The Most Exceptional Loch Ness Land Sighting by Torquil MacLeod

The climax of all the land sightings was Torquil MacLeod's sighting in February of 1960, with the ceature partially ashore but with its tail end trailing off in the water. This was in many ways the most exceptional of the land sightings because it was the lagest creature ever reported ashore, out of the largest series of "Creature" reports in the Loch in any sense, and one of the best-observed to make out the most of the creature's shape. Subsequent collectors of the reports have tended to take an attitude of feigned stupidity in order to question the witness' specific statements made in his report.

I shall start with the summary given by Darren Naish on his blog about land sightings at Loch Ness, primarily because it has been referenced here recently otherwise.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/10/loch_ness_monster_on_land.php


"Rather better, perhaps, is Torquil Macleod's 1960 account where a gigantic creature (perhaps 60 ft long) with squarish flippers was watched through binoculars for as long as nine minutes at a distance of about a mile. It was big and grey and had a projection that Macleod described as being like a large elephant trunk. The creature was apparently half ashore, and at the end of the sighting it curved into a U shape and flopped back into the water, apparently without much of a splash (is that even possible for an animal this size?) (Witchell 1975) [artistic version of Macleod's sighting shown modified from Witchell(1975) back to reflect original source in Dinsdale (1960)]

Macleod produced a sketch of his sighting, but it has been argued that there is no way he could have seen what he claimed to with the binoculars he had, given his position on the opposite shore (Binns 1983). Binns also drew attention to the fact that Macleod wasn't a neutral observer, but a fervent believer who longed for a sighting. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean anything either way (or does it?)."



Torquil MacLeod's sketch done after the sighting "I Think the LNM Looks like THIS", from Dinsdale's Loch Ness Monster, p 144

Binns' objection is exceptionally peculiar. He argues that it would have been impossible to see such an object through McLeod's Highpower binoculars BUT he assumes that what he had seen was a man in a boat, the same explanation he gives for Dinsdale's film. Thus he expects the object MacLeod saw to have been one-third to one-fourth the length of what MacLeod actually REPORTED. It is therefore not reasonable for him to assert that the witness could not have seen the much larger object with his binoculars. The thing was as big as a house.

MacLeod's account as printed in Dinsdale's book includes these paragraphs:

Upon turning my glasses on the moving object, I saw a large grey-black mass (I am inclined to think the skin was wet and dry in patches) and in the front there was what looked like an outsize in Elephant's trunks Paddles were visable at both sides but only at what I presumed was the rear end, and it was this end (remote from the "trunk") which tapered off into the water. The animal was on a steep slope, and taking its backbone as an approximate straight line, was inclined about 15-20 degrees out of my line of sight: the "trunk" being at the top and to the left and the tail being at the bottom, in the water, to the right...
For about 8 or 9 minutes the animal remained quite still, but for its "trunk" (I assume neck although I could see no head as such) which occasionally moved from side to side with a slight up and down motion-just like a snake about to strike; but quite slowly. It was, to my mind, obviously scanning the shores of the Loch in each direction.
In the end it made a half-jump, half-lurch to the left, its "trunk" coming right round until it was facing me, then it flopped in the water and apparently went straight down: so it must be very deep close inshore at that point [Dinsdale's footnote affirms this] As it turned I saw a large squarish-ended [rhomboid] flipper foreward of the big rear paddles-or flippers...[and appends overall reconstruction sketch at the end]

Dinsdale's book also contains four of the position sketches, all quite clear, and none of them exactly matches whe two wash-drawings reproduced in Witchell and at Naish's site. The versions at the start of this posting are my modifications of the wash drawings in attempting to make them match MacLeod's originals more closely.

A lot of the confusion over this sighting arises from Roy Mackal's The Monsters of Loch Ness which seems to be the most common source for most later retellings. In making his remarks about this case, Mackal states:

"Witness seems unclear as to whether he observed head-neck or tail end. He definitely saw a pair of appendages and he believes they were at the rear: however when his sketches are examined, it is obvious they could equally well be at the front of the animal. Later, as the the animal changed its orientation prior to flopping into the water, he saw the third, square-ended flipper foreward of the big rear paddles; he shows it in the same anatomical location that the Spicers observed something flopping up and down. In another context...he reverses his earlier position and says there were only 'two very short forelegs or flippers clearly seen' This does seem to fit better with the["my"] overall impression of his drawings."

Mackal is being disingenuous. It is clear from his statement that the witness took the end on land to be the head end, that it was scanning the banks and that the head end took the lead in diving back into the water. There would be no sensible reason for the tail end to curl over and lead the rest of the body on a return to the water. The description throughout says the creature is viewed tail end on with the head end on shore. That is not an ambiguous statement about whether the head end or the tail end was being observed it was a description of his vantage point in the sighting. The fact that Mackal transparently and very clumsily attempts to force the appearance that there actually is an ambiguity as to whether the tail end or the head end seen on land stands out from the start of his comment to the end. And MacLeod's statement to David James does indicate a change in his story: at that time he had come to believe he actually had seen both foreflippers, on land and free of the water, while the rear flippers were inthe water and partially obscured.

Basically, Mackal has misrepreseneted the entire account and all authors following after him and quoting him are using a badly distorted version of the story. Using the version as printed by Dinsdale is much preferable. Mackal did have an ax to grind as to the matter of "The witness did not know if he was looking at the head end or the tail end" and onhis table of the usual sightings of Loch Ness creatures he has only ONE column to hold descriptions of both ends. This is not really usually a problem since most witnesses (such as tin this case) have a pretty good idea of which end is front and which one is back from the way the creature is acting. Mackal has said there was a problem in that area and because of that he must needs force ALL of the reports to have that same problem.

Dinsdale did make the suggestion that there was one creature living in the Loch of really unusual size and that Torquil's sighting was of it. Another instance of the same individual's passage was supposed to have been on P.T. MacNab's 1955 photo of the Loch Ness Monster near Uruquart castle (which is 50 feet high). Binns allows that it represents a real object, which he says is a wave. I am all for sightings of monsters turning out to be standing waves but this photo does not have any of the characteristics of such waves. Perhaps it is the one fullgrown Longnecked Seaserpent in the Loch, and we can trace its appearances between 1955 and 1965 fairly well. IT could have lived for decades in the Loch and grown to its full size there, but more than likely it was a separate individual intrusion into the Loch, especially since Dinsdale also logged a couple of fullsized "Monster" reports as travelling up and down the River Ness in flood, and in different years.




Dinsdale,Tim Loch Ness Monster,Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, London

Mackal,Roy The Monsters of Loch Ness, Swallow Press, 1976, Chicago

Binns, R. 1984. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. W. H. Allen & Co, London.

Costello, Peter. 1975. In Search of Lake Monsters. Panther Books, St. Albans.

Witchell, Nicholas. 1975. The Loch Ness Story. Penguins Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.