Sea Monsters of the Roman Empire

 

This blog has occasionally diverted off into the dim and distant ages to look at tales of aquatic creatures not only in Loch Ness but around the Highlands of Scotland and beyond. Now someone claimed last year that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day. My trip to Rome and Naples late last year certainly has had me thinking about that Empire as I considered the fabulous animals said to inhabit the seafaring routes of the Roman Emperors. But others would question whether those beasts merely inhabited their ancient minds?

I had seen these various artforms from 1600 years back or more when I was previously in Rome, but this time I took more care in searching out such images. They basically took three forms. They were either mosaics made from thousands of tiny coloured stones or were frescoes quickly painted onto wet plaster walls or, on rarer occasions, were statues sculpted from marble or other materials.

The mosaics were certainly the best preserved and as a consequence the more abundant. They would tend to be found on the floors of villas owned by the rich, perhaps located some miles away from Rome or other bustling centres of activity. Such places would also have frescoes, but these have not fared so well when exposed to the environment over long periods of time.

Most of these items were in the National Museum of Rome, the Vatican Museum and finally the Naples Archeological Museum which derived most of its objects from the nearby ruin of Pompeii. In an attempt to ascertain what these creatures may or may not have represented in the real world of the Romans, one should try and understand them in what is left today. The mosaic pictured below best summarizes the creatures under consideration and was retrieved from the villa of a man named Severus dated to the 2nd and 3rd century AD.

This striking mosaic would have appropriately been situated in the bath complex and is structured at three levels. At the centre is the face or mask of a god being circled by four hybrid creatures beyond which at the corners are more familiar dolphins and fish. The images are interspersed with lines indicating the flow and currents of their underwater world. The four fabulous creatures are hybrid because they comprise a front half reminiscent of land animals and a rear half that is decidedly aquatic.

I initially thought the god in the centre was Neptune, the god of the seas, but the museum display said it was another deity called Oceanus. This figure was said to be the father of the innumerable river gods (potomai) and spring water goddesses (oceanids) as well as being the great river said to encircle the world. With that in mind, we rotate through each creature in turn, coming first to the Hippocampus.

This is the first and most familiar of these crypto-creatures, also called a Sea-Horse or Mer-Horse. They predate the Roman Empire by centuries and have made their way into diverse cultures right up to the modern day. As you can see, the front part is all equine and the rear is a serpentine body ending in a fluke tail. The rear was often displayed in this coiled manner and its equine function on land progressed into the water as it became a steed for supernatural beings.

That being the case, they are often depicted as pulling the chariots of various aquatic deities as well as being ridden in horseback fashion by lesser beings such as the mermen Tritons and the female Nereids. The most familiar representation of this is the world famous Trevi Fountain in Rome which depicts Oceanus with the help of two tritons breaking in two hippocampi attached to his shell chariot.

The next creature shown below is the Taurocampus or Mer-Bull which is easily identified by its two horns on opposite sides of the head. Like the Water Horse, this reminds us of the water bull legends that pervaded the Scottish Highlands and to which Loch Ness was said to have its own specimen. The role of this creature is less certain but it has been depicted as also being ridden in horseback-fashion by lesser deities. 

The last two beasts take on a carnivorous form and are described as "marine tigers and panthers" by the museum. Instead of front hooves, we now see front paws and claws and heads reminiscent of the big cats. The first picture below looks like a spotted leopard and it is a fact that there was a Pardalocampus or Mer-Leopard described in other works. These are also depicted as harnessed to chariots and one imagines they were the fierce and fleet footed animals which sped their owners through the waters. I suppose the supernatural Ferraris of their day.

The next is the Leocampus or Mer-Lion which presumably had similar Ferrari-like capabilities. The Hippocampus and others also had their representation in other artforms such as statues and frescoes, but for various reasons, the floor mosaics have endured the most. In fresco form, I came across these works. The first rather faded image has one of those feminine nereids riding the beast.

And we have the marble statues as well, the first below is of a Hippocampus and the next perhaps a Pardalocampus. Note that the front hooves of this Hippocampus have taken on a more webbed form as one would expect from a sea faring creature. This is zoomed in further down and we see four front digits and one at the rear. How did the sculptor conceive of this morphology? 

Five forelimb digits is the general pattern for land and sea animals, but they tend to be forward facing. So the sculptor has the correct count but what animal has four forward and one rear finger?  Animals such as dogs, lions and deer have a small digit separate to the rest but to the side and rear called the dewclaw which never touches the ground when standing. Horses do not have dewclaws and I am not aware of aquatic animals with a dewclaw, but I await anyone coming forward with possible candidates. 

So we currently have a minor mystery there, but when one looks at these varied images, one wonders how much of the form is mythological precision. biological accuracy (such as those webbed hooves) or  artistic license.

Another impressive floor mosaic was in the Sala Rotonda room of the Vatican Museum. Sitting on top of it was a large bath made of porphyry marble which was a material highly prized by Roman Emperors for its royal colour of purple plus its rarity and durability. However, the mosaic below was of more interest to me. As you can see from the battling centaurs in the foreground, the theme is decidedly mythological.

Moving round the large mosaic, an assortment of Mer-men and Mer-creatures came into view. In the first image below, the familiar Hippocampus on the right looks on at a Triton perhaps subduing the other beast with a rope. The second image presents a similar scene but with no Hippocampus and more of these creatures which do not look like any horse, bull, lion or leopard.

Zooming in on five of these creatures around the mosaic, they have their similarities, but also their differences. The feature that may strike cryptozoological readers are the necks of these beasts which are longer and thinner than the previous creatures. Certainly, these are more in line with reports of sea serpents and lake cryptids. All of them have manes which suggests the Romans regarded them as more more mammalian than reptilian (as far as the Romans understood modern taxonomies). They also all possess the usual coiled hind parts.

Note the last image contains another Hippocampus alongside another of those longer necked animal. In fact, these five non-Hippocamp creatures can be divided into three types:

• Creature 1 (images 1 and 5 (right)) - creature with extended fin-like forelimbs.
• Creature 2 (images 2 and 4) - creature with webbed claws and wings on back.
• Creature 3 - (image 3) - creature with webbed claws and finned upper limb.

Of course, we are not going to use these images to classify them zoologically as there are elements of mythology. biology and artistic license in all of them. Can we say that these three creatures are aquatic representations of land animals as per the first mosaic we examined? It is not clear what land animals they may simulate. Creature 2 has the horns of a Capricorn in image 2 but is winged in image 4, while creature 3 has a Griffin-like look with its beaked head but no wings. One cannot presume there was a standard to which they all held, but neither would one presume it was a chaotic free for all.

CRYPTID ASSESSMENT

But did these creatures have any basis in biological reality? Taking the sceptical view, one may argue that they are no more real than the hybrid-humans in the form of tritons and nereids that rode them. Very few believe that mermaids are real animals, so why should these hybrids be any different? The conclusion would be that Greek and Roman mythology took a symmetric view of creation where similar animals inhabited the seas as the familiar ones that inhabited dry land.

Moreover, of necessity, these gods of the seas and rivers were going to need some form of animal to provide them with transport, whether it was on the animal's back or hooked up to a sea chariot. Sceptical interpretations will take things further by attaching psychological and figurative interpretations to the given creature such as making it a symbolic expression of some aspect of human nature, society or the sea's chaotic nature. It is not clear whether the Romans would recognise these more abstract interpretations.

In that light, one has to ask what the Romans (and Greeks) thought of these marine creatures? Looking back at the first mosaic, the four creatures move between their water god on one side and the dolphins and fish on the other side. This gives the impression of a set of creatures moving between the natural and supernatural. But were these hybrids ever detached from the supernatural and depicted in more natural settings?

The Romans would produce artwork showing sea life in more familiar surroundings. The mosaic below from the Naples Archaeological Museum shows the diverse lifeforms that Romans would capture in their fishing nets. Would you anticipate seeing a Hippocampus in this depiction? I don't think they were expecting to capture one in their nets and neither would they want to unless they wanted their boat smashed to pieces.

Looking at other images, The first below is a fresco from Naples showing the previously mentioned Mer-Griffin swimming between dolphins with no gods in sight. The second fresco (from the same villa) shows a Hippocamp in a similar situation. In the third image below, the Vatican Museum had a striking sculpture of a dolphin being attacked by another Mer-Griffin as we see it biting into the dolphin's dorsal fin. So we could deduce from these that the owners and artists regarded these creatures as being as natural as the dolphins beside them.

 

Moving to the classical writers of that period, we see these animals mentioned in the epic poems such as the Iliad and the Argonautica (from which the film "Jason and the Argonauts" was based). If one reads more historical documents such as the works of Pliny the Elder (c.AD 23-79), we get some idea on how they viewed sea life. In Pliny's "Naturalis Historia" is a chapter entitled "The names of all the animals that exist in the sea" (XXXII:53). He enumerates one hundred and seventy six types of creature found in that environment. In fact, he asserts:

And yet, by Hercules! in the sea and in the Ocean, vast as it is, there exists nothing that is unknown to us, and, a truly marvellous fact, it is with those things which Nature has concealed in the deep that we are the best acquainted! To begin then with the monsters that are found in this element. We here find sea-trees, physeters, balænæ, pistrices, tritons, nereids, elephants, the creatures known as seamen, sea-wheels, oreæ, sea-rams, musculi, other fish too with the form of rams, dolphins, sea-calves, ...

It is a bold man that declares that everything has been discovered. The fact that the sequence of names that followed is still not fully translated leaves what they did know as unknown to us. Pliny makes no mention of the Hippocampus here yet does mention the tritons and nereids. Indeed, in an earlier chapter (IX:4), he recounts a tale of one seen:

A deputation of persons from Olisipo, that had been sent for the purpose, brought word to the Emperor Tiberius that a triton had been both seen and heard in a certain cavern, blowing a conch-shell, and of the form under which they are usually represented. Nor yet is the figure generally attributed to the nereids at all a fiction; only in them, the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales.

The French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, once the number of potential marine candidates had been exhausted, dismissed such a story as fraudulent. Whatever creature was reported to Tiberius, it was not the type of triton represented in mosaics and statues as it had full body scales. Another creature mentioned is the sea-calf or the vitulus. This can also be translated as the bull-calf and is identified as a species of seal by commentators. Did the ancients regard its fully grown male version as the Taurocampus? The fish that is described as like a ram also sounds interesting, but again Cuvier says such instances may be a species of dolphin (despite the dolphin having its own Latin word, delphinus).

Pliny does mention the word hippocampus elsewhere when being used as an ingredient in various remedies for illness, though one concludes the familiar little seahorse is in view there. All in all, the vagaries of what the Latin words may mean adds some difficulties, but if Pliny admitted to tritons swimming the seas of the Empire, how much more their steeds, the Hippocampi?

As we have seen already, researchers like Cuvier came along centuries later with their interpretations. Back in 1965, Bernard Heuvelmans published "Le Grand Serpent-de-Mer" with an examination of Sea Serpent reports that he grouped into nine categories, one of which was the Merhorse and so the Hippocampus was reborn. Heuvelmans' depiction of this category in his book is depicted below.

He describes it as possessing "a long floating mane", having a "slender medium length or long neck" plus "only one dorsal curve". To this he adds "very big eyes" and "long hairs or whiskers on the face". Of the 358 cases he analysed, Heuvelmans states that 37 were of this category of creature which puts it at 10.3% of all sightings, second only to the other category of generic long-neckers at 13.4%. He further thought it to rarely exceed sixty feet in length and mainly inhabited the depths between 50 and 100 fathoms (90-180m).

When one looks at Heuvelmans' global map of how these cases are distributed, it became apparent that the majority of the Merhorse cases occur in a cluster off the coast of Western Canada where the famous "Cadbororsaurus" is reputed to inhabit. The other reports cluster off North East Australia and the Atlantic coasts of Norway, Scotland and Ireland. The Romans may have engaged with some of these northern cultures, but the Hippocamp genre was long established closer to Rome as evidenced by images of them in the Eastern Mediterranean civilizations going back to at least the 6th century BC.

So people have claimed to have seen Hippocamp-type creatures in modern times, but not near their Mediterranean birthplace. We should not be expecting much in eyewitness reports on papyrus or tablets two thousand years later, but I am not sure how many there are from that region in recent years? However, the Hippocamp comes across as a universal creature and like the water horse stories from Scotland which preceded the modern reports of strange creatures in some Loch Ness and others, I suspect there is or was a kernel of biological truth to those old statues depicting webbed hooves creatures of the deep.

I include those strange long necked animals from the Vatican Museum in this view and certainly we have more instances of reports of Heuvelmans' generic long necked sea serpent from around the Mediterranean. So were and are these mainly mythological or biological? Did they inhabit the seas or the mind? I'll leave everyone to form their own opinion.

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The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

A Sighting from 1987

 

Here is an sighting which I came across on the Unexplained Mysteries Forum which had been there for nine years - I wish I had found it earlier. The original link is here and I pull together the posts of the witness, who appears to be named Catherine Ross.

I've joined this forum to share (and hopefully receive explanatory feedback) on a sighting myself and my then husband had of something in Loch Ness in the late summer of 1987. At the time, we were both baffled and perplexed by what we saw, and acknowledged that it was something neither of us could identify rationally. Of course, we were familiar with the legendary 'monster', but the creature we viewed didn't really conform to what I've ever expected 'Nessie' to look like - it certainly did not look like a plesiosaur with a long, thin neck. Anyway, we were holidaying in Inverness and took a trip to the Loch purely for its beautiful, highland views. We were walking long a road which runs alongside the Loch in the vicinity of Dores, where we stopped at a little layby which overlooked the Loch (there was no beach, just a steep incline to the water). It was, if I recall correctly, about four o'clock in the afternoon (although it might have been earlier) and the weather was fine and dry. We were watching the water and looking across the Loch for about ten minutes when we spotted what I took to be a horse swimming off to the right. My first response was panic/worry that a horse would be out in deep water (I thought about 100ft out, although I'm awful with distances). We observed for a while, trying to work out what we were seeing, which is as follows:

A big horse's or camel's head on a thick neck sticking up out of the water with a rounded hump a little behind. The colouring looked black or very, very dark and, like a horse, there was some fuzzy, mane-like stuff sticking up and running down its back. It was moving forward, from the right of our vision to the left, fairly rapidly. We couldn't distinguish facial features or the like. After a minute or so, the head curved downwards into the water (as though diving) and a black, tube-like body followed it, as though the neck just kept going. A few seconds later a fluke-like appendage emerged and then quickly sank down, in a way that reminded me of a whale's tail going under. There was a far amount of spray and disturbed water. Whatever it was did not look like a dinosaur or plesiosaur, and was rather slimy and unpleasant looking.

As you can imagine, this experience was all very confusing, and we mentioned it to the people we were staying with in Inverness, who seemed interested but didn't take it too seriously. They thought perhaps we'd seen a deer. We never reported the sighting to anyone official (heck, we'd have had no idea how to do so) and it's just been a fairly interesting anecdote we've told family and friends whenever a programme about Loch Ness popped up on TV. We had a camera with us at the time, but, stupidly in retrospect, the moment we noticed the creature and stared (both trying to work out what we were seeing) and the moment it went under the water, all happened so quickly that it didn't cross our minds that it was something possibly connected with the mystery and worth photographing. Has anyone else ever had a similar sighting? Is there a natural explanation for this horsey creature? Any thoughts or opinions are warmly welcomed.

So perhaps August or September 1987 and Catherine is recounting events 25 years later in 2012. Naturally, some details will be less sharp when recalled after so long. My first question was where this exactly happened - near Dores, a layby with no beach below a steep incline. There is a layby with a steep incline just south of Dores, but there is a pebble beach below. If one goes any further south, grass fields begin to impose between the road and shoreline.

I wondered if she had misremembered this or foliage prevented her seeing a beach? Perhaps some local can clarify here. The replies came as others chipped in with questions and comments. In the absence of a sketch, she posted some animal photos best describing what she saw: "If anything, these pictures look closest to what we saw"

We have had a good number of eyewitnesses describe this merhorse kind of event, albeit, one should imagine these animals in the photos without ears to get a better sense of what was seen and a thinner head. She goes on to say:

Everyone we spoke with at the time was sure we'd seen a swimming deer, but even at the time I recall being convinced that wasn't what it had been. Another problem is scale - I'm not good at judging that kind of thing at the best of times, but when there was nothing else in the water, the thing could have been anything from 5ft to 10ft to 30ft - I couldn't hazard a guess. The thing I thought looked like a fluke could have been a flipper or anything - it definitely appeared at the back part of the submerging animal for a few seconds, though. I should be frank, it was an experience which at the time was perplexing and interesting, but we didn't 'do' anything about it, and I've never really thought about it that much (the trip being replete with other very natural fond memories!). It's only after reading about other people's experiences I started to think 'hey. I saw something strange back then - but it wasn't anything like what other folk have seen!'. Perhaps we did spot a monster back then, and there's a plethora of completely different looking beasties out there!

Catherine initially suggested a distance of 100 feet out, which is very close for a monster sighting. This should make length estimates easier, but what length is being described? That which is out of the water or a composite length based on parts seen throughout the event? Apart from deer, one could tentatively suggest a grey seal which has a more pronounced snout than the harbour seal, though she discounts a seal explanation further down. Some posted a drawing of an artist's impression of the cryptid cadborosaurus which reminded her of the creature, that picture is at the top of this article. 

I should also add, that nothing I've come across (and I've spent - or wasted - some time today looking this up) in terms of reported sightings of the Loch Ness monster seem to match or come close to whatever we saw. Similarly, nothing on any TV shows I've seen over the years ever sounded like it. It was nothing like a plesiosaur, or sturgeon, or whale, or dinosaur, or otter and there was no graceful swan-neck or flippers. In fact, a 'swimming deer' probably comes closer than all those things, without being right. For all intents and purposes, what we both saw and said at the time (and what I still remember) looked like nothing so much as a slimy horse, way out of its depth and with fishy bits.

On another note, I've spoken to my ex (on the subject of the Scottish trip my friends are taking) and raised the subject. From what he recalls (without my prompting), he saw a horsey head on an big eel with a fish-tail. The fish-tail is, I suppose, as similar as one can get to my memory of the whale's tail. The eel part I've never thought about, as I'm not in any way familiar with eels. Perhaps others can let us know if there are big eels with anatomy like the thing I've described (a horse shaped head and fish or whale tail).

A horse like head on an elongated eel like body with a fluke tail at the end. Again, our monster defies easy correlation with known species of aquatic animals, no matter how much we inflate their sizes to bring them up to Loch Ness Monster proportions. But what resemblance does this have to the long neck sightings which describe a head which is almost no head but rather a continuation of the neck? Indeed, some sightings are almost just like poles sticking out of the water. Are those a different part of the animal or a different stage in development of the creature? Your guess is as good as mine.

if the animal was a horse (or deer) swimming (and it would have to have been been a fairly large specimen of either), it would have to be very dark and very dead afterwards (as we watched for some time after the thing submerged and nothing reappeared in the vicinity). The picture of the swimming horse with the dolphin following was very interesting, however - as this at least captured the sense of movement, which I would describe as wormy (if that makes sense). Is it possible a horse could have been swimming and dragged down by a big eel or some other big fish with a fluke or fish-tail? As I've also said, there were no ears that I can recall either seeing or mentioning at the time. If it was a seal, it would have to have had a long, thick neck which continued to a similar, tubular body.

Catherine posted some sketches of what she saw, but unfortunately nine years on, the site hosting these images has gone AWOL and they are no longer visible. Since she has not posted for nine years and moved on, it would probably require her to do another search for the monster to perhaps find this site and then email me those sketches. But all in all, an interesting sighting by two eyewitnesses which is thought provoking and adds to the merhorse genre.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

sss

More on Giant Eel Stories

It is back to giant eels as I went through my research material and found a few stories of interest. Now I myself do not think the Loch Ness Monster is a giant eel, but that doesn't mean that opinion is false and various theories regarding the beast will continue to be blogged for the benefit of discussion. Of course, if a thirty foot eel is found at the loch, I would have to accept that the monster has been found and some explanation for the non-eel type sightings will be required. That has not happened and so we now continue with some letters from the Fortean Times magazine dated July 2006 (No.212). The first letter is from well known Fortean researcher, Mike Dash:

Loch Ness Eels 

I was very interested to read Jim Currie's letter (FT208:74) concerning rumours that apparently circulated in Glasgow shipyards during the 1960s of an underwater sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. According to Currie, a story went around that a car had careered off the road and into the loch and that when a diver was sent into the water to search for it, he found the vehicle perched on a ledge 80ft (24m) down and surfaced babbling about "giant eels, the size of a man's body, hundreds of them!" In one version of the account, Currie adds, the diver's hair went white and he was rendered insane by the experience.

This tale, which while undated seems to refer to an incident occurring in the latter half of the 20th century, is readily identifiable as a variant on a supposedly much older account first published in the first edition of Nicholas Witchell's The Loch Ness Story (1974) p.29. "There is an interesting story," Witchell writes, "of a diver, Duncan MacDonald, who was sent to examine a sunken ship off the Fort Augustus entrance to the Caledonian Canal in 1880. MacDonald was lowered into the water and shortly afterwards the men on the surface received frantic signals from him to be pulled up.

When he did surface it is said his face was like chalk and he was trembling violently. It was several days before he would talk about the incident, but eventually he described how he had been examining the keel of the ship when he saw a large animal lying on the shelf of rock on which the wreck was lodged. 'It was a very odd looking beast,' he said, `like a huge frog.' He refused to dive in the loch again."

The first point to make is that Witchell's account of the MacDonald sighting is unreferenced and no primary source has ever been found for it (see Ulrich Magin, "Waves Without Wind and a Floating Island: Historical Accounts of the Loch Ness Monster" in Fortean Studies 7 (2001) p.102). Thus, if Mr Currie's memory of dates is correct, his apparently later version, involving cars and eels, may actually predate the MacDonald story. The second is that neither account is at all likely to be true.

Aside from the obviously folkloric elements featured in both tales (hair turning white, refusal to dive again), numerous underwater surveys of Loch Ness, conducted with sonar and echo sounder apparatus, have failed to reveal the various subsurface features so often featured in popular accounts: underwater ledges, caves and even tunnels leading to the sea. Finally, as is fairly well known, underwater visibility at Loch Ness is negligible - of the order of a few feet once one ventures to any depth below the surface - thanks to the heavy concentration of silt particles washed into the loch from the surrounding hills. The reported observations of Duncan MacDonald and of Jim Currie's diver would simply not have been physically possible.

Mike Dash

London

That letter from issue 208 of Fortean Times is short and reproduced below:

When I worked in the Clyde shipyards in the 1960s, a story went round about Loch Ness. It was said a car had careered off the road into the loch and a diver was sent to investigate the insurance claim. Apparently the car had landed on a kind of ledge only about 80ft (24m) down. When the diver broke surface after investigating, he was heard to be babbling about "giant eels, the size of a man's body, hundreds of them!" In one version of the tale, the diver's hair turned white, while in another he became a babbling wreck confined to a lunatic asylum. Has anyone else heard this story? 

Jim Currie

Baillieston, Glasgow 

First off, Mike compares this underwater encounter with the better known story of Duncan MacDonald from 1880 described in Nicholas Witchell's "The Loch Ness Story". Though it is described as a "variant", the two tales are undoubtedly unconnected. It is correct to say Witchell's tale is unreferenced and it is my opinion, it was one of those stories related by locals to the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau team in their years at the loch during the 1960s and 1970s. The local was probably known to Witchell but requested anonymity.

At this point we can also include the stories of Robert Badger (link), James Honeyman (link) and an unnamed diver (link). So you can see we have a growing line of such stories. Now as to folkloric elements,  if Robert Badger in 1971 said he would never dive in the loch again, that would be understandable, not folkloric. We can quite readily assume it for any other diver after such an event. What is not clear is whether they vowed never to dive in Loch Ness again or anywhere at all.

The reference to hair whitening is indeed not true in the sense of happening overnight. However, extreme stress could trigger an autoimmune response which renders further hair growth a lighter colour, but that is speculation as such a condition has not even been recorded in Death Row. The only defense is that it is a figure of speech and not to be taken literally.

The two points about the nature of the loch itself take a rather binary view of the situation. The Duncan MacDonald account actually says "the rock ledge" and not "the shelf of rock". A rock ledge can mean several things. In the case of the loch, the land underwater can gently incline before one reaches a precipice which takes us over the edge into the deeper parts of the loch. Or it could simply be a ledge with a small drop and nothing more. It is my opinion that when ledges are spoken of in these reports, we are talking about these initial shallows and it is no surprise that boats end up there.

The other point about poor visibility underwater is taken, but in both cases discussed, the distance between diver and animal is not given, so how do we know it is a problem? Robert Badger states the creature he saw was about 15 to 20 feet away from him. The answer here is depth, once you get to a certain depth at say about seventy feet, then all light is lost. I would suggest these divers were at lower depths and/or the creature was as close as Robert Badger's incident. So visibility, though poor, is not a blocker.

However, Mr. Currie's diver's comments about hundreds of eels does not sound literally true if visibility is out to twenty feet, unless he had a good flashlight or he employed a metaphor to signify a lot of eels. One final thought I would add is that Jim Currie reminds me of the apocryphal James Currie, who was an alleged banker from the 1930s, who held a sensational film of the monster, but held it back until the public took it more seriously (link).  Does that suggest this person's name is not real and is taking us for a ride? With that we move onto the second letter by James Kitwood:

Jim Currie makes reference to a story about a giant eel seen in Loch Ness. He asks if anybody else has heard a similar story. It is said that during the construction of the hydroelectric plant at Foyers on the shore of Loch Ness, a lorry that had been dumping soil into the loch reversed too far and slid into the water. During the salvage operation. divers came up in a hurry and refused to go back as they had seen huge. hairy eels. In a related story about the Foyers power station, there was a rumour of giant eels that had been trapped against the metal grilles on the entrance to the water intake pipes. (Ness Information Service Newsletter 84, Oct 1987) In 1998 I wrote to Scottish Hydro Electric and received a letter from a man who had worked there since its commission in 1975. He said that the story about the lorry was unsubstantiated and the issue of large eels getting into the water-cooling system was a physical impossibility.

He did, however, relate a story he heard as a child about a diver who was lowered into Loch Lomond. When he resurfaced not only was he badly shaken, but his hair had turned grey. It seems this story is not unique to Loch Ness. Another Loch Ness eel story that may yet be possible to verify concerns a minesweeper travelling through the loch at the end of World War I. Apparently, the crew thought it would be a good idea to try and blow up the creature. They released a depth charge and after the explosion the bodies of two eels floated to the surface. One was 11ft (3.4m) long and one was 9ft (2.7m) long- but this was just the tail end of it! (Ness Information Service Newsletter 116, April 1993)

James Kitwood

Calverley, West Yorkshire 

Since James mentions his sources as Rip Hepple's Nessletters, we can have a look at them in more detail. The first being number 84 from October 1987 which I quote below. Rip had contacted a Mr. Hancock on updates for the then Operation Deepscan. He worked for the company which distributed Lowrance sonar systems in Britain and he relayed the story:

One evening after the days operation and evening meal they were relaxing in the hotel when a local man approached them and told them of a big eel. Foyers hydro-electric station is one of the water storage type, pumping water from Loch Ness up to Loch Mhor when there is spare electricity, then using it to generate power during peak periods. The water intakes have metal grids over them, to protect fish being sucked in. This local told them that some time ago staff noted that water pressure was falling and when they investigated, the grid on one of the intakes was clogged up with eels among them a real giant of around 18 to 20 feet long and some 2/3 feet in diameter. I do not really know what to make of this story, Mr Hancock said the man seemed sincere.

One point that came to me later was the question of how could the grid be seen, the intakes must be some distance below the surface, well out of sight unless there are observation ports of some kind built into the installation. To clear the grids of debris the usual practice is to stop the turbines and allow the water to back-flush the system.

I remember that another giant eel story did the rounds when the power station was being built. A wagon driver was dumping soil in the loch when he got too close to the edge and managed .to lose the wagon into the water as well . The story was that divers went down to attach lifting gear, but they came· up in a hurry and refused to go back down, claiming they had seen huge, hairy eels. Attempts were made to locate the divers later, but failed and the story remained hearsay. Perhaps the account told to Mr Hancock will remain in the same category. 

This story has been remarked on before in less detail and it presents a few questions. The first is the obvious one as to why finding the remains of a 20 foot eel did not lead to sensational headlines and a carcass ending up at the Natural History Museum? Since the grid has to stop all manner of fish, the meshing must be quite fine which makes one ask how a powerful large eel could get stuck there? The answer to that may be the ability of the pump storage devices to suck up 160 tonnes of water per second! 

Nevertheless, why no body parts? I thought perhaps this was a pre-Nessie event before 1933 since a hydro-power station has been in operation since 1895 when it supplied power to the now derelict aluminium smelting plant. Perhaps so, but that was a low powered setup and it was not until 1976 that the present 300MW plant came into operation, so I suspect the tale is from that year onward. 

Or we could speculate they failed to obtain any physical evidence because, as Rip says above, the pumps were turned off and the back-flush drove the eels back into the deep. Or perhaps they couldn't get samples. If any of these critters were still alive, no diver would go near one, even for a ton of gold. We also have James Kitwood's letter above in which he states he wrote to a worker at the power plant who could not confirm the story and thought it was a physical impossibility anyway. Which turns us back to 1987 and who on earth was this chap who walked into that hotel and related the story? We may never know and move on.

Rip's second tale about the dump truck falling into the loch is also tantalizing and the hairiness of the eels reminds us of the mane seen on the monster. If this were true, it would suggest these are not the species of European eel that inhabit the loch. But once again we are frustrated by the lack of a first hand testimony by one of these divers. The second account from Mr. Kitwood regarding the depth charging of Loch Ness is from Nessletter 116 dated January 1994 and relates a story told by an angling correspondent for the "Salmon, Trout & Sea-Trout" magazine called "Viking". It is dated February 1993 and Viking is quoted first:

At the end of the first world war, a mine-sweeper was on her way through from Fort William in the west to the Beauly Firth in the east, by the Caledonian Canal that connects the great lochs to the sea. On her way down Loch Ness she passed over the depths below Urquhart Castle which are a favourite of the 'Beastie'. The crew had been celebrating peace all the way and still had depth charges ready to launch. Some one had the bright idea of having a go for the monster, so they set off a charge and up came two gigantic eels. One was 11ft long and the other 9ft, but that was only the tail-end!

Rip Hepple then adds his thoughts:

Viking said that is a true story. I wonder how, after seventy years such facts could be checked? Lobbing live depth charges into Scottish lochs would hardly be legal, even in celebratory high spirits, so I doubt if any official record would have been kept. However he does go on with an account of an incident which happened to him. Saying, 'An old friend of mine, now long gone to the 'fishers tryst', was trapping salmon for the hatchery on the River Garry at the top of Loch Ness. The fish he trapped were kept in a long iron tank until they were ready to be stripped of their eggs. The water supply was piped from the tail-race of the small hydro-electric generating station a short distance upstream, where the blades in the Francis turbine could chop up migrating eels. A chunk of eel had blocked the pipe which was 5 inches in diameter. it must have come from an eel at least 10 feet long.' 

One does not doubt that minesweepers passed through Loch Ness and it is possible they indulged in this foolish behaviour. However, the incident is dated to 1918 and the Loch Ness Monster did not become a national phenomenon for another 15 years. It was however a well known local legend, but since a Royal Navy vessel would contain a crew from all over the United Kingdom, they were unlikely to have any regard to this.

Depth charges were developed to take out German submarines and could be preset to detonates at depths of up to 300 feet. In this instance two dead giant eels were observed coming to the surface. One presumes they were forced to the surface by the explosion and then promptly sunk again in the normal manner. To achieve this, the charge must have detonated at a depth a lot less than 300 feet. Viking says this is a true story and, 28 years on, perhaps he is still alive to state who his source was? To that we can add nothing more, you either believe it or you don't.

Viking's final tale about finding a five inch diameter chunk of eel is interesting and probably the most credible to the bulk of readers. He suggests this scales up to an eel at least ten feet long. My own scaling measurements based on a good picture of an adult European eel suggests a length of eight feet. Nevertheless, that is a substantial eel as all eels caught in Loch Ness will be less than three feet and would raise some serious questions. Note a thirty foot eel would scale up to a diameter of  about one and a half feet, unless you ascribe to Roy Mackal's thick bodied eel theory.

So there we have several tales of giant eels in Loch Ness, all at best second hand tales. Where does it take us? Not very far, but it will be of value to some more than others.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

Readers' Letters to the Newspapers in 1933

  

Back on the 17th October 1933, The Scotsman published an account of some sightings of the new phenomenon of the Loch Ness Monster. The story had been running for about five months previously up in the Highland newspapers, but the Scotsman's increasing coverage from that point raised its profile throughout the nation. So it was on the 23rd October that a selection of letters from readers with their varying opinions were published which we shall now have a look at. First we have a letter from Captain Munro.

All the accounts that I have seen point to this "monster" being a large grey seal. Seals have been known to make long trips inland, generally over frozen ground. A seal may have ascended the Ness during a spate, and gone overland when he came to rapids. It might also be a large sea otter, or a pair of them. Whatever it is, it is no new animal to the zoologist, and it is certainly not a fish. Seals are often caught by drift-net fishermen on the West Coast, and a drifter might have had one on board and dumped  it in the loch as a jest and to get rid of a troublesome shipmate. If a seal, when he has dived he would come up again some distance off, and also the same with an otter; but in either case,  probably only the nose and eyes would be above the water. It is strange that no stalker with his glass has sighted this "stranger." Whatever it is, it should not be interfered with or killed.

D. J. Munro, Captain, R.N. October 20 1933

Now we already know about Captain Munro as he was the first person to try and place camera stations around the loch via a share offering in 1938. Monster Hunter, Ted Holiday mentioned him in his "Great Orm of Loch Ness" book in 1968 and I wrote about him in an earlier article linked here. The Captain first appears in this letter and is sceptical of anything mysterious about the whole affair, suggesting seals or otters. That attitude evidently softened in the years ahead as the monster proved stubbornly unsolvable and he turned to camera stations. The next letter is from a Mr. Morrison.

Sir, Allow me to make a suggestion which may be an explanation of  the phenomenon which apparently is causing such a scare among people in the neighbourhood of Loch Ness - the so called "Loch Ness Monster." Many years ago a man in my father's employment, whom I knew very well, saw a creature of an appearance similar to that described in the Press in a fresh-water lake in one of the outer islands of the Hebrides. He got such a fright, that it was said that it left its impression on his eyes till the day of his death. The matter was investigated by others who saw this apparition on the lake afterwards, and it was found out that it was nothing more or less than a number of  otters following one another in a line. This episode may help to clear up  the "mystery"of the "Loch Ness Monster".

I am etc. ALEX C. MORRISON.

Here we have a somewhat tongue in cheek story of a man being fooled by a train of otters, mistaking them for a frightful creature. Now we have blogged on monster lochs on the Isle of Lewis and Harris a couple of times. There was the creature of Loch Ulladale (link here) and more monster lochs here and here. Mind you, I can't see any link between those and this story, and it may not have even been that island, but we note otters are getting trotted out again as a solution. The next letter is more interesting.

Sir, Amongst many letters to your paper I have not observed a contribution from a believer of the plesiosaurus. To any such believer who has not come forward - I should like to present the following information. Some years ago a skull was taken in the salmon nets at the mouth of a West Coast river. The Gaelic inhabitants of the district called it a crocodile, but I have an idea that their own name for it  may be vastly different. I have examined this skull on many occasions, and it undoubtedly possesses the teeth and approximately the jaws of a crocodile. So far as I know, the skull is still in existence, and if any believer in a family of old-fashioned monsters would like to spend two days and some money in visiting the place, making inquiries and seeing the skull, I believe that I can arrange the matter. A knowledge of Gaelic is almost essential, and the visitor must not blame me if he finds the skull of a crocodile thrown into the water by an ex-sailor's wife when spring cleaning.

I am &c. C. W. INGRAM.

You will see Mr. Ingram is an early contributor to the plesiosaur theory and tries to link it to an odd story about a skull pulled in with salmon nets at the mouth of a west coast river. Assuming the skull was indeed pulled from the estuary, it obviously could not be a crocodile. What other candidates should be considered? There are no doubt several, it could be a Beluga whale which strayed from the northern waters to be stranded on the west coast of Scotland and die. The picture below shows how its skull looks crocodilian with teeth and a narrow jawline.

This may not be the solution, but these animals should be considered first before introducing plesiosaurs. Where that skull from 1933 resides now is anyone's guess, but we do not think it has anything to do with the Loch Ness Monster. The next letter brings us back to stories of giant eels.

Sir, The "oldest inhabitant" has been strangely backward, and has not yet been trotted out to state the facts of this most interesting subject. Well, here is one of them, at last brought up in Upper Stratherrick, near Loch Ness, of a family located there for well over 400 years, and in close contact with the people of that district. We knew, and, accepted without question, from tradition and common knowledge, that there were and always had been "monster eels" (plural) in Loch Ness and not a "Loch Ness Monster" (singular), for there were many, and of various sizes.

We accepted as a certainty, based on experience that the body of anyone drowned in would never be found. To talk of underwater currents in is nonsense. There are none. Anyone can dispose of an obscure question which lie cannot solve by saying that it is all a myth, good enough for the ignorant and credulous. He may even deign to explain it in some paltry and superficial way; posing as one too wise (shall we say too materialistic?) to be taken in by fairy tales. Such negative or destructive criticism is futile. The critic has not even begun to understand the subject.

Let us get some competent naturalist from South Kensington to interview all these who can give direct evidence, to collate their statements, and give his own skilled conclusions for the benefit of the public, now peculiarly interested in this question.

One might suggest as a hypothesis that, at some remote period when the world was young, eels, migrating from the Garry, the Moriston, the Foyers or Farigaig rivers, through on their way to spawn in the deep Sargasso Sea, have thought it unfit for them to go so far while the depths were available so near their home.

Hence a race of land-locked eels may have evolved. Some of these may have survived the spawning crisis and developed into the "enormous eels" always traditional in Stratherrick, Some such abnormal creatures may possibly be the foundation of our tales of the "each-uisge " (anglice "kelpie'') or of the "seilcheag" (great water-snail), or even of the sea serpent, all of them interesting monsters upon which we need not now dilate, but realities to unsophisticated person: in whom materialism has not yet bred blindness to natural phenomena.

I am &c - OLD STRATHERRICK

As you can see, the idea of a eunuch eel staying in the loch and growing progressively larger over the years and decades is not new. It is a theory as old as the monster and in fact predates the Nessie era by an indeterminate span. So this letter is itself not new in content but re-affirms such stories. However, as pointed out in previous articles, one searches the old Highland newspapers in vain for any stories of large eels of any notable size being caught in Loch Ness.

We get stories of large marine eels being caught or found along the Highland sea coasts nearby and one can be sure that if a seven footer was landed at Loch Ness, it would also make the news with no effort. Note that "Old Stratherrick" does not expand upon this "common knowledge" to back up his claims, apart from the statement that the loch doesn't give up its dead, which is not really related to the issue of oversized eels.

But it cannot be denied that the locals believed in such things, but based pretty much on anecdotal evidence in the same way as our modern monster. That they were called eels is more based on speculation rather than one being dragged ashore for classification. In fact, I would suggest "giant eel" was one descriptive term for them like "plesiosaur" was during the 1960s and 1970s. It was basically considered a good candidate by 19th century locals. One such sighting from 1885 by a Roderick Matheson would have helped propagate this tag for the monster:

Mr. Matheson was part owner of the schooner Bessie, which frequently made passages from the West Coast to the East via the Caledonian Canal and, of course, Loch Ness. On one of these journeys Mr. Matheson, who was mate of the vessel, saw in Loch Ness what he described as ‘the biggest eel I ever saw in my life. It had’ he said ‘a neck like a horse, and a mane somewhat similar’

Moving on from eels, comes a letter from T.J. with some florid and prosaic language.

Sir, - With monsters so much "in the air" - to say nothing of the lochs - it seems rather strange that none of your correspondents should have drawn attention to Mr J. St J. Graham's delightful thriller, "The Wee Loch", in the current number of Chambers' Journal. Compared with the creature therein "featuring," surely 

the monsters of the prime

Rending each other in their slime

Where mellow music matched with him!

while the editorial instinct, in anticipating the present visitation, is almost as marvelous as the marvel itself. Mr Graham's monster is not seen; it is smelt, and it occurs to me, to wonder whether anything 'uncommonly "ancient and fishlike" been encountered in the atmosphere of Loch Ness? I would also suggest that the healthy excitement aroused by this "'questionable shape" - alas, in Shakespeare's sense, unquestionable!  - calls for addition to our numerous anthologies, a collection of stories of monsters.

Why not call it - shade of John Knox! - A Monstrous Regiment? Anyway, permit me to make your readers a present of the suggestion.

I am &c - T. J.

I am not sure the author has much to say here apart from one wondering what that short story entitled "The Wee Loch" was all about? Apart from that, he asks a question as to whether the monster has been detected by the sense of smell. That would seem an irrelevant question as most sightings of the creature are so far away from the witness. Indeed, a search of the sightings database confirms there is no such data. The only sense that really matters here is sight with the rare addition of sound. The last letter addresses the issue of sea serpents.

Sir,—Some of your readers may be interested to hear that as far back as between 1858-60 I heard a minister of the Scottish Church assert that he had seen a sea-serpent. I cannot recall whether he said it was in the North Sea or elsewhere. He had lived for some time at Lochaber. He was afterwards minister of the Parish Church of Golspie and librarian to the Duke of Sutherland: Dr Joass, a geologist and antiquarian. Of course, he was laughed at.

This morning I had a visit from the daughter a minister in East Ross-shire. I asked her if she knew him. She did; she remembered about it. She had seen a drawing of it made by him. There may still be some in the north who remember about it and where he saw it.

I am &c - A CONSTANT READER

The Reverend James Joass did indeed claim a sea serpent sighting but dated to 1873 and the sketch below is taken from Bernard Heuvelman's great work "In the Wake of the Sea Serpent".  

The relationship between the Loch Ness Monster and Scottish sea serpents was covered on this blog in a previous article (link). There is no doubt in my mind that Nessie is a sea serpent either marooned in the loch or an itinerant visitor ... or both. That ends this series of interesting letters and they continued to flow into all manner of newspapers for years to come. Some entertaining, some informative and some just frustrating. But everyone is entitled to their opinion.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com