The Loch Ness Monster

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INTRODUCTION

I am going speak about the book. The title of it is Loch Ness Monster. The book is written by Mary Smith. It is an adventure story. The book is about the friendship of a Scottish girl, Carol, and the Loch Ness monster called “Nessie”.

MAIN PART

All the events happen in Scotland, in a small village where Carol – the main character of the book-lives. The village stands on a small hill. There is the lake Loch Ness nearby. Carol lives with her parents. Her father is a shepherd. He has many sheep. Carol is a nice girl. She helps her father to take their sheep to the lake every day.

One day Carol discovers that there are only 28 sheep, instead of 30 in her flock. Carol wants to know who took her sheep. The next day she sees a monster in the lake who wants to eat the sheep. But the monster only wants to play with the sheep. So Carol and the monster, Nessie by the name, become friends. Every day Carol comes to the lake to play with Nessie. Nessie taught Carol to swim and Carol taught Nessie to play with a ball. Carol tells her parents about Nessie but they do not believe her. Only one boy, whose name is John, believes Carol. He calls many people to see the monster. He brings a camera to take pictures of Nessie. The weather is foggy this day. Many people gather on the shore. Nessie appears for some time over the surface of the lake. But Carol is afraid that the people will put Nessie into the Zoo. She cries for Nessie to go away and the monster disappears in the water. The people do not see anything. Jim’s pictures are unclear.

When the boy showed his pictures to the people the next day they did not believe them. They thought it was a storm.

Nessie never came again when there were many people near the lake. But when Carol came alone Nessie was always glad to play with his true friend. And they both were happy.

APPRECIATION OF THE BOOK

I like the book very much. The plot of it is rather interesting and exciting. I have learned much about Scotland and about the famous Loch Ness monster. I have heard about Nessie and have seen its pictures in books and magazines. But in this book, Nessie is a character and it is very lonely and wants to have a friend. I know that everybody wants to have true friends (people or animals). This is the main idea of the book: it is nice when you have a friend who can play with you and help you in a difficult situation.

NESSIE – THE EVERLASTING MYSTERY

Many a man has been hanged on less evidence than there is for the Loch Ness Monster.

I. Nessie – Fact or Fiction?

Mankind has always had an interest in a good mystery. Around the world there are sea serpents or monsters in many bodies of fresh water and the Loch Ness Monster is without doubt, the granddaddy of them all.

This world-famous monster is affectionately known by most people as Nessie and as Nessiteras rhombopteryx by scientific believers. Nessie has been featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, dozens of books, and has starred in several feature films and innumerable documentaries. He is the best known crypto-zoological creature and is certainly one of the most-sighted monsters in the world. At his old age, Nessie has lost none of his charisma. He often appears in advertisements, is the object of sonar searches of the Loch, and is exploited by public relations people cashing in on his ability to attract the international mass media.

If Nessie is proven to exist, British bookmaker William Hill faces a payout of over Ј1 million. To Scotland the monster has been worth millions a year as its premiere tourist attraction. It is a fact giant nets, submarines, underwater cameras, sonar, and loch-side crews of observers have all failed to come up with the solid evidence that will prove to the world that there is a Loch Ness Monster. On the other hand, the great number of eyewitness sightings make it hard to easily dismiss Nessie, who remains the Queen or rather the King (as Nessie is supposed to be male) of all lake monsters.

Carvings of this unidentified animal, made by the ancient inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands some 1,500 years ago, are the earliest evidence that Loch Ness harbors a strange aquatic creature

II. Birth of a Legend

abridged from Stephen Lyons

When the Romans first came to northern Scotland in the first century A.D., they found the Highlands occupied by fierce, tattoo-covered tribes. They called them the Picts, or painted people. From the carved, standing stones still found in the region around Loch Ness, it is clear that the Picts were fascinated by animals, and rendered them with great fidelity. All the animals depicted on the Pictish stones are lifelike and easy to recognize – all but one. The exception is a strange beast with an elongated beak or muzzle, a head locket or spout, and flippers instead of feet. Described by some scholars as a swimming elephant, the Pictish beast is the earliest known evidence for an idea that has held sway in the Scottish Highlands for at least 1,500 years – that Loch Ness is home to a mysterious aquatic animal.

In Scottish folklore these water-horses, or water-kelpies, are said to have magical powers and malevolent intentions. According to one version of the legend, the water-horse lures small children into the water by offering them rides on its back.

The earliest written reference linking such creatures to Loch Ness is in the biography of Saint Columba, the man credited with introducing Christianity to Scotland. In A.D. 565, according to this account, Columba was on his way to visit a Pictish king when he stopped along the shore of Loch Ness. Seeing a large beast about to attack a man who was swimming in the lake, Columba raised his hand, invoking the name of God and commanding the monster to “go back with all speed.” The beast complied, and the swimmer was saved.

The modern legend of Loch Ness dates from 1933, when a new road was completed along the shore, offering the first clear views of the loch from the northern side. One April afternoon, a local couple was driving home along this road when they spotted “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” Their account was written up by a correspondent for the Inverness Courier, whose editor used the word “monster” to describe the animal. The Loch Ness Monster has been a media phenomenon ever since.

Public interest built gradually during the spring of 1933, after the couple reported seeing one of the creatures on land, lumbering across the shore road. By October, several London newspapers had sent correspondents to Scotland, and radio programs were being interrupted to bring listeners the latest news from the loch. A British circus offered a reward of Ј20,000 for the capture of the beast. Hundreds of Boy Scouts and outdoorsmen arrived, some venturing out in small boats, others setting up deck chairs and waiting expectantly for the monster to appear.

The excitement over the monster reached a fever pitch in December, when the London Daily Mail hired an actor, film director, and big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell to track down the beast. After only a few days at the loch, Wetherell reported finding the fresh footprints of a large, four-toed animal. He estimated it to be 20 feet long. With great fanfare, Wetherell made plaster casts of the footprints and, just before Christmas, sent them off to the Natural History Museum in London for analysis. While the world waited for the museum zoologists to return from holiday, legions of monster hunters descended on Loch Ness, filling the local hotels. Inverness was floodlit for the occasion, and traffic jammed the shoreline roads in both directions.

The bubble burst in early January, when museum zoologists announced that the footprints were those of a hippopotamus. It wasn’t clear whether Wetherell was the villain or the victim. Either way, the incident tainted the image of the Loch Ness Monster and discouraged serious investigation of the phenomenon. For the next three decades, most scientists scornfully dismissed reports of strange animals in the loch. Those sightings they said were the result of optical illusions caused by boat wakes, wind slicks, floating logs, otters, ducks, or swimming deer.

III. Nessie Sightings Chronology

The modern Nessie era began in 1933 when a local paper “The Inverness Courier” reported that while driving along the loch side, a local couple of the Spicers spotted a large creature crossing the road in front of them. The creature disappeared into the bushes in the direction of the Loch. This report was taken up by the national press in London and the Nessie ball began to roll.

The monster was first photographed by a Hugh Gray in 1933. Gray claims “I immediately got my camera ready and snapped the object which was then two to three feet above the surface of the water. I did not see any head, for what I took to be the front parts were under the water, but there was considerable movement from what seemed to be the tail.”

The same year on April 14th the owners of a pub the MacKays, saw an “enormous animal” in the Loch. They told the man responsible for controlling salmon fishing in the Loch, Alex Campbell, about their sighting. Because of his job Campbell spent a lot of time observing the Loch, and saw (Did he?) Nessie a number of times. Campbell put it at 30 feet long and described it as having “a long, tapering neck, about 6 feet long, and a smallish head with a serpentine look about it, and a huge hump behind...”

The next year, 1934, the most famous photograph of Nessie was allegedly taken by a London surgeon Dr. Robert Kenneth Wilson. This “surgeon’s photo” has been the focus of intense debate since it was first taken. Over the years several people have “confessed” to being involved in faking the surgeon’s photo. One of them was Christain Spurling. Christain Spurling later admitted that he had taken part in a hoax. He made the confession on his death bed in 1993 when he was aged 90. His story was that his stepbrother, Ian Wetherell and Ian’s father a film director, and big-game hunter named Marmaduke Wetherell had been hired by the Daily Mail to find Nessie. They made their “monster” out of a 14 inch toy submarine and plastic wood. The photo was taken so seriously that they did not dare to disclose their secret. You can decide for yourself whether this confession is proof that the photo is a fake or not.

In 1934 Arthur Grant, a veterinary student, saw the thing on land crossing the road as Arthur rode along on his motorbike. His description matched that of a Plesiosaurus – small head, long neck, big body with flippers and a tail. The Plesiosaurus, a relative of the dinosaur, has been thought to be extinct for some 65 million years.

In 1951, Lachlan Stuart, a forestry worker who lived beside the loch, also managed to photograph the monster, if that is indeed what it was. He saw three humps in the water appear in line and ran back to his house to get his camera. After taking one photograph his camera shutter jammed, but his photograph got wide publicity as further proof of the existence of Nessie.

An indistinct moving picture was taken in 1960 by an aeronautical engineer, Tim Dinsdale. The film did not convince the world, but Dinsdale gave up his job, and spent the next twenty years trying to prove Nessie existed. He saw it twice more, but never got the photographic proof.

In 1961 the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau was formed and even two submarines have been brought into the search with sonar experts on board! When the submarine Pisces was diving off Castle Urquhart, where the water is 950 feet deep, a vast underwater cavern was found. Was this Nessie’s home?

In the late 1960s the searchers ventured beneath the surface for the first time, initially in mini-submarines then with sonar equipment. The American Academy of Applied Science funded a search by Dr. Robert Rines, using sonar and automatic cameras. Sonar brought new levels of sophistication and accuracy to the search, with sonar-activated colour cameras recording images of Loch Ness. Remarkable underwater photographs were made public in 1972 and 1975 and were instrumental in raising public awareness and generating new interest in the monster.

In more recent years mini submarines have tried to find Nessie. In 1987 Operation Deepscan covered the entire surface of the Loch with 20 motor cruisers, which methodically swept it with sonar equipment bouncing sound waves from the surface down to the bottom and electronically recording any contacts. It created a sonar envelope from which nothing could hide. Nessie, however, did. Many salmon were found, but no Nessie.

Sightings continue to be reported and every few years an expedition obtains funding to “prove” the truth once and for all. In 2003 a BBC expedition surveyed the entire Loch. The BBC claims it has proved that Nessie – a marine reptile, does not exist. They used satellite navigation technology to aim through Loch Ness. “We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch,” said Ian Florence, one of the specialists who carried out the survey for the BBC.

It should be remembered that it is logically impossible to prove that something does not exist – only that it has not been found. Nessie sightings continue to be reported every year, some backed by photographic evidence. Many of the reports come from tourists who have been enjoying the justly famous Scottish hospitality.

IV. Conclusion

Nevertheless, eyewitnesses continued to come forward with accounts of their sightings – more than 4,000 of them. Most of the witnesses described a large creature with one or more humps protruding above the surface like the hull of an upturned boat. Others reported seeing a long neck or flippers.

To this day there is no scientific, physical or photographic evidence to prove the existence of a monster or monsters in Loch Ness. Nevertheless, many respectable, responsible and sober observers are utterly convinced they have seen a large aquatic creature in the waters. Among them are lawyers and priests, scientists and school teachers, policemen and fishermen – even a Nobel Prize winner.

None of the evidence so far shows proof of Nessie’s existence. On the other hand the waters are big enough and deep enough to hide such a creature. And ... it is impossible for only one to exist, there would have to be a breeding population of say at least 10 to 20. Certainly no bones or bodies have been found, so the myth lives on.

You decide!

Compiled by Yelena Zubets