Foreign News: Again, Nessie

(See map) Smiling broadly last week Dr. W. Reid Blair of New York’s Bronx Zoo exclaimed:

“Well, well, they’re starting a little early this year, aren’t they? . . . The offer of $25,000 for the Monster still stands. Of course, it must be alive, weigh two tons and be 40 feet long, and by all means it must be in good health. I don’t want any ill monsters on my hands.”

The Monster referred to was the dire denizen of Loch Ness, Scotland, first fabled in the world press in 1933. Opener of its 1937 season was an announcement by the Right Rev. Sir David Oswald Hunter Blair, Bart, (no kin to Dr. Reid Blair) that, at the age of 83, he was organizing an expedition to trace and trap the creature, bring it back alive.

“Nessie,” said Sir David, “must be thousands of years old and belongs to the postglacial period. . . . He is so tame I expect little trouble in bringing him home. In fact I have invited the boys of St. Bede’s Roman Catholic College in Manchester to join me in the monster hunt.”

Loch Ness, largest of Scotland’s lakes (22½ mi. long, 1¾ mi. wide), bisects the Highlands from Inverness on the northeast to Fort Augustus- on the southwest. Near its narrow shores are many a Highland distillery, many towns and glens intimately connected with haberdashery: Inverness (tweed capes), Glen Urquhart (gents’ suitings), Glen Garry (highland bonnets). Ben Nevis, best publicized mountain in Scotland, is only 30 mi. to the southwest. In August 1933 when workmen were blasting a new motor road along the west shore of the lake, the monster was first “seen.” Eyewitnesses during the following season ranged from hard-bitten big game hunters to impressionable lady schoolteachers. Their descriptions of the beast varied in detail but agreed roughly that it was 40 to 50 ft. long with a large whiskery head and eight humps; that it could travel 40 m.p.h. up & down the lake, prudently keeping at least 100 yd. from shore. On the east shore, a large pudgy “footprint” was found. Scientists entering the discussion opined that it was: 1) an elephant seal that had slipped through the Caledonian Canal from the North Sea; 2) a giant squid; 3) a hippopotamus; 4) an acclimatized crocodile; 5) floating debris from a Wartime German blimp.

Whatever the Monster was, it was a godsend to Loch Ness hotelkeepers, tourist agencies, omnibus operators. At the height of the 1934 excitement newshawks suddenly remembered the Benedictine monastery at Fort Augustus, at the southern and deepest end of the lake. There they found jovial, garrulous 83-year-old the Right Rev. Sir David Hunter Blair, Bart. Sir David is more than a British baronet. He is a onetime captain of Scottish militia, an antiquarian, author of five books of memoirs, a Benedictine monk and titular Abbot of Dunfermline. Abbot Sir David has been an Abbot Emeritus of Fort Augustus since 1917, but he has lived on Loch Ness for 50 years, still spends most of his time at the monastery.

Amazed was he at the world’s sudden interest in the Loch Ness Monster, which he insisted had been familiar to his fishing monks for years.* Since then Abbot Sir David has been the Monster’s unofficial spokesman. After its big 1934 season, the creature remained on the Loch bottom (750 ft. at the deepest) during most of 1935, but was up and very busy during 1936, when in one day as many as 50 people reported seeing it. Impressed with “Nessie’s” value as a tourist attraction, Scots have organized an informal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Monsters.

*Their land a gift from Simon Fraser, 13th Baron Lovat, the monks of Fort Augustus have had until recently the ancient right to net salmon from the Loch twice a week during Lent.