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How the modern story was written

The 1930s wave of reports

BBC News says the modern story gathered pace when, in 1933, the Inverness Courier’s Fort Augustus correspondent, Alec Campbell, reported a sighting by Aldie Mackay of what she believed to be Nessie. Campbell described a whale-like creature and the loch’s water “cascading and churning.” The editor, Evan Barron, suggested the beast be described as a “monster.”⁠¹

The Gazetteer says it was not until 1932 that a plethora of sightings began.⁠² The same BBC page records that in 1933 Mr and Mrs George Spicer told newspapers they saw a monster, measuring 40 to 50 ft (12 to 15 m) long, crossing the road near the loch.⁠³

In 1994, the BBC records, the most famous of the published photographs — taken by Colonel Robert Wilson on 19 April 1934 — was revealed to be a hoax.⁠³ The same report says the 1934 “Surgeon’s Photograph” was, sixty years later, confirmed as a hoax hatched in revenge after a newspaper ridiculed journalist Marmaduke Wetherell for finding “Nessie footprints” on the shore. The “monster” caught on camera was apparently a toy submarine bought from Woolworths, with a head fashioned from wood putty, and the hoaxers then gave the photograph to Wilson.⁠¹

BBC News traces the story back 1,500 years, when the Irish missionary St Columba is said to have encountered a beast in the River Ness in 565 AD. That is a reported tradition about a river encounter, given here with the later newspaper history, not as proof of an unknown animal in the loch.⁠¹ The Gazetteer notes a much earlier story: St Columba (521–597) is said to have subdued a mysterious “water beast.” The site treats that as a reported tradition, not as a zoological record.⁠²

A tradition about St Columba is much older than the newspaper wave. It is given here respectfully, as a reported story about a missionary and a beast in the River Ness, not as a modern sighting of the loch.