This is of necessity a story without an ending. The beginning is shrouded in mystery, and the middle is confused. This is not even the definitive version of it, as new, or old, material may yet come to light. It is not an area of research where I expend much effort, but as I may have a contribution to make, there seems little need to wait any longer before telling what I know.
The main players are a Dr McRae, who had worked in London but retired
to the Highlands of Scotland, and the Kirkcudbright landscape artist Alastair
Dallas. It would appear from the story that the the doctor had a practical
interest in cinematography. Mr Dallas was a widely travelled landscape artist
with a wide circle of friends. After the "new" road along the north-west shore
of Loch Ness had been completed he contacted the main contractors, Carmichaels,
with a view to a commission to record the works. Unfortunately, the commission
had already been awarded, but due to the original artists preference for
sweeping curves over straight lines, Mr Dallas was later invited to the contractors
offices and given the commission by the proud builder of the straight roads.
It was during this commissioned work that the sketch is believed to have
been made. Mr Dallas the artist died in 1983, but I am indebted to his family
for the background information given here. One interesting point made was
that Alastair Dallas invariably carried a camera, and field glasses, to help
him in his work, and the question naturally arises, - " If he had time to
make the sketches, why didn't he just take a photograph?" As a professional
photographer I know only too well that one does not always carry the entire
contents of one's tool-kit... One carries what one expects to need. As a
landscape artist, a telephoto lens may not have been an essential item.
Loch Ness Investigation
Ted Holiday
Dr McRae
On the crest of the head are two horn-like sense organs. Starting between these, and running down the neck, is a bristly mane. Slit-like eyes could be made out on the head but they are not very distinct.
Occasionally, the Orm rolls on the water and one of the forward flippers makes an appearance. It is thick and fleshy in appearance and seems to be capable of independent movement. The skin looks tough and leathery. Another interesting feature was that the head seemed to be in a continuous state of flux or movement, apparently due to the play of muscles under the skin.
The second film taken by Dr McRae shows a creature lying in the shallows
in Loch Duich itself, writhing its head over a bed of seaweed. It differed
from the Loch Ness creature in having a longer neck and a mane, which looked
tufted.
Alastair Dallas
Some ten years later the story took another turn, when Alan Wilkins, a Dumfries-shire schoolteacher, observed and photographed a very sizeable object at a distance of several miles. Following my meeting and interview with him on behalf of the continuing investigation, a friend visited Alastair Dallas and was told a rather different story. In this version there was only one film by Dr McRae, but Mr Dallas himself had had a sighting, and had made some sketches. A copy of this drawing was given to the friend, who passed it on to me in October 1975. As attempts to pursue the alleged film failed, it might be useful to study the sketch.
Over the past quarter of a century I have shown this sketch to numerous zoologists, naturalists and serious researchers and there is no consensus view. Superficially the animal appears to be a plausible member of the sirenian group, (and in a moment of weakness I coined the phrase "plausiosaur") although the neck length is of unclear benefit to a member of a group which eats seaweed, a commodity for which the supply greatly exceeds any potential demand, making adaptive evolution seem unlikely. Let us examine the sketch in a much detail as possible. It consists of four components:
Sketch A – upper left, a right side view
of the fore-part of the creature.
Sketch B – upper right, a frontal view of
the head only.
Sketch C – lower centre, the most complete
view
Sketch D – lower right, the head apparently
sucking a rock
Alastair Dallas's Sketches
Copyright 2000 Alastair Dallas. Reproduced
with permission.
The animal appears to have the following characteristics
1. It has a relatively long neck, like a horse or deer
2. It has a rather conical head in the horizontal plane
3. There are thick lips around the mouth, typical of browsers
4. There are nostrils just behind the mouth
5. The eyes are large, but closed
6. There are ear apertures behind the eyes
7. There are two wattle-like appendages hanging down below but not
from the ears
8. There are heavy jowls or distended cheeks
9. Although not obvious from the sketch, the animal was described
a “sucking the rocks" (a)
10. There is a mane down the centre line of the neck, with the suggestion
of long strands of hair depending from it.
11. The fore-limbs look like paddles, and the creature is apparently supporting
itself on them.
12. There is the suggestion of breast-like organs between the fore-limbs
13. The central part of the body seems quite thick
14. There are two fin-like objects on the centre-line of the back
15. There is a patch on the flank where the surface is different, and this
has been described as a “mangy patch with hair missing” in one interview .
16. There is no visible sign of rear limbs.
17. The artist has shown where the tail disappeared from view, but stated
that it extended for some distance beyond this point.
18. The sketch is annotated “Drumnadrochit 1936 Sept.” at the top and is
initialled AAKD/36 at the bottom.
reference.
(a) : It is believed that the creature was
observed, possibly through field glasses, to be "eating lichens or weeds
on the rocks". This also hints that the observer may have been at some distance
from the creature, which might also explain why the camera was not used.
Even at about 100 yards or metres, a standard lens camera would not have
recorded much detail, and the view of the creature may have been obscured
by intervening branches. The duration of the episode is believed to be 20
or 30 minutes, occuring while the artist was taking a picnic lunch. How the
episode began or ended is not recalled.
There is a whole spectrum of explanations available to account for the
sketch, ranging between acceptance of this as an accurate record of a new
and unidentified species in Loch Ness and dismissal as an outright and total
fabrication. It might be useful to list a few possibilities, including ones
which we might loosely call “lawyers tactics”, in which what was stated or
written was the truth, but what the listener or reader infers is something
quite different.
Possibilities
1. Mr Dallas had the incredibly good fortune to witness the last of a race of freshwater sirenians which was dying out as the increasingly peaty loch water finally reduced plant growth to a level which could no longer sustain the population. (Sympathy is an under-researched subject, and on the 7th day of that same September, 1936, on the other side of the planet, Benjamin, possibly the last Thylacine on Earth, died in Hobart Zoo, and his species became "extinct".)
2. The artist was shown an unclear film taken by Dr McRae and drew the sketches afterwards while in Drumnadrochit. Artists are entitled to "interpret" blurred or unresolved images and produce their own versions.
2a. The film itself may or may not have been "genuine" and there is a whole spectrum of "genuineness". Dr McRae may have filmed the last of the sea cows on a journey in the High Arctic where there are still tantalising reports of their survival. Mr Dallas may have seen such a film in Drumnadrochit, thus justifying the annotation..
2b. Dr McRae may have filmed a seal, or a drowning deer or horse as a real, naturally occurring event, or contrived it for the benefit of his camera, and then shown the film to Mr Dallas while in Drumnadrochit, who then made the sketches from memory and in good faith.
3. The artist briefly or at a distance, or under obscured viewing conditions
saw either a seal or a deer or other large animal on the beach and failed
to recognise it. He then drew from memory his recollections, to the best of
his ability. ref 1, ref 2.
4. As an act of innocent fun, the artist produced a skilful "zeitgeist"
drawing, and soon realised that it was "too good", and likely to be taken
seriously. He then simply put it away for thirty years, and only then decided
to pit his skills against those of the scientific establishment.
Comments
There is no obvious conclusion to be drawn from the material available. I have no information at all at this time about Dr McRae beyond what I have stated above.
Mr Dallas emerges as a competent and respected artist, and, judging from events, a person to be trusted. Ted Holiday discovered that he evidently also had what is called a "short fuse", and did not suffer unwelcome visitors with begging bowls gladly.
If Alastair Dallas did see an unusual animal on the beach at Loch Ness, two obvious candidates would be seals and deer. His sketches and reported comments are not inconsistent with an encounter with either animal under conditions in which clear observation were not possible. Anyone can make a mistake. In September, the common seal Phoca vitulina moults, looks rather shabby and is in a generally bad mood. Being aware of the "monster" story, and spotting a seal sleeping on the beach in the distance, the artist could be forgiven for not wishing to get a closer look. The photograph below illustrates this.
Copyright 2000 Paul Thompson, University of Aberdeen.
The other obvious candidate, a deer in the process
of expiring on the beach, has not been photographed to my knowledge, but below
is a deer swimming in Loch Ness.
Deer Swimming in Loch Ness
Image of deer with no horns
There is so much we do not know.
It seems that Alastair Dallas did not know for a long time that he was a trustee of anything, and even then did not know who the other trustees were, even though they were in his circle of acquaintances. Yes, Dallas may have known Cameron of Lochiel, but he didn't know that he was another trustee! Perhaps Dr McRae never wanted the film released, and went to great lengths to protect it. And who was the third trustee? Dr McRae was a personal friend of the Prior at St Benedict's Abbey, Fort Augustus...who could be of better repute? But we may never know. The Prior of that time is long dead, the Abbey is closed down, the brethren dispersed. The one member of the brethren who was most closely associated with the Monster was Father Aloysius, perhaps better known as J.A.Carruth, the author of the booklet "Loch Ness and its Monster", published by the Abbey Press in the fifties and sixties. The last I heard of him was that he was engaged in missionary work in southern Africa. Significantly, perhaps, the Dallas family received a letter from a Catholic mission in southern Africa asking if the McRae film could be used to raise funds for their work. Clearly, it is not in their hands, nor those of the Dallas family.
The film, if it ever existed, may well have been recorded on nitrate based stock. By now it would be very unstable, and likely to spontaneously ignite at the merest draught of the can being opened. Perhaps the only clue will come when we hear of a bank burning down....
Postcript: 9th November 2001
In the course of my "day job" as a photographic technician, I was surprised
to discover yesterday that some old negatives handed to me for printing were
embossed with the words "Eastman Nitrate Kodak". When small slivers from
the end of the negs were "flame tested" they burned with a spluttering yellow
flame as expected. Some of them were exposed as early as 1924, and
were still entirely printable. This suggests that there may still be hope
for any "McRae Film" which may exist, even if it was recorded on "nitrate"
film, depending on its storage conditions.
* “The Great Orm of Loch Ness” by F.W.Holiday Faber and Faber 1968 £1.16.0
ref 1. The Common Seal, Phoca vitulina, moults during August and September, and these are also months when they have been seen in Loch Ness.
ref 2. Deer have often been seen swimming in Loch
Ness in September, and they will sometimes have short horns.
**Loch Duich is a fascinating environment where I have dived many times, seen many strange creatures, and taken the occasional pretty underwater photograph. Diving with George Brown and others I have seen unrecorded species of anemone, brachiopods unchanged for 600 million years and much besides. I cannot resist the temptation to finish this page with my photograph of a worm and a holothurian, taken near Inverinate Church, Loch Duich. Like so much that we find underwater, they are totally alien to our terrestrial existence. Most worshippers would have no idea of the beauty beneath the surface just 100 metres from their church door.
