required as we see applied to other theories. This is demonstrated in the photograph at the top of the page which shows a fossil skeleton of the extinct species Archelon which grew to at least fifteen feet long.

However, like all theories (including sceptical ones), there are drawbacks. Turtles lay eggs and go ashore to lay them in often large numbers. No such activity has ever been witnessed of the Loch Ness Monster. Indeed, it is doubtful that any that could be construed as reproductive has ever been observed with any certainty.

Obviously, no eggs have been found or the mystery would have been solved by now. It could be counter proposed that such a cryptid turtle gives birth to live young but since all known turtles lay eggs, this would seem a drastic departure. It may be suggested, like our snake necked turtle above, that it could lay eggs in the waters of the loch. The problem here is that the snake necked turtle lives in the warm waters of Australia. It is unlikely a developing egg could survive in the cold waters of Loch Ness.

The other issue is that the recent eDNA study by Professor Neil Gemmell revealed no reptile DNA, let alone turtle DNA. Henry takes hope in the 25% of DNA samples that were not readily identified with any species from the genome database. That may be true, though the fact that less samples were taken at the lowest depths of 200 metres may be a better explanation.

One could go on further about shape changing humps, long necks with non-turtle heads and three toed limbs but the truth of the matter is that no theory fully explains all the features described. The turtle theory is at no disadvantage there compared to other theories and doubtless is ahead of others. But we have a eyewitness database which will contain misidentifications and hoaxes which only muddy the waters. To that we can add those genuine eyewitnesses to a genuine monster which imperfectly describe what they see. How that is handled is entirely down to each investigator and their own combination of skill and bias.

I certainly prefer the giant turtle theory to the giant eel theory but still have my doubts when I compare it to the AAA sightings. For example, our last article on the John MacLean sighting, would a giant turtle fit all that went on there? My thinking is that it would not.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com