Loch Ness Monster Again

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 27 October 1934, Page 14

Loch Ness Monster Again

NEWS has been received that the watch on Loch Ness which has been organised by Sir Edward Mountain, chairman of a

well-known insurance company, will continue for some time, says a special correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” In the month of July twenty unemployed men from Inverness were posted at points round the loch, each armed with a pair of binoculars and a box camera. This observation corps was disbanded in the second week of August, since when two men have remained in camp by the side of the loch at Castle Urquhart, which overlooks the bay at Drumnardochit and commands a wide stretch of water both to north and to south. They are equipped with powerful binoculars and cine-cameras, to which telephoto lenses have been fitted.

The expedition has not succeeded in securing any evidence likely to lead to the identification of the Loch Ness “monster”; on the other hand, it has certainly accumulated a further mass of well-attested observation to the effect that there is living in the loch a ci*eature of size and habits which warrant one in regarding it as foreign or abnormal in relation to its present surroundings.

From his watchers Sir Edward Mountain has received over twenty signed statements describing appearances of the “monster,” as it is convenient to call the creature. One of them is Mr W. McL. Campbell, who lives in the Eastgate, Inverness. Mr Campbell has served as a signaller with the Cameron Highlanders, and could probably on that account lay claim to a keen eye. He has seen the “monster” four times, and had twice secured photographs, one of which he withdrew from his breast pocket to show me. It revealed a black object standing out of the wa'tei*, consisting so far as one could see of one longish hump which might he the “neck” and two steeper humps as “back.” Mr Campbell told me that to his eye the “back” seemed to consist of one hump and not two. It is possible, however, that while he was finding the direction with his camera the animal changed its position.

His best view was once at a range of thirty yards, when he was scrambling from the shore of the loch to the top of rocks where he had left his camera. He was therefore unable to take a picture. He described, however, the appearance of the neck and of the large arched back.

The head seemed to be spade-shaped, and was just under water, while the hide was tough and dark. The parts visible stretched over a distance of between twenty-five and thirty feet. He also caught sight of two short fore flippers. Two other watchers saw the creature from other points on the lochside at the same time.'

After talking to Mr Campbell I left Inverness Tor Castle Urquhart, the ruined twelfthcentury fortress on a headland on the south of Drumnadrochit Bay, where the two remaining watchers, Captain J. Fraser (who directed the first search party of twenty) and Mr J. Mclntosh, are stationed.

Captain Fraser began by explaining to me some of the difficulties of keeping watch on the

Organised Observation Parties

loch. Although yesterday was a fine, sunny day, on which the loch presented a scarcely broken surface of blue, many of the days sinee the watch was instituted have been far from favourable. The'atmosphere may become thick, the wind, caught in the narrow channel of the hills, or eddying in the bays, plays curious tricks, the loch becomes as choppy as an arm of the sea, driftwood bobs up and down, and ducks fly over the face of the water in close V formation, brushing the tips of the waves with their swiftly-beating wings.

Often, I was told, tourists whose naked eye had been deceived rushed up to a watcher and pointed out as the “monster” some object which with the aid of glasses could be easily identified as a plank or a barrel. Captain Fraser was convinced that fully half of the recent accounts of sightings could be doubted, particularly when they came, as they often did, from tourists who had visited the loch for the express purpose of “seeing the monster.”

* One day a man and his wife from the Manchester district came and photographed a bobbing tar drum and were loath to accept the loan of field glasses in order that they might be convinced of their error. I have learned from other sources that two pictures which have been passed off in the Press as “the monster” were known to be false by people dwelling near the loch, although they were no doubt accepted—and paid for—in good faith by the newspapers in question.

The loch in over twenty miles long and in breadth more than a the average. Its average depth, according tbTmy informant, is between 400 and 500 feet, while at points it is nearer 800 feet than 700. At one place it is said to be 300 feet within a few yards of the shore. This can easily be imagined by anyone who stands on the road on the western shore and assumes that the rocks continue to be as precipitous below water as they are above it.

The watchers well understood the tricks which the eye could play on such an expanse of water, and this ought to increase the respect with which one treats their testimonies. Yet all their reports of “a large dark object” of varying size, of humps and necks and flippers, seem to bring one no nearer a solution of the puzzle than did the already large mass of evidence, selections of which were published after interviews with the witnesses in person early this year. Every statement tends rather to deepen the mystery,, for nothing is more bewildering than the curious mixture of confirmation and divergence. Once the animal bobbed up suddenly and disappeared. One watcher got a photograph, but only of the “wash” as it sank. The picture therefore seems to portray the wake of a fairly large vessel though no vessel was there. The commotion of the water on one occasion was described thus: “As if a boulder of at least half a ton had been dropped into the water.”

There is general amusement around the loch when gentlemen of scientific leanings pronounce calmly to a witness that it is impossible to have seen the things they describe.