A Monster in Loch Ness Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
Note: Scotland is produced and designed to be heard, not read. We encourage you, if you are able, to listen to the audio, which provides insight which is significantly different to how it appears on the page. Transcripts are generated from the original scripts of the episodes. They may be slightly different to the corresponding audio and may contain errors.
Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 24 - A Monster In Loch Ness
MICHAEL PARK: It is 2020. It is dark. It is cold. Freezing cold. And silent.
Completely silent.
Except it isn’t. Somewhere in the distance there’s a rumble, the sound of something huge struggling to haul its massive form through the water.
You feel something move around you, the water pushes past you as though the hull of a giant submarine is moving past you mere feet away.
You see nothing... but you feel it, the sensation of something rushing by you with a horrifying, other-worldly urgency.
You try to put it out of your mind - the depths are full of the unknown. It was probably your imagination. The mind plays tricks on you after a while.
You came here, to the far North of Scotland, to Loch Ness because you know that something lives in the water. Hundreds of people - maybe even thousands - have seen it down the years.
You know in your heart of hearts that a beast lives in the depths of the Loch. You know that something prehistoric, something terrifying and beautiful lives deep in the murk just outside Inverness.
A monster.
The monster.
You just hope it wasn’t that you felt in the water.
From Be Quiet Media, this is Scotland, a podcast about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
It is 1934. Doctor Robert Wilson is on a trip with a group of friends, shooting and fishing in the North of Scotland. Among his party are his host, Maurice Chambers, the flamboyant film director and amateur big game hunter Marmaduke Weatherell and his son Ian - as well as a young artist by the name of Christian Spurling.
The doctor had travelled up from London and, although he found getting around a bit more difficult since picking up a wound in the war, had enjoyed a few days in the bracing fresh air of the Scottish highlands.
At night they’d retire after dinner and drink port, play billiards and bridge and talk at length about their careers, the exciting and wonderful things they’d seen all across the world. Sometimes they would talk about the war and the men they’d left behind - but not often. It didn’t do to talk about things like that in polite company.
In the mornings they would get up at the crack of dawn to go hunting with Duke Weatherell - as he liked to be called - regaling them with tales of the incredible creatures he had put one between the eyes of in Rhodesia and South Africa before moving back to Britain.
Duke had fancied himself a film actor in his younger days and had moved on to directing. In fact, he had directed three films just the year before. A Moorland Tragedy, Hearts of Oak and Wanderlust all flopped.
The younger Weatherell was actually known as Ian Colin among his own circle of acting friends. He is a regular feature in the government-mandated short films which play before actual features and is the prototype for those actors you see in everything but can’t put your finger on what they’ve been in.
Christian Spurling was an up-and-coming artist, sculptor and was the step-son of Duke Weatherell. The good doctor and Maurice Chambers, who was an insurance agent, were fairly adrift among the creative spirits.
But it is Doctor Wilson who was about to become more famous than he ever thought possible - credited only as ‘the surgeon’. One day, on the shore of Loch Ness, as the clouds parted a little and allowed the bright mid-morning light to beat down on the glittering surface of the water, he saw it.
Poking out of the water.
A small head. A long, elegant neck and what looked like a hump just breaking the surface of the loch.
He couldn’t believe his luck. With none of his companions around he grabbed his camera and snapped four pictures of this most incredible sight. He - a gynaecologist from London - had just found the Loch Ness Monster! It might as well have winked at him.
He rushed back and had the plates developed as quickly as he could before deciding to send the prints to the Daily Mail.
After all, this was proof.
The world had to know, and the Daily Mail was one of the country’s most widely read newspapers - even if they had published an editorial praising Oswald Mosley’s fascist blackshirts that January.
There had been stories of an ancient and giant creature in the Loch for centuries but in 1933 a couple saw an incredible creature walk across the road in front of their car. This was followed by a photograph which purported to show the beast.
People were fascinated by the idea. The Daily Mail themselves had even sent a big game hunter to look for the monster.
Just a few months later and Doctor Wilson’s photograph caused an instant sensation when it was published and for many, that was it. The Loch Ness Monster existed. There it was in black and white.
If the Daily Mail said it was true, it must be true.
It is 1933. Marmaduke, Duke, Weatherell is at the centre of a media storm.
The noted director of terrible films, actor in terrible films and big game hunter of self-renown is being ripped to shreds in the papers because he failed to find the Loch Ness Monster.
The Daily Mail had hired him to go North to their least favourite part of the United Kingdom and find a mythical beast living in the murky depths of Scotland’s deepest and most mysterious Loch.
He had come back with plaster casts of footprints that he claimed could only have been the monster’s. These massive, four-toed casts caused a storm of monster hunters and tourists to flock to Loch Ness and they were turned over to the Natural History Museum for analysis.
Unfortunately for Duke Weatherell someone who had known he was out looking for legendary monsters had decided to play a joke on him, using an umbrella stand made from a hippo’s foot to create the tracks.
Not only had Weatherell failed to find the monster, he’d been had.
His employers at the Daily Mail turned on him and ridiculed him in a series of articles which poked fun both at his oeuvre, and his competence as a monster hunter.
Fast forward six months to the house in the Highlands where Doctor Wilson was staying for a week of hunting, bird-watching and fishing with his flamboyant company.
Except Doctor Wilson, the renowned surgeon from London, isn’t there at all.
Instead there are three conspirators, the men of the Weatherell family, with revenge in mind.
Duke, the struggling film director who had been humiliated by a national newspaper for falling for a hoax himself.
The younger Weatherell, the actor you couldn’t put your finger on, was a keen amateur photographer. His step brother Christian Spurling was a sculptor with a background in model-making.
Through their friend in common, the insurance agent, Maurice Chambers, they had enlisted their fourth conspirator, Doctor Wilson who would be the acceptable face of their plan.
And what a plan it was.
Duke had been humiliated in the court of public opinion for acting in good faith. The Daily Mail wanted their exclusive… they wanted their monster? He told his sons…
“We'll give them their monster"
The plan was set. Spurling used his model making talents to craft the elegant head and neck of an unknowable ancient creature, following the earlier sketches from people who had sighted the monster.
They had claimed it looked like a plesiosaur so a plesiosaur they would have.
They then went to a toy shop. Woolworth’s to be exact and bought a little tin submarine. Spurling strapped the head and neck to it and attached a little lead strip to keep it from capsizing in the water before Ian Weatherell took the contraption to the shore of the loch.
He took a few photos, most of which included the shore in the background and made the monster look like what it was, a 12 inch high model among huge ripples in the water.
As they took the photos, they were almost interrupted by a water bailiff. The story goes that Duke Weatherell sank the submarine with his foot and pushed it into the mud.
It might still be there.
Then it was time to put the second part of the plan into action. The plates were developed and the best photo cropped to remove the land in the background and give the photo a sense of scale.
They sent it to Doctor Robert Wilson along with a slightly blurrier shot which they had made to look like the monster was diving. He would then send it on to the Daily Mail.
After all, why would they have any reason to doubt a respected war veteran and doctor? If there was one thing Doctor Robert Wilson loved, it was a good practical joke.
That part of the plan was a masterstroke. The photo was published, the hysteria went into overdrive, and for nearly 60 years that photograph, the Surgeon’s photograph was what people thought of when they closed their eyes and thought of the Loch Ness Monster.
It was what drove people to search the depths, to feel the water pushing past them as though something giant, terrifying, unknowable was moving mere feet away.
It was a monster hunter’s revenge.
He gave them their monster.
CREDITS
You’ve been listening to Scotland, it was written and produced by me, Michael Park and is a production of Be Quiet Media.
The music for every episode of Scotland is by the human substitution cipher, Mitch Bain, you can check out more of his work by heading over to Facebook and searching for Mitch Bain music.
Additional voices for this episode were by Chris Moriarty.
Jamie Mowat does stunning illustrations for us which you can see in our episode art. See more and buy prints at tidlin - t i d l i n - .com.
Scotland is supported by Chris Lingwood and listeners like you on Patreon. Get involved and chuck us a couple of bucks at: patreon.com/scotlandhistorypodcast
You can find out more about the show on our website, thisisscotland.co and on twitter, facebook and instagram by searching Scotland - Scottish History Podcast.
Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time.