NESSIE has been discovered – but not, unfortunately, the real thing. A huge model of the Loch Ness monster designed for a Sherlock Holmes movie has been found by an underwater robot almost 50 years after it sank to the bottom.

The 30ft Nessie was created for the 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Sir Robert Stephens and Sir Christopher Lee.

A new underwater sonar-imaging investigation into what lies beneath Loch Ness has uncovered the remains after delving deep into areas of the 230 metre-deep loch which have never been reached before.

A mission called Operation Groundtruth used Munin, a state-of-the-art intelligent marine robot operated by Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime.

The mission, led by Kongsberg Maritime and backed by The Loch Ness Project and VisitScotland found the model 180m down on the loch bed. It is thought the model, used as a submarine in the movie, sank after its humps – the buoyancy aids – were removed.

Other findings have revealed that claims of a “Nessie trench” in the northern basin of the loch made in January this year were wrong, as the new, more precise underwater evidence shows that there is in fact no anomaly or abyss in the location specified.

A 27-foot long shipwreck has also been uncovered during the investigation and the team is looking for more information on the origins of this boat.

Engineer John Haig with a Munin robot, which found the model from the 1970 film


The survey – the first of its kind in Scotland – has being carried out over two weeks with an analysis of findings and discoveries every day.

Loch Ness has been notoriously difficult to survey in the past due to its depth and steeply sloping side walls consisting of hard clay and rocky outcrops. Munin is a highly accurate underwater vehicle and its operations in the past have included searches for downed aircraft, sunken vessels and marine forensic investigations.

Operating autonomously, the 4m-long device carries sonars that efficiently map vast areas to depths of 1,500m.

Other discoveries made in the past include a crashed Wellington bomber from the Second World War, a 100-year-old Zulu class sailing fishing vessel and parts of John Cobb’s speed record attempt craft Crusader which crashed at over 200mph in 1952.

It is estimated that the Loch Ness Monster or Nessie phenomenon is worth more than £60 million to the Scottish economy as hundreds of thousands of visitors travel to Loch Ness and Drumnadrochit every year.

Craig Wallace, subsea applications engineer at Kongsberg Maritime said: “Kongsberg first surveyed Loch Ness with some of the world’s first multi-beam sonar back in 1987 and have continually visited, bringing the latest technology to uncover this loch’s mysteries.

“Munin is the most advanced low logistic autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in the world. Merging the cutting-edge technology from the commercial sector whilst maintaining the robust reliability from the military market, the vehicle provides insight to the loch’s depths never before imagined. The vehicle allows sonar to scan just a few metres from the loch floor, giving resolution several orders of magnitude greater than anything before.”

Adrian Shine, leader of the Loch Ness Project, said they had obtained “superb images” in the depths of Loch Ness (right).

He added: “It is a pleasure to have Kongsberg supporting Operation Groundtruth. Because Munin can dive and navigate itself safely at great depth, it can approach features of interest and image them at extremely high resolution.

“We already have superb images of the hitherto difficult side wall topography and look forward to discovering artifacts symbolic of the human history of the area.”

Malcolm Roughead, chief executive of VisitScotland, said: “We are excited about the findings from this in-depth survey by Kongsberg, but no matter how state-of-the-art the equipment is, and no matter what it reveals, there will always be a sense of mystery and the unknown around what really lies beneath Loch Ness.”

The myth behind monster tourist lure

by Hamish MacPherson

LIKE so many Scottish legends, the Loch Ness monster is more myth than fact. It’s a story that has been around a long time and owes its origins to the dark ages when the Picts and the Scots were just getting to know each other, the latter moving east from what is now Argyll.

St Columba travelled from Iona to one of the Picts’ power bases near Inverness and met King Brideii.

We do not know if he converted the king, but the two men respected each other and Columba was allowed to preach and convert all over the Pictish lands. It was from that visit to the king that we get the first mention in writing of the Loch Ness Monster.

According to St Adamnan, or Eunan, as Columba came to the River Ness he learned of a man having been bitten to death by the ‘water monster’ as the original Latin has it. The saint rebuked the monster as it was about to bite one of his companions, and Nessie slunk away at the sign of the Cross. 

Not surprisingly, the local heathens converted to Christianity on the spot.

Few pay heed to the fact that in the Latin version, it clearly states the monster emerged in the River Ness, but it was all good propaganda for Columba and his followers on Iona, and the Picts became Christian in total.

There was precious little else in writing or even in oral tradition about Nessie until the 19th century, and it was not until 1933 that the Monster exploded onto the world scene, thanks to Mr and Mrs George Spicer who claimed to have seen Nessie crossing the road in front of their car.

A year later came the so-called Surgeon’s Photograph – long since proved to be a hoax – and a global story, not to mention an entire tourist industry, was born.