The Latest Nessie Sighting (August 2011)

Witnesses: Diane Blackmore
Date: 28th August 2011
Location: Near Lochend
Time: 1000

The sighting reports continue this year with an experience recounted to me by Diane Blackmore. She found my blog having returned home from her Scottish holiday and decided to email her story to me.

Following on from the Hargreaves head and neck encounter in June, Diane also spotted Nessie in her famous pose whilst she was travelling from Nairn to Skye on a bus tour. Her encounter is that bit more unique because she saw the creature face on whereas most such sightings strike a side on pose.

To begin her story, she was at the rear of the bus and looking out over the loch on an overcast day but with no particular thoughts about "Nessie Spotting". In her own words, she describes what happened after Loch Ness came into view southbound on the A82 but still a few miles from the Clansman Hotel:

I was looking out the window keeping my gaze on the water when in the distance I saw the typical body and neck and head of Nessie. She appeared to be emerging out of the water as I saw splashing around her. She appeared to be shiny black in the sun. (Though I know it wasn't a sunny day.)

Adding to the detail about movement:

I saw some splashing like the effect of movement gone on before but I didn't note movement.

The bus continued on its journey as she gazed at this intriguing spectacle which was soon out of sight:

It was all over in a few seconds but I know what I saw. It appeared rounded .... would have to be a blow up model if at all ... but it appeared moving and alive.

I do know that it appeared to be a living creature though, not a wave or a log.

I emailed Diane back for further details and to ascertain some more facts about the event. The location of the sighting was right at the top of the loch which is much narrower than the main body of the loch. She also said that the creature was three quarters of the way across the loch from her which would place the distance at about 350m-400m depending on the exact location.

Based on that information and the fact that she stated that the Clansman Hotel was another ten minutes away after the sighting, the map below speculates on the probable position of the creature.

I asked Diane to supply a picture of what she saw and two were sent to me. The first is how she saw it from the distance stated and she estimated it was 1.5m to 2m out of the water.

And the second picture below is her impression of how the creature may have looked closer up. I asked her about facial features:

I can't say for certain that there were eyes though I did suggest them in the drawing. I was given the impression in the short time that there was a face though so I must have seen eyes and a mouth.

As to what it may have been, she was convinced it was a living creature and not something like a wave or log. I further enquired as to whether it could have been a bird she was looking at. The reply was decisive:

As to it being a bird, well I wouldn't want it landing on my roof! It was a bird x 1000!

At a range of 350 metres or more, I suspect she is right. A bird at such a distance is hardly likely to excite an observer.

And so the sighting ended. Being a shy person, she didn't want to shout out and risk an accident with the bus and when she told the other tourists, some suggested she had too much of the distillery samples but a few accepted her testimony (and, no, she was not drunk!). It is to be noted that Diane saw the creature in between shrub like trees - which would partly explain why others were not so quick to see it.

So what did Diane see? Was it the famous denizen of Loch Ness or something more mundane? Naturally, the skeptically minded will say "bird" because of the long neck. In that regard, a big, impressive picture of a bird like a cormorant is normally shown at this point - like the one below.

And the consensus would be, "Oh Yeah, big bird, easy to mistake for monster ..." and so on. But then you produce a picture of a cormorant perched on the old pier at Dores:

This bird is probably about 20 metres away and is, errm, tiny. What would it look like twenty times further away? I am not really sure, because I probably wouldn't even see it! Impressive close up, nothing far away.

Now since this sighting occurred not far from Greta Finlay's famous sighting, someone who is skeptical may suggest it was a deer out for a swim. Well, apart from deer being reddish-brown and not being black and shiny, their heads protrude forwards instead of upwards when swimming.


And swim it must at that place in the loch or it will inconveniently descend to the bottom. And, yes, those give away ears do stick out a bit.

Perhaps it was one of these very rare excursion by seals into the loch? With that long neck, one is doubtful of that.

But this sighting raises a question that is often seen in Loch Ness Monster reports - how does the creature achieve such high buoyancy? By that I mean, how does it raise itself so far out of the water? What we read here is only part of this buoyancy question as the beast is extremely adept at both rising and falling in a vertical manner.

Typical reports would speak of a hump and/or neck rising and falling effortlessly. Sometimes this could be accompanied by a "boiling" effect of the water or no obvious turbulence.

Tim Dinsdale considered this question and put it down to either displacement of water upwards and downwards by flippers, altering its specific gravity (i.e. density) or altering its displacement (i.e. changing its shape in relation to the amount of water it displaced).

Tim was more inclined to the third option. The unknown factor is how much of the creature is below the water in relation to what is above and what is the average density of what is below in comparison to what is above water.

Quite possibly, the creature has a degree of bodily contraction and expansion plus a gas-based buoyancy organ that combine to allow these feats of movement. Proving that requires a live or dead specimen, until then we move in the realms of speculation!

UPDATE: I have been told that the object in question may have been a buoy that floats on the Aldourie side of the top end of the loch. It is green-blue in colour and its dimensions are similar to what was seen. Whether our witness saw the buoy before the creature, I am not sure but you can add this observation into the mixer and form your own opinion. I continue to investigate whether this is indeed a viable explanation in the context of the witness' location and description.

Iconic Nessie Painting for sale

Anyone who has a passing interest in the Loch Ness Monster is bound to recognise this picture below.


It is the famous painting by Sir Peter Scott of "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx" and was created shortly after the media circus over the 1975 Rines pictures. I think he first gave it the quaint title "Courtship in Loch Ness".

This is the actual original painting as I photographed it at Torosay Castle back in 2008. You can read my blog about that visit here. It is now in the possession of Chris James, son of the late David James who was co-founder of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. Torosay Castle was the home of David James and for some years was also open to the public - hence my visit.

However, the place is now up for sale and that includes this painting. I was in contact with Chris James and he revealed that the plan is for the painting to go up for auction at Christies on January the 22nd next year. You can go to christies.com to view the item when the time approaches for the auction.

Fancy owning a piece of Loch Ness history? Then prepare to bid in a few months time!

The Legacy of Past Nessie Researchers

I was in communication with a fellow Loch Ness Monster enthusiast recently about an aspect of Loch Ness research that barely gets a mention in the general discussion and that is the legacy of past researchers.

We can list the honoured people who dedicated years if not decades in the pursuit of this mystery who are no longer with us. I think primarily of Rupert T. Gould, Constance Whyte, Tim Dinsdale and F. W. Holiday and others. But there will be the lesser known people who gathered material on Loch Ness but never went to print with them. We also have the groups such as the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau which has long disbanded.

Yes, we have the books, newspaper articles and magazine features but what about their private collection of material? We can be sure that not everything of interest made it into their books and we can be sure that items continued to be gathered after their last publications and before their death or disbanding.

I have queried various national library catalogues with no indication that any works were deposited with these publicly accessible organisations. Admittedly, some collections will still be held by the family of the deceased. Some will not be considered significant enough to be put in the vaults of these places while some were sadly destroyed or lost when the estate of the deceased was distributed.

I have hopes that the works of Rupert Gould on the Loch Ness Monster will be hidden amongst his other notable horological items. I suspect these may be in the British Library or some other archive in the London area.

I am optimistic that Tim Dinsdale's works are still with his family and well preserved.

Constance Whyte's works are a mystery as they seem to have been bequeathed to someone but have been subsequently lost. This needs clarification.

F. W. Holiday's works are a mystery too. He died unmarried and without children as far as I know. I have a theory as to where they are now but again this needs clarification.

But the biggest question mark is the whereabouts and accessibility of the materials gathered between 1962 and 1972 by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. I suspect some material may be held at the Loch Ness Centre in Drumnadrochit but they need to confirm that. A lot of material may have been distributed to individuals on their closure. The point I want to make is that the LNIB materials ought to be made publicly accessible to all researchers.

If the mission statement of such founder members as David James and Constance Whyte was :

"To study Loch Ness to identify the creature known as the Loch Ness Monster or determine the causes of reports of it."

Then who are the successors of the LNIB and on whom does the mantle now fall? Certainly not any one individual but I would suggest anyone with a serious interest in the subject - be they on the "skeptics" or "believers" side.

Meanwhile, access to private individual collections are a matter for the new owners to consider. Do they let these items of potential importance lie in a dark corner of an attic until they decay or are thrown away? Must a new generation of researchers have this information lost forever or have to go through the exertions of re-discovering old knowledge again?

Finally, I am not addressing the matter of how these materials are made accessible. It is unlikely that much of these items are digitised or ready for email and the web. It may be that one has to physically travel to see such material. It may be a matter of someone volunteering of their time to scan and collate documents. The point of this posting is the matter of being granted access in the first place.

The legacy of the Loch Ness mystery should be made available to those who can take it further. If anyone has such a collection, I ask them to contact me about what they have!

UPDATE:

Subject to confirmation, the state of ownership of various archives is:

LNIB: Loch Ness Centre under supervision of Adrian Shine (have asked for confirmation)

Tim Dinsdale: presumed held by family

Rupert T. Gould: presumed held by family

F. W. Holiday: Some or all of his material was held by Alastair Boyd

Constance Whyte: Held at one time by Nicholas Witchell (rumours of this being lost need to be confirmed/denied by Nicholas himself).

Nessie Simulacra

A reader sent me a link to a photograph he took at Fort Augustus of a Nessie-like tree branch.

Note the wide mouth, grinning teeth and bulbous eyes. Did anyone unwittingly file a report on this pseudo-monster? Not quite because it is still attached to a tree on dry ground. As we have pointed out before, logs and the like can fool some of the people some of the time. I actually thought of another monster when I saw the picture ...

The Secret of the Loch (1934)

Why this did not win the Oscar for Best Film in 1934 I'll never know. Actually, I do know, it's a pretty poor film technically. But in terms of Nessie films, it is a classic.

Cashing in on the Loch Ness Monster craze that started the year before, it began a line of Nessie films which persists to this day and still draw in cinema goers.

I got this film on DVD some years back and enjoyed it purely from a Nessie-phile point of view. The monster at the end seems to very much take its cue from the theories of Rupert T. Gould which is probably no surprise. The London Zoological Society are credited as advisors. As arch-Nessie skeptics, one can only wonder what they said to the film producers.

Anyway, I just found the whole film available on YouTube, so enjoy this piece of Loch Ness Lore and look out for David Lean as the film editor who went on to greater fame with "Lawrence of Arabia".

UPDATE: The link has been removed from YouTube, oh well. It may turn up again!
 

Classic Sightings - Gordon Powell

Date: June 21st 1936
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Urquhart Castle
Witnesses: Reverend Gordon Powell
Type of sighting: Head, neck and two humps in water

Following on from our tale of the monk and the monster, another man of the cloth is behind our latest classic sighting. This sighting is not one that can be found in the standard Nessie text books but it nevertheless has all the qualities that constitute a classic sighting as we shall relate.

In fact, this story may well have remained in a dark corner if it was not for the labours of Paul Cropper. Paul, though he believes there is something unexplained in Loch Ness is primarily a Yowie man. For those who wonder what a Yowie is, go to Paul's website at this link. The following transcript and photographs are under Paul's copyright.

Paul had heard that a man by the name of Gordon Powell in his native Australia had seen Nessie and made arrangements in 2001 to interview him about the sighting. By then, Rev Powell was long retired but the memory of the event was still there for Paul to record.

The Reverend Doctor Gordon Powell himself was born in 1911 and was ordained into the ministry in 1938. It was a scholarship to Glasgow University in 1935 that brought him to Scotland. He went on to a successful ministry in Sydney as well as a popular radio ministry. He died in 2005 aged 94.

Gordon Powell begins with the background to the sighting in 1936:

I was a student at Glasgow University at the time and I was with two other students. We were on a camping trip around Scotland and we’d camped beside Urquhart Castle. And one of the significant things I found in investigating the whole thing was that the local people have a superstition that Nessie brings bad luck and the only way to avoid it is to not talk about seeing it.

I took my wife back in 1960 and hoped that she would see it as I did. And I said to the young man in the Drumnadrochit Hotel, I’ve seen the Loch Ness monster and I was going on to explain I wanted my wife to see it. And he shook, he really trembled all over, he said “don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it”. And he refused to talk about it.

Well, by the extraordinary coincidence there had been a death in a family that morning, we were all theological students and we’d gone to church, and I’d say the service lasted from 11:00am ‘til after 3:00pm. It was a six monthly communion service and half in Gaelic and half in English.

And anyway, we met Mrs MacDonald who was distressed because her brother-in-law had died and she couldn’t get to the house. And the other two chaps offered to drive her there. And they left me alone. I was writing a letter home and I was sitting on the bank and it was a perfect day for the viewing.

The paragraph concerning his wife is a paranthetic about his second visit to Loch Ness in 1960 but I can concur with his statement about local fear of the monster having researched the Water Horse aspects of the creature for my book.

Then the Loch Ness Monster appeared to unsettle his quiet solitude.

The sun was behind me and the water was so calm that in Urquhart Bay it was like glass. And I happened to look up just in time to see a disturbance in this glassy area, and then a head came up like a calf. From that distance I couldn’t see any horns or ears, it was very smooth, the head, and a long neck. And then it looked just the one way and then looked straight towards me, and then it looked at what was ahead. And my theory is it spotted a school of salmon.

It was the salmon season of course, the middle of summer, and it chased something anyway, whether it was salmon or something else, at tremendous speed. And at least three humps came up, possibly a fourth, and there was a lot of spray. It was very much alive. It was very large. It swam very quickly, it bucketed along the surface very quickly and after … well I grabbed my camera and I took a picture after it had gone I suppose perhaps two or three hundred yards, and then it swam on for a similar distance and then dived.

I wrote in the letter a few minutes later that it looked like an enormous eel to me. But then I thought about all the spray that it sent up and I thought well an eel wouldn’t send up a lot of spray, something with flippers might do it. And well that was as I saw it then.

Wondering what he had seen, a subsequent visit to London helped form an opinion:

A week or two later or some … no, it was on the second trip I was in London and I went into the Victoria and Albert Museum and I didn’t know what I was going to see. But I went into one room and I gasped “..there’s Nessie!” It was a skeleton of a plesiosaurus and it had a long neck, a small head, a long tail and a big body with four flippers. And there it was in skeleton form. I don’t know if it was a plesiosaurus but it … some people say it could be. I suddenly thought well this is a … be surviving for about 50 million years.

Helpfully, Gordon drew a picture for Paul of what he had seen which is shown below with the man himself.


The form of the beast seen is very much the classic sighting - long neck, small head and a number of humps following. Paul asked for more details concerning the sighting. Powell said the creature emerged beyond the centre of the bay at over 500 yards and moved nearer until at the point of submerging for good, it was only 200 yards away.

The head and neck were visible mainly at 300 to 400 yards. The neck was estimated as six feet out of the water.

The duration of the sighting was put conservatively at between 30 and 60 seconds.

Gordon also mentioned that he took a photograph of the sighting. Did he capture the head, neck and three humps on film? The answer is "No" in the sense that no such detail is visible on the print but it is reproduced here for completeness. The arrow marked "1" is where the creature first appeared and "2" is where it was at the point of the picture being taken.

Mr. Powell supplied a better picture with further comments attached which we reproduce below.



So ends the story but I add my own research and thoughts at this point. Firstly, a trawl of newspaper archives revealed that this sighting had featured in a 1977 article on churchmen and monsters. The article is from the 7th September edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The text of his sighting is below which pretty much agrees with what he said to Paul Cropper 24 years later.

The water was calm like a mirror. Suddenly there was a bulge in the bay and this thing shot up; its neck was about six feet long and a foot thick. Its head was smooth, without horns, and reminded me of a calf. The body was dark brown or black. The creature looked around, dived, and swam at great speed towards the castle. There were three or four humps. I grabbed my camera and took a picture which showed the wake. My reactions had been slow because of the shock.

Reverend Powell then quotes Job 41:31 from the Bible concerning Leviathan:

He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

A fitting Biblical allusion to the power the Loch Ness Monster is said to exert on its surrounding waters.

One final comment by Gordon Powell in his interview with Paul led me down a final avenue of research. It was this comment:

Next day in the newspaper, three other people reported seeing what I saw at the same time in the same place.

Naturally, if one witness corroborates another's story then that lends weight to the overall testimony. Mr. Powell does not state what newspaper he read so some guesswork is involved here. I went to the Inverness Courier microfilm archives at the National Library of Scotland and examined the issues beyond the 21st June 1936.

As it turned out, the next edition of the paper on the Tuesday ran an article in which three reports of Nessie were claimed over that weekend. Two were on the Saturday but one was on the Sunday in which Mr. Powell claimed his sighting. The newspaper relates thusly:

One of the best views of the "Monster" was obtained on Sunday afternoon by Miss H. MacFie, 5 Porterfield Bank, Inverness, and Mr. J. Fraser, Firthview, Auldcastle Road, Inverness. They were cycling along the east side of the loch in the direction of Foyers, when suddenly they saw a large object rise about the middle of the loch and travel in the direction of Urquhart Castle.

Although a considerable distance away, both were certain it was the "Monster", for it created a great disturbance in the water by splashing. They watched its movements for fully four minutes before it ultimately stopped, and seemed gradually to sink below the surface.

It would seem that Mr. Powell's sighting took off from where Mr. Fraser's sighting finished as his creature headed off towards Urquhart Bay. The time of this sighting is merely stated as the afternoon which could place it anywhere between noon and 6pm (depending on how you define "afternoon"). So it is possible the two groups of witnesses were witnessing two parts of one overall Nessie journey.

An effort to resolve this matter further could be made by examining other Highland newspapers for that week since the Courier was not the only paper which took an interest in the Loch Ness Monster. I will update this posting if I find anything of interest.

But we are happy to add this "new" sighting of the Loch Ness Monster which lay hidden from the standard Nessie text books and web sites for years and again we thank Paul Cropper for his diligence in bringing it to our attention.

Spotting the Loch Ness Monster

You have arrived at Loch Ness. Perhaps you have come to admire the grandeur of Highland scenery, go fishing, visit relatives or are passing by on your way to the next town. Whatever your plans, you now have some time to scan the loch and perhaps see its famous resident.

But what are your chances of seeing Nessie? As it turns out, the probability is quite low of the Loch Ness Monster putting in a special appearance for you.

Various personalities associated with the Monster have had varying degrees of success.

Alex Campbell, who worked as a water bailiff for over forty years at Loch Ness claimed something like 17 sightings.

Winifred Cary who had a house overlooking Urquhart Bay claimed 16 sightings over 59 years.

Famous Nessie hunter Tim Dinsdale had a more meagre harvest of two sightings during his 25 years of searching.

Current resident Steve Feltham has watched the loch for nearly 20 years and has had only one instance of what may be a Nessie encounter.

Ted Holiday (who wrote The Great Orm of Loch Ness) claimed four sightings over 6 years.

And then you have the thousands of claimed sightings by people who perhaps visited the loch once for possibly only minutes but just happened to be the lucky "Nessie Lottery" winners.

The aforementioned Ted Holiday even calculated how long he had to watch the loch in order to see the beast arise. Based on his own logged hours and sightings this amounted to 600 hours of surface watching between sightings.

Applying that logic to Alex Campbell would have required him to have watched the loch for 1 hour per working day for 49 years to achieve his 17 sightings.

For Winifred Cary, it works out as 27 minutes per day for 59 years.

But it is not as simple as that for various factors apart from how long affect the seeing of the Loch Ness Monster.

First is the quality of observation as opposed to the quantity. Ted Holiday was an experienced watcher of Loch Ness. He scanned the visible area of the loch for signs of activity. He would use binoculars to focus on areas of interest. He had learned what was normal and could be ignored through over 1000 hours of observation.

Moreover he was focussed on the task at hand with no distractions (although things could get rather boring and the odd tea break and chat helped). Contrast this with the casual observer who glances at the loch, looks across a narrow range, is distracted by things around them, etc.

Then there is the quality of time itself in terms of when one is watching. Some think that the monster is more likely to be seen at dawn whilst other go for quiet dusk hours.

The place itself may be of importance as plotted sightings tend to congregate around spots such as Urquhart Bay. This is somewhat disputed as more people tend to stop there to view the castle, but certainly sightings are not uniformly spread out across the loch.

Then there is the quality of the environment as some think Nessie is quite noise sensitive and hence they go for the secluded watch spots on the southern shore away from noisy boats, cars and tourists.

So if you want the best chance of seeing Nessie, perhaps you need to rise at 5 am, park yourself on a secluded spot on the south side of the loch but with a decent vista and of course spend the whole day there with your sandwiches, binoculars and hopes ...