Making of ‘Nessie’ (by Marmaduke Wetherell, 1934), 2013

The story behind the photograph…

In 1933, a new road was completed along the northern shore of Loch Ness in Scotland. Shortly afterwards, a couple claimed to have spotted an ‘enormous animal’ in the water. The Inverness Courier reported the story, describing what the couple saw as a ‘monster’. Thus began the legend of ‘Nessie’, attracting tourists and conspiracy theorists alike. The Daily Mail invited the big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to track down the monster. When the hunter returned with photographs of giant footprints, the newspaper investigated and determined that the prints had been made with a dried hippopotamus foot (it was common to make umbrella stands from hippo feet at the time), leaving Wetherell humiliated. Then in April 1934, a British physician, Dr Robert Wilson (1899–1969), came forward with an image purporting to show a sea serpent in the loch. He declined to have his name associated with the picture, which came to be known as the ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’. Some considered this to be concrete evidence of Nessie’s existence. However, in 1994 Wetherell’s stepson, Christian Spurling, confessed that his discredited and ridiculed stepfather had asked him to create a model of a sea monster, which he did using a toy submarine and a wooden head and neck. The model was placed in the loch and carefully photographed. Analysis of the image has confirmed a number of discrepancies indicating that the picture is a hoax.