Serious Attempt To Solve Loch Ness Mystery

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 5

Serious Attempt To Solve Loch Ness Mystery

(Written for “The Press” by REG BIRCHFIELD)

Loch Ness’s wonderful old inhabitant, “Nessie” the monster, has been in the news again. Now investigators are trying to get a showing by scaring her out of her watery complacency with underwater noise devices.

A recent report says the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau, Ltd., has received some sizeable donations to help in its quest to determine Nessie’s identity. The bureau will make its seventh expedition to the loch this summer, and from all accounts they are determined to secure tangible results.

What is, or rather who are these monster watchers who call themselves the L.N.P.LB. I spent a day and a half on location with some of them last summer.

One of them was Commander Sir Peter Ogilvy Wedderbum, friend, fellow clansman and neighbour of Mr Angus Ogilvy, Princess Alexandra’s husband. ' Also there were Mr C. Lister Skelton, the brains behind the elaborate photographic equipment employed during the Bureau’s five-month vigil and Miss Molly Eady, a member of Colonel Hazier’s (of Cockelshell Hero fame.) famous expedition to the loch in 1960. Miss Eady has been back three times since. The 70-80 members of the Bureau take it in turns to spend two or three weeks of their summer holidays there from May till October. They include scientists, naturalists, school teachers and when I was there, a Lloyd’s underwriter, a market gardener, Welsh farmer, a veterinary surgeon, an accountant and an interior decorator. Depends On Donations It is a non-profit making organisation and survives on donations from members and enthusiasts and on the few pence they make from the sale of postcards featuring a photograph Of Nessie sporting three of her humps above the water line. They told me it was this complete lack of funds, .backing and interest from any responsible body, such as the Government, that prevented them from making more intensive investigations. “We find it difficult enough to get sufficient money together to continue with our

above surface observations,” said Sir Peter Wedderburn.

“It costs us £5OOO a year in cameras, .film, food and other equipment” When I was there they had five years and 13,000 hours of observation behind them. They had recently received a stimulus from a report released by the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre of the R.A.F. The report stated that a series of photographs taken during a sighting in 1960 revealed “an animate object about 12ft to 16ft in length, 3ft high and nearly 6ft across moving at about 10 knots” in the loch. I was completely unable to argue with this authoritative document. After all those air reconnaissance boys can just about tell you the name on a golf ball photographed from 10,000 ft. The bureau shuns the claims that the whole thing is a publicity stunt to attract tourists. “This mystery is 1400 years old,” said Sir Peter Wedderburn. “We known there is something there. All we are trying to do now is find out what.” What can you say? “We get absolutely nothing for this,” he said. "When the job is done the money we receive for film, television and press rights will go to the World Wildlife Fund.” Camera Battery The team set up their headquarters at Achnahannet, about half-way along the western shore of the Loch. Here they have set up a 35mm camera with a 36in infra-red lens and two 16mm cameras with 18in lenses. Two other 35mm cameras are mounted on vans, one at either end of the loch, and two 16mm cameras with 20in lenses are set up between the vans and the main rig at Achnahannet. This gives them about a 65 per cent coverage of the sur-

face, and Includes all the places where sightings have been reported. They do not watch at night, believing from past experiences that the creature is not nocturnal and neither do they sight during rough weather because confusions arise in the photographs. I asked Sir Peter Wedderburn whether he had ever seen the “Monster.” “Oh yes,” he replied. “But I think it the use of the term monster that puts people off believing in it.”

"Personally, and several others agree on this, I believe it to be a plesiosorus, a type of marine dynosorus. Until a few years ago they were believed to have been extinrt for several million years but in the 1950 s they caught a couple of them in the Indian Ocean.

“Saw Nessie In 1962”

“I saw Nessie back In 1962 off Urquart Castle, not far from the John Cobb memorial stone. (The water-speed holder, John Cobb was killed in a record attempt on the loch In 1952). It appeared three times each half hour for about three minutes. I was looking straight down on it. It appeared to have three humps and was four or five feet across the back. “Frankly, we consider that there Is probably a family down there. It seems feasible that they were trapped in the loch when It was formed. It is commonly believed that there are underground caverns running up into the hills surrounding the loch with entrances below the water line. If this is so then it could well harbour sufficient air for an air-breathing reptile to live in peace. • “Actually you have a sort of similar parallel in your country,” said Sir Peter Wedderburn. “It was thought until a few years ago that the notornis was extinct then a colony was found in the South

Island. Discoveries like this happen all the time.” The first record of strange beasts in the Loch dates back to 565 A.D. An account by a local abbot, St. Adamnam, records an experience a fellow abbot, St. Columba, had when a peasant was killed when the abbot was trying to cross the River Ness. There is too much detail to recount and although I would never p.esume to swear to the validity of the story, at least it shows that the story is not recent. If we consider that the loch contains an estimated 263,000 million cubic feet of water, holding by far the largest volume of water of any loch in Great Britain, it is not so surprising that it has taken a long time to track Nessie and her famly down.

Sassenaches Story

The bureau receives dozens of reported sightings a year. Only a small percentage of these turn out to be reliable. It is these few reliable reports that tally with what is already known that keeps this dedicated band turning up each summer to sit and gaze at the water. On the hill above the bureau's camp lives the Cameron family. Mrs Cameron, a Sassenach by birth, lived there for 30 years and never believed a word she had heard about it all. Then she told me what she had seen one evening two years ago.

“My niece was visiting us. We were standing outside talking when she pointed out what she called a speed boat. There was no bow foam and it was travelling at a fantastic speed up the loch. The rest of the loch was like glass, broken only by this speeding turbulance up the middle. Then just as suddenly the thing that was making the disturbance disappeared completely. There was never any report of a boat missing that

night.” , I heard many stories about sightings and read about even more of them. How do I feel about it? Let’s just say my Imism preft*: reluctantly changed from pess to opt