1970s Loch Ness Monster Movie Prop Found

Kongsberg Maritime has discovered the long lost model of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, which was used during filming of the 1970s movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes starring Sir Robert Stephens and Sir Christopher Lee.

The Loch Ness Monster is a being in folklore that reputedly inhabits Loch Ness, a lake in the Scottish Highlands.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder, was made in the U.S. and U.K. and released in cinemas in 1970. The film tells of the detective investigating the disappearance of an engineer. The case takes him to Loch Ness where he encounters the monster.

The discovery of the movie prop was made during a survey of Loch Ness supported by The Loch Ness Project and VisitScotland.

Kongsberg Maritime’s Operation Groundtruth is the first survey of its kind in Scotland, making use of the company’s recently-launched MUNIN autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The highly accurate vehicle features groundbreaking sonar and camera equipment, which provide the ability to map vast areas up to a depth of 1,500 meters at high resolution.

Kongsberg Maritime began surveying Loch Ness with some of the world's first multibeam sonar back in 1987. Over the years, the company has returned many times, bringing the latest technology to uncover the Loch’s mysteries.

“We expect to uncover new information from the Loch during this survey,” Craig Wallace, senior subsea applications engineer at Kongsberg Maritime. “Merging the cutting edge technology from the commercial sector whilst maintaining the robust reliability from the military market, the vehicle is providing insight to the Loch’s depths as never before imagined. Finding Nessie was, of course, an unexpected bonus.”