Loch Ness Uncovered: Chapters 7–9

Collins managed to hold it together long enough to issue a stiff response: No. No, he would not be calling upon England’s elite flyers to help deal with a monster.

Then, another politician spoke over the din. He asked, “Would not the Scottish Office find its time better occupied in trying to capture the monster of unemployment in Scotland?” The laughter fizzled. It was a good question.
Money and jobs were scarce throughout the UK.

Folks who couldn’t scrounge up enough work to feed themselves or pay rent turned to the “dole,” which was government relief in the form of meager payments that just barely covered the cost of living.

Living through such a hard time taught many Scots to be frugal and always watch for opportunities to make money.

When Mills read newspaper tales of a giant and mysterious beast in Loch Ness, he knew he had to have it for his show. The crowd appeal would be unprecedented!

Komodo dragons are every inch the fearsome monster van Hensbroek had been told they were.

Learning about Komodo dragons was a shock. It also begged the question: if dragons walked the earth, what other mythical creatures might turn out to be real?

On January 14, 1933, just months before the excitement began at Loch Ness, a group of pedestrians on a beach in Scarborough, a seaside town in North Yorkshire, England, uncovered a mystery of their own. Something terrible lay on the sand. Its slick skin was blotchy and mottled. Long, snaky ropes trailed limply from its body.

A local naturalist heard news of the commotion and hustled to the waterfront to behold their treasure. He marveled at the sight. It was, he decided, the largest cephalopod ever to have washed ashore in England: a giant squid.

Beebe and Barton’s trips under the sea captivated armchair scientists everywhere. Their exploits were so daring, so exciting, that they were reported in newspapers around the world.

The majority of zoological advances occurred with far less fanfare.

The Loch Ness Monster was no less believable than a bunch of lethal dragons running amok in Indonesia, or a giant, angry beast attacking Norwegian naval ships.

In November 1933, that question was answered when a celebrity named Lieutenant Commander Rupert Gould arrived in Loch Ness. Every inch of Gould’s six-foot, four-inch frame oozed charisma.

Over the course of his career, he authored books covering everything from Oddities to Enigmas. With this career trajectory, it made perfect sense that he’d wind up at Loch Ness. After all, what was odder or more enigmatic than a Scottish sea serpent?

Von Forstner’s submarine had just torpedoed a British steamer called the Iberian. As the British ship sank under the sea, her boilers exploded. This sent pieces of wreckage rocketing upward. Von Forstner and five crew members watched the mayhem, probably quite enjoying their wartime victory. But then, in the middle of the flotsam, he said a “gigantic sea monster was hurled, writhing and struggling, twenty or thirty yards into the air.”