Amelia Earhart and the Loch Ness Monster
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Am the nste e rt & Lo Mo r lia Earha ch Ness “One day in 1937 ... riding her bicy- cle down the beach road on Saipan … “It was a June morning in 1934 … she saw a large, two-motored plane fly as the mist shredded away under the overhead and disappear in the vicinity warm sunlight … [s]omething rose from of the harbor … . A little while later, the water like a monster of pre-historic when she reached the beach area, she times, measuring a full thirty feet from found a large group of people gathered tip to tail.” The testimony of Alexander Campbell around two white persons … one was as related by Timothy Dinsdale in Loch Ness Monster, a woman.” The testimony of Josephine Blanco (London, 1961). Akiyama as related by Fred Goerner in The Search for Amelia Earhart (New York, 1966). In December of 1933 the Depression-ridden public public acceptance of sensational theories later advanced was astounded to learn that a great monster lurked in the to explain them. depths of a remote Scottish loch. The recent completion of a new road along the shore of Loch Ness had, for the Hollywood History first time, brought civilization to the doorstep of the The seminal event in the Loch Ness Monster phe- beast’s lair and sightings were flooding in. In April 1934 nomenon was the release in 1933 of King Kong. This a photograph of the monster’s head and neck rearing masterpiece of a new genre of science-fiction films from the water’s surface clinched Nessie’s place in the popularized the prospect of out-sized beasts in exotic popular imagination. haunts waiting to be discovered by modern adventurers. Indeed, one scene depicted a prehistoric reptile capsizing a raft on a foggy lake. When a fuzzy photograph of the Scottish monster hit the headlines in 1934 it bore a remarkable resemblance to the creature who had wreaked havoc on the screen a year before. Then, on December 22, 1938, a fishing boat off the coast of South Africa hauled in a living coelacanth, a primitive fish thought to be long extinct. In the public mind the concept was validated. If a prehistoric fish could live in the ocean why not an aquatic dinosaur in Scotland? The Earhart legend also began with a Hollywood film. The 1937 disappearance was old news when, in Three years later, in July of 1937, the public received 1943, RKO Radio Pictures (the same folks who gave us another shock when it learned that Amelia Earhart, “Lady King Kong) released Flight For Freedom starring Rosalind Lindy,” “First Lady of the Air,” had vanished in mid-ocean Russell and Fred MacMurray as a thinly disguised Amelia on the very brink of completing her round-the-world Earhart and Fred Noonan. The film told the story of a flight. What seemed like the whole U.S. Navy raced to patriotic lady flyer and her lover/navigator who feign the rescue, her faint radio calls for help providing fodder their own disappearance to give U.S. forces an excuse to for two weeks of banner headlines. But despite what was reconnoiter secret Japanese fortifications in the central called “the greatest sea and air search in history” no trace Pacific. Just as in the monster myth, fiction became the of the martyred flier or her navigator was found. model for “fact.” The president of the Georgia Institute of The popular impression of what had happened in Technology, M. L. Brittain, had been board the battleship Scotland and the Central Pacific was far from accurate, U.S.S. Colorado for the 1937 ROTC training cruise which, and the events reported were much less mysterious quite unexpectedly, became the search for Amelia than the stories that appeared the news media. In each Earhart. The hoopla surrounding the release of Flight case, the facts never stood a chance against a fortuitous For Freedom prompted him to suddenly remember that combination of unrelated events which greatly increased during the voyage he got “a very definite feeling that September 2002 7 Amelia Earhart had some sort of understanding with appearance in 1933 was attributed to blasting done officials of the government that the last part of her during the construction of a new road along the shore around-the-world flight would be over those Japanese and the increased public exposure the road provided. islands.” The film was widely circulated among units Following the publication of Loch Ness Monster there in the Pacific Theatre and by the time U.S. troops went flowed a seemingly endless stream of searchers, research- ashore in the Marshall Islands and on Saipan in 1944 ers and scientists intent upon finding, filming, and even many were on the lookout for Amelia Earhart. capturing the beast who soon became affectionately known as Nessie. Millions of dollars, innumerable hours Knights Errant of surveillance, and the best underwater technology available were focused on the one mile wide, 22 mile Still, neither Nessie nor Amelia would have attained long loch while the tourist industry of Invernesshire true legendary stature without a champion to bring their boomed. Widely publicized successes, like a photograph story to a new and eager post-war generation. By strange of the monster’s flipper taken by a remotely operated coincidence, both Timothy Dinsdale and Frederick underwater camera in August 1972, fueled the search Goerner took up their crusades in 1960, inspired, in each but ultimately proved inconclusive. The flipper photo, case, by the dramatic appearance of a new witness to for example, turned out to be rather creatively computer the old mystery. Each conducted multiple expeditions enhanced. in search of proof for his theories and each, lacking that It wasn’t until 1983, with the publication of Ronald proof, wrote a best-selling book about his quest. In Binns and R.J. Bell’s The Loch Ness Mystery Solved, that the case of the Loch Ness Monster’s appearance and the discipline of academic historical investigation was Amelia Earhart’s disappearance the popularity of the applied to the problem. By insisting upon original source books and the controversy surrounding them spawned documentation of all claims and accepted scientific a whole school of amateur sleuths who, in turn, hatched methodology in all research, Binns and Bell assembled a new theories or expanded on the originals, conducted very different picture of what had been happening. They research and expeditions, and, of course, wrote books discovered that, contrary to legend, no monster tradition and articles. exists regarding Loch Ness. St. Columba’s oft-quoted Tim Dinsdale was an aeronautical engineer in his encounter occurred, not on the loch, but on the River mid-thirties and contemplating an impending lay-off Ness miles away. Furthermore, a more complete reading when he first arrived at Loch Ness on April 16, 1960. of The Life of St. Columba reveals that the good Saint Having read in Everybody’s Magazine (February 21, 1959) regularly used his great voice to frighten off all manner of a dramatic monster sighting by Alex Campbell he of ghosties, ghoulies and long-leggety beasties. The “could not doubt the truth of what I had read” (Binns, medieval references to a monster at Loch Ness either do p. 107) and was determined to capture the monster on not exist or are conveniently transplanted from other film. Campbell, however, had already admitted that what locations (the “terrible beist” lived in Argyle). Nessie, he had seen was most probably a line of cormorants like King Kong, seems to have first appeared in 1933, swimming in the loch. Initially representing himself as but the circumstances surrounding that debut were not a skeptic converted by his close encounter, Alexander as advertised either. Campbell was, in fact, the author of a May 2,1933 article Loch Ness, far from being remote, has been a primary in the Inverness Courier which started the whole thing. cross-Highland thoroughfare for many centuries, with During his eight days at Loch Ness, Dinsdale, after regular sail, then steamer, service along its 22 mile conferring with Campbell, took two brief 16mm film shots length from 1820 to 1929. The “new road” of 1933 was, of what he said was the monster. Press conferences, in fact, merely a repaving of sections of a road first built television appearances and, in 1961, a book entitled Loch in the late 1700’s and recommended for tourists in a Ness Monster launched Dinsdale on a new career and 1906 road guide. The road’s most likely association with gave the monster a new lease on life. the monster sightings is the fact that the 1933 work The “Terrible Beist” generated debris such as lumber and barrels which littered the loch and may have been mistaken for floating Dinsdale’s readers learned that reports of a great creatures in the heavy mist. beast living in Loch Ness went back as far as the 6th Point by point, with sources footnoted and docu- century when St. Columba saved a man by frightening the mentation cited, Binns and Bell demonstrated that not monster with his voice. Numerous medieval references only is there no evidence of a monster living in Loch were cited, including an account in the 16th century Ness, but there is overwhelming evidence that no such chronicle Scotorum Historia (History of Scotland) of a beast exists. Nonetheless, hopeful monster hunters with “terrible beist” which came out of the loch and killed ever-more sophisticated technology, dogged by equally three men. (Binns, p. 57) The monster’s sudden re- hopeful television crews, continue to probe the murky TIGHAR Tracks 8 depths of Loch Ness for a creature that can be found in and eighty-seven of the two hundred people interviewed any video rental store.