A sighting from 1954

The Daily Mail today relates an account from Loch Ness where an army major notes an encounter with the beast in his journal. The leading title says "Revealed after 72 years - the journal entry with extraordinary
eyewitness account of a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster" and goes on to say this before I hit the Daily Mail paywall:

It has lain largely forgotten and gathering dust for decades. The daily journal lovingly collated by Major Bill Davidson in the 1950s mainly recounts his successes or otherwise fishing the deep, dark waters of Loch Ness near his family home. Until you get to the…

I was intrigued to find out more and asked Google's AI search assistant to tell me more about the story. Obligingly it pierced the paywall and told me this:

In July 1954, an extraordinary eyewitness account of the Loch Ness Monster was recorded by Major Bill Davidson, an Army officer on leave from the King's Own Scottish Borderers. While staying at his family’s cottage near Urquhart Castle, Major Davidson, his mother Winifred Cary, and his sister Daphne observed an object in the water for roughly 20 minutes. His forgotten firsthand account, preserved in his personal fishing and game journal, was publicly revealed by his son, Bob Davidson:

"Saw the Loch Ness Monster for 20 minutes. No doubt about the speed and size of this thing. Like a huge snake's head sticking out of the water at half a mile's range. Sometimes diving, stopping and backtracking. Large Vee wake behind it. Last seen heading towards Dores several miles distant."

At the mention of Winifred Cary, it soon became apparent this was not a new sighting for it is related in the 1968 book, "The Great Monster Hunt" by David and Yvonne Cooke. They visited the Cary family at Loch Ness where Winifred recounted some of their past sightings including this one:

I didn't see anything again until a fortnight later, when my son Bill came up for a visit. He is in the Army, and he was on leave from his outfit. Bill was with me on the hill about half past nine in the morning, and we were just standing there looking at the loch, which was flat calm. As we were watching, this huge black thing just rose up out of the water right below us off Urquhart Castle. It was at least fifty or sixty feet long. We could judge the size because we know the castle is fifty feet high. In any case, we know the look of the fourteen-foot boats on the loch, and if you put three of them end to end it was still bigger than that.

The thing must have been at least four or five feet out of the water. It was just like the bottom of a turned-up boat. Bill said afterwards he thought he'd seen a head and neck when it first came up, but I couldn't say that I really did. I just saw this great hump, and as it came up there was this terrific commotion in the water and it just lay there. We stopped an AA man [British Automobile Association patrol-man] named MacIntosh, who was passing on his motorbike, and he came up and stood beside us and watched it as well.

Now assuming AI has not hallucinated the Daily Mail text (and I will update this article if necessary later), one account emphasizes the head and neck while the other focuses on the hump, but we now have some form of corroboration for the Winifred Cary account (I am not sure if there is an independent account by the AA patrolman). I was initially thrown by the story as how could Bill Davidson be the son of Winifred if her married name was Cary? Perhaps a son from a previous marriage or something? That aside, the account does not appear in the newspaper archives I searched, though we have a few other interesting accounts from 1954.

It is also noted that Major Davidson's journal was mainly a fishing journal of the loch. I like experienced anglers of the loch for the sceptics cannot so easily dismiss their observational skills garnered over the years. Since it would appear that he put his account in writing shortly after the event while the Winifred account is related over ten years later, I would probably put more trust in his account.

Curiously, I realised the Cary/Davidson account had the look and feel of another famous sighting around that time at the same spot. She describes a fifty foot black hump surfacing beside Urquhart Castle. Unlike Winifred Cary, who admitted she was transfixed by the scene and didn't get her camera, Peter MacNab may have seen the very same beast one year later by the castle but captured it on film. Unlike us, I highly doubt he had knowledge of Winifred Cary's previous account.

As I have said before, I believe there was once a big alpha beast in the loch measuring at least fifty foot long and it was the main creature that led the headlines from the 1930s. It died around the early 1960s and its bones now lies partially buried under about five inches of silt awaiting discovery by one of those clever ROVs that occasionally patrol the depths of the loch. Where this bull monster actually gave up the ghost is a bit trickier to ascertain.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com