Loch Ness Monster Explained

Chapter 12c - MY MONSTER - Monster Centres At War

Fortunately the income from the exhibition still continued to climb. Although my ownership and intellectual property had been stolen, living in a tiny cottage without children enabled us to have a reasonable standard of living.

I enjoyed building the business, but as I became more convinced by Adrian Shine's and Ricky Gardiner's arguments about the evidence it became important to try to introduce a healthy scepticism into the presentation of the exhibits.

This began in 1984 when the John Murray research vessel was brought into the exhibition hall and a number of Loch Ness Project exhibits introduced. We also set up an early projector television system to show some of the footage I had taken during the Project expeditions.

With Adrian Shine, exhibition panels were designed to show the food chain in the loch, all overlaid by a sonar profile. In addition there were three sonar panels showing the results of the Project's 1981 John Murray expedition, the 1982 Humber Barge expedition and their work conducted from Jim Hogan's New Atlantis Sonar Search vessel in 1982 and future years.

Strong sonar contacts were a positive side to Adrian's research and it was only later, when he began to attempt to explain away his own work, that things became difficult for me at the Loch Ness Centre. How could a centre which exploited Nessie commercially, also tell the truth about fakes and hoaxes without seeming to be hypocritical?

That became a very difficult part of my work at the centre over the coming years.

Also in 1987 another exhibition centre had opened just one hundred metres up the road. Its presentations were almost entirely of fakes and, as a whole, the quality was extremely poor.

The first we knew of it was when an advertisement appeared in the Coach Drivers' Club Yearbook. It invited drivers to bring their coach parties to see "The 'Famous Loch Ness Monster' Exhibition". The owner had been extremely clever in the construction of the heading to his advertisement. He was not inviting coaches to come to the Famous Loch Ness Monster Exhibition, which was clearly our exhibition, but to his new exhibition about the "Famous Loch Ness Monster".

The Bremners' solicitor put us on to a Queen's Counsel in Edinburgh who advised us that we could not sue for "passing off" as the owner was not claiming that his exhibition was the famous one, only that it was an exhibition about the famous monster.

Rather amusing actually and you have to admire his cheek.

Surprisingly the name was not used in other advertising by the other centre and I often wonder if the owner was badly advised that we could take legal action against him when we actually probably couldn't.

We were advised that we could take out an injunction to stop him opening on the grounds that wherever he put the inverted commas, he was still trying, by illegal false pretences, to pass off his business as being ours. There was a serious risk in this strategy if we had adopted it. If we got the injunction and then he got it overturned at a later stage, we could be tens of thousands of pounds out of pocket.

In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood, "Did we feel lucky?" The answer was no. Probably rightly, Ronnie did not pursue the action and sleeping dogs were allowed to lie.

Later he changed the name to the Original Loch Ness Visitor Centre as ours was called the Official Loch Ness Visitor Centre. The word "official", which I had backed but never liked, had been insisted upon by Ronnie Bremner and now we were in an impossible situation.

How could we argue that we were the "official" centre? I outlined how this might be achieved on the following basis:

· We were now the home of the National Archive which had been passed down to Adrian Shine by the Loch Ness Bureau.

· We contributed to the funding of the official British research group, the Loch Ness and Morar Project.

· We provided logistical and storage facilities as well as a lochside base camp rent free for the Loch Ness and Morar Project and also logistical help for the Academy of Applied Science

· We had been part funded by the Highlands and Islands Development Board.

However it was fascinating to see how the owner of the other centre developed his marketing, adding claims like "Sponsored by the Loch Ness Researchers" whatever that was supposed to mean.

Sadly the two centres being side by side has caused a lot of confusion for tourists, exactly as Henry Bauer had suggested. Yet this was exactly what the Project had been trying to avoid.

I remember countless occasions when people had come from the "original" centre to the "official" centre complaining that they wanted their money back. They wanted us to give them the money back that they had paid to the other business.

As for the word "original", well this will always be debateable. The first exhibition was at Achnahannet and was staged by the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau in the nineteen-sixties. The second one was staged by the notorious faker, Frank Searle. The third was a single room in the Great Glen Exhibition in Fort Augustus. This had been improved in 1979 with the help and co-operation of the Loch Ness and Morar Project. The late William Owen's Great Glen Exhibition was actually a terrific little heritage centre.

Then in 1980 my exhibition opened in Drumnadrochit. There was a later exhibition staged by Lawrence Lockhart in Inverness, another by me in the form of a video show in Inverness in the late eighties and then the short-lived Loch Ness Diorama staged by me in Fort Augustus in 1998. This latter was the most accurate presentation until Adrian Shine convinced Ronald Bremner to give him a free hand with the Loch Ness exhibition in 1999.

However, the other exhibition claimed it was the original one because the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau had had pictures on display there in the nineteen sixties.

By far the most outrageously funny claim came from one of their staff who, when asked why the exhibition was "original", said that the word meant it was "different" not "first".

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry over that, but let me just say, visitor beware. One shows all sorts of Nessie material without too much analysis and proudly proclaims, "We believe!" while the other uses Nessie as a tool in order to provide an in-depth understanding of this fascinating deep water loch. Being aware that there are two should at least allow you to decide which you would prefer to see.

Interestingly some people come out of the Loch Ness Centre saying how disappointing it was to learn that there was no monster. In fact this is not quite what it portrays. There is no cut and dried statement that the monster does not exist.

I can report a post script to the "Monster Wars". The Bremners finally decided to take legal action against the Skinners and the Scottish papers were full of it for a few days. Finally there was an undisclosed out of court financial settlement and the Skinners were forced to change their business name to "Nessieland Castle Monster Centre" and the Bremners continue to trade as "Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition". The two names certainly reflect what you are likely to find within the centres so future visitors will no longer be confused.

Interestingly, during my many years as a tour guide, I have found that many adults who come to Loch Ness, from Britain in particular, tend to expect the whole monster story to be "a tall story" and they are actually disappointed to find the subject properly and scientifically interpreted. Many actually want the joke and expect to be conned. Isn't that ironic?

To anyone who has a genuine interest in the interpretation of Loch Ness in the context of the explanation of one of the world's greatest mysteries I would recommend the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition.  

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(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth