nessie photo hoax 2

From: andrewst@u.washington.edu (Andrew Steinberg)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Nessie: The 2nd Article
Date: 16 Mar 1994 03:31:20 GMT

             Copyright 1994 The Sunday Telegraph Limited  
                                Sunday Telegraph

                             March 13, 1994, Sunday

SECTION: Pg. 3

LENGTH: 1488 words

HEADLINE: NESSIE AND BIG-GAME HUNTER'S MONSTER EGO Clockwork submarine and
plastic wood fashioned a legend

BYLINE: by James Langton

 BODY:
   FOR 60 years this photograph has been the subject of intense debate. For
many, it is the cornerstone of their belief that a large aquatic animal 
unknown to science lives in Britain's largest freshwater lake. In fact, 
the "monster" is no more than a toy submarine bought for a few shillings 
in Woolworths with a head and neck modelled from plastic wood. The 
photograph has always thought to have been taken on April 19, 1934, as a 
Harley Street gynaecologist, Colonel Robert Wilson, drove north alongside 
the Loch towards Inverness with an un-named friend. Wilson's friend is 
said to have seen a commotion in the water, and shouted: "My God, it's the
monster." Wilson took four photographs with a plate camera. After two 
minutes, the story continues, the creature vanished.

 Later he handed over the four plates to be developed at a chemist. Two were
blank and a third showed a small blob above the water. It was the fourth 
which caused a sensation, published three days later as a Daily Mail "world
exclusive". In reality, the story begins not on April 19, 1934 with 
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wilson, MB, BChir Cambs, FRCS, MRCS, LRCP but 
several months earlier with Mr Marmaduke Arundel Wetherell, actor, film 
producer, self-styled "big game hunter" and self-publicist. Duke 
Wetherell had been hired by the Daily Mail to track down the Loch Ness monster.

  Stories of a mysterious beast in the loch had begun to circulate from 
spring 1933 when a new road opened alongside the north shore of Loch 
Ness. First published in the local papers, they gradually began to filter 
south. For the British public, and Fleet Street in particular, the monster was
a welcome relief to the unremitting diet of economic depression and the rise of
the great dictators.

 The "Duke" was a flamboyant character who enjoyed seeing his name and 
face in print. In 1927 he produced two talking parrots in court after claims
that they had been annoying the neighbours. That the case came shortly 
after the opening of his latest epic Robinson Crusoe was, of course, 
coincidence. To readers of the Daily Mail, he became "Mr M. A. Wetherell, 
the Central African big game hunter" (he had blasted a few wild animals while
filming Livingstone), hired to find the monster and, in particular, scoop 
the rival Daily Express. With a lucrative contract in his back pocket and a
Mail photographer and "special correspondent" at his side, Wetherell 
arrived at the Loch on December 18, 1933. Even the Mail was astonished at how
quickly he got results. "

 Loch Ness Monster Is A Fact, Not A Legend" the paper trumpeted on 
December 21. A succession of smaller headlines told the
story: "Hunter's Deduction from New Find. Tracks Only A Few Hours Old. 
Tests To Be Made." The cause of all the excitement was two footprints in 
soft mud on the south shore of the loch near Fort Augustus. Wetherell had 
stumbled across them less than 48 hours after landing on the beach by 
motor boat. The "spoor" he declared was "less than a few hours old". The 
animal was an amphibian: "A four fingered beast . . . and it has feet or 
pads about eight inches across . . . a very powerful soft-footed animal 
about 20 ft long." Plaster casts were taken of the footprints and sent to 
the Natural History Museum. All through Christmas and New Year, the world - or
at least that part of it egged on by the Daily Mail -
waited in breathless expectation for the museum's verdict. On January 4 
it came. The footprints were identical and from a young hippo. It was most 
likely that the foot was in use somewhere as an umbrella stand. A gale of 
laughter swept Fleet Street. The Mail's Loch Ness coverage shrank with 
the speed of rapidly deflating balloon. Wetherell quietly returned to London
on January 18 with suggestions that the footprints were the work of 
pranksters. Nessie was dead. Until the "Surgeon's Photograph", published 
in triumph by the Mail three months later.

 Unlike the humiliation of the previous expedition, here was conclusive proof
that something did exist in Loch Ness, and with a respectable surgeon and 
former officer as its source. Except that Colonel Robert Wilson did not 
take the famous photograph. It also was the work of Duke Wetherell. The 
key to the mystery is Maurice Chambers, named in original newspaper 
reports as the co-lessee with Wilson of a wildfowl shoot on the Beauly 
Firth near Inverness. What has remained concealed for 60 years is that
Chambers was also a friend of Duke Wetherell. The real story has been 
uncovered by David Martin, a zoologist with the Loch Ness
and Morar scientific project and Alastair Boyd, a fellow researcher.
 
 Their first clue was a small diary story, ironically in The Sunday 
Telegraph in December 1975, reporting that Wetherell's son Ian claimed he 
and his father had once fabricated a photograph of the Loch Ness monster. 
The article did not mention which photograph or mention Colonel Wilson - the
surgeon - but it did name Maurice Chambers as a co-conspirator. Then 
David Martin remembered reading of Chambers before - but as a friend of 
the more dubious Wetherell. At the time of The Sunday Telegraph interview, Ian
Wetherell was 63 and running a Chelsea pub. When Martin and Boyd arrived at
the pub it was 18 years later and they discovered he was dead. The trail 
led to Duke Wetherell's step-son, living on the south coast and in poor 
health. Christian Spurling, now nearly 90, had kept the secret of the Loch
Ness monster for nearly six decades.
 
 Faced with a series of straight questions from Martin and Boyd, however, 
he gave straight answers. It was an angry and irritated Duke Wetherell 
who returned from Scotland to the family home in Twickenham in January 1934.
The Mail, in particular, had made it clear what they thought of the hippo 
footprints. "All right," he is said to have told his son Ian, "We'll give them
their monster."

 Ian, then 21, wassent out to buy the raw materials - a toy submarine and
several tins of plastic wood. Christian, the son of a marine painter, was a
keen model-maker. "All I got was a message from Wetherell saying 'Can you 
make me a monster?' " he recalled. Wetherell's sons worked out the details 
together. "I said 'well, it's a monster so it's got to have long neck, I 
suppose," remembered Christian. "I just sat down and made it. It was 
modelled on the idea of a sea serpent." The "monster" took eight days to 
make. The head, neck and body were built over the conning
tower in stages as the plastic wood hardened with a space for the 
clockwork key.Lead soldered underneath gave it stability.

 Sea-trials were conducted in a pond and then, probably in February or 
March, Ian and Duke Wetherell returned to Loch Ness. In a quiet bay the 
monster was floated out into the shallows. Ian took the photographs. What
happened next is not completely clear. Duke Wetherell clearly confided in his
friend Maurice Chambers. It was a bit of harmless fun, but to make the 
hoax work, he needed someone convincing who would enter into the spirit of the
thing. Did Chambers know anyone suitable? He did. Robert Wilson.

 Wilson was given his lines and four photographic plates to take to the 
Inverness chemist shop. With the resulting photograph was also developed 
the myth of Loch Ness. Why has the full story remained secret for so long? The 
Surgeon's Photograph has withstood rigorous scientific examination. It 
has been enhanced by computers; explained variously as a plesiosaur, a 
tree trunk or an otter. No book or article on the  Loch Ness monster  is 
complete without it. From the waves, the monster's neck has been 
calculated at more than a metre. Observers have noted a "flipper" in the 
water in front of the beast. None have realised they are seeing the deck 
of toy submarine.

 Why did those involved keep their silence? No one realised Wetherell and 
his sons were involved and so they were never approached. All were 
certainly overwhelmed and unprepared by the publicity the photograph
generated. Their little joke had got out of hand and the least
painful solution was to keep quiet. Later the surgeon, Robert Wilson, never
claimed more than to have seen "something in the water". The British Medical
Association had warned him the story was in danger of bringing his profession
into disrepute. To ward off subsequent inquiries he hinted to researchers 
that he could not say more because his companion on that fateful morning 
was a married woman. Today all those involved are dead. The surgeon died in 
Australia in 1969. Duke Wetherell and Chambers were dead by the 
mid-Fifties. Spurling died last November, shortly after recording his 
version of events.

 What about the "monster?" As Duke and Ian Wetherell waded on the shores of
Loch Ness with their camera and model, they heard a water bailiff approaching.
Duke put his foot out and sunk it. And there it probably lies to this day, a 
small lump of rusting metal and some crumbling plastic wood. All that 
remains of the Loch Ness Monster. 


January 25, 1995

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