Is the Loch Ness Monster heading for real celebrity?
PAUL JOHNSON At this time of year my thoughts often dwell on the Loch Ness Monster. Let me recapitulate what we know about this beast. It was first spotted on 22 July 1932. It was described as crossing the main road running north of Loch Ness and being about six feet long. Later it was seen in the water, with its head above the surface. It had a long neck, a snake-like head and flippers, and was at least 20 feet long. A famous but indistinct photo was taken corresponding to this description. The monster has never again been seen on land but is often sighted, always in midsummer, holding its prehistoric head up and swimming strongly. Scotch stringers for London newspapers regularly visit the Loch at this time, hoping for a silly season story. They put up at the Drumnadrochit Hotel, whose bar is decorated with photos purporting to be of the creature.
The hotel also accommodates, from time to time, people of scientific or pseudo-scientific bent who come up to find or if possible capture the monster. They are rough diamonds rather than Einsteins; adventurers, rather like the men in that marvellous Edgar Wallace movie, King Kong, which dates from the same period (it might fairly be described as inter-war but pre-Hitler). Sometimes they have a young moll with them, like the delightful Fay Wray, to do a bit of screaming if the monster gets out and grabs her. `Nessie'- hunters sometimes bring elaborate equipment. In the 1980s they made a month-long sonar 'scan' of the Loch, which detected a moving object of large size. Experts on animals and reptiles were said to be 'baffled' and 'amazed'. But nothing came of it. Another year the bird-man Peter Scott, having studied the dossier, baptised the monster Nessiteras rhomboptelyx. Readers of popular newspapers were told this meant 'The Ness creature with the fins in the shape of a diamond'. But it turned out to be an anagram of 'Monster Hoax by Sir Peter S'. In yet another year, a group of rich Japanese monster-fans came along with a miniature submarine, holding two people and a mass of photographic and recording equipment. What came of that I don't know — nothing, obviously.
I have visited Loch Ness many times. Indeed I once swam in it. This is not so common as you might suppose. The Loch is dauntingly wide, over a mile, and 700 feet deep. The surface always appears to be dark, even in bright sunshine. This is not an optical illusion. The fierce mountain streams on both sides bring down immense quantities of minute particles of peat. Most of it settles on the floor of the Loch in great depth but enough remains undissolved in the water to render it impenetrably opaque. If you dive as little as six feet below the surface, you can't see a thing. So there was not much point in having a submersible craft anyway. The darkness and density of the waters suggests to me that they will never find the monster by going under them. And can a creature of any size live in such an inhospitable liquid? Not many fish do, obviously. And the monster has to live on something. It can't just swallow liquid peat-fragments. Of course its diet would depend on what kind of a thing it is. My old walking-companion in those parts, Simon Fraser, the Master of Lovat, whose family estates, which were sold after his early death, once stretched from coast to coast, embracing nearly 200,000 acres, had certain rights in Loch Ness. He used to say to me, 'If the monster is a mammal, it belongs to the Queen. But if it's a fish, it belongs to me.'
I did not like swimming in that dark and sinister Loch. There are tales of drownings, both natural and not-so-natural. From the 1930s, when the monster tales began, there is a story of an immensely rich lady who went swimming there wearing a priceless necklace of pearls. Neither the lady nor her pearls were ever seen again. And in 1952 the great racing hero John Cobb was drowned not far from Drumnadrochit in an attempt to break the world water-speed record, when his powerful craft took a header into the depths. There is a little cairn erected to his memory on the shore.
The best place to survey Loch Ness, to get a proper idea of its immensity, depth and saturnine character, is Urquhart Castle. It is a promontory which pushes itself out into the dark waters, the only one in the 20 or more miles of the Loch. This makes it a place of great strategic importance, and I imagine there has always been some kind of military fortification there. It was constantly being besieged, stormed, recaptured, 'slighted' and rebuilt. It changed hands four times in a single year during the period when Robert the Bruce set up his standard against the English The records show it was repaired under the Scots King James IV, but fell in 1545 and again, to the Covenanters, in 1644. The English and their Campbell allies blew it up with gunpowder in the 1690s, at the time of the Glencoe Massacre. They must have done a thorough job because the castle then passed out of military history. I quote from a report compiled at the time of the Old Pretender's rising in 1715: 'The castell of Urquhart is blowen down by the last storme of wind, the south-west side thereof to the laich woult.' It is now, and has been for nearly 300 years, a noble ruin, which I have painted several times. A desolate place, a bit scary even on a sparkling midsummer day.
Stories abound about the treasure to be found buried in or near Urquhart Castle. And of course, there is treasure sunk in Loch Ness too, quite apart from the pearls of the drowned lady. Years ago I used to see Sir Compton (Monty') Mackenzie at old Martin Secker's house at Iver, and listen to his fabulous stories. Of course, as Monty pointed out, wherever you get really deep water in Scotland, you tend to get monster stories too. A case in point is Loch Morar, also in Inverness-shire but on the western side. Unlike Ness, it is a sea-loch, famous for its sea trout. It is about ten miles long and two wide, and in part of it the depth is over 1,000 feet, which makes it the deepest lake in Britain — perhaps in Europe. There are islands in it, and on one of them, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was found hiding in a hollow tree and captured after the Forty-Five — he of course being a distant forbear of my Simon Fraser. He had his head chopped off on Tower Hill in 1747, being over 80 at the time. On his way to the scaffold, a cockney woman in the crowd shouted: 'They are going to take off your head, you old Scotch dog.' He replied: 'I believe they are, you old English bitch.' They had a bit of style in those days, and no nonsense about political correctness either.
So what about the Loch Ness Monster? From what I know of that beastly loch, I don't see how there can be a monster in it. And I don't think much of the photographs of it. On the other hand, a very large number of people claim to have seen it, among them many sober, responsible, cool-headed men and women; and their descriptions, which often tally, are surprisingly matter-of-fact. I would not be surprised to hear our new, not overmodest, Prime Minster announce: 'Not only have we pulled in all the recent bombers, but we have succeeded in taking alive the Loch Ness Monster too. I am seriously considering putting him in the Cabinet, to broaden its foundation.'
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