Loch Ness Monster located in underwater survey

An underwater survey of Loch Ness has uncovered the final resting place of a 30ft model of the Loch Ness Monster, which sank during a film shoot almost 50 years ago.

It was created for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Robert Stephens and Christopher Lee

Nessie was discovered during a sweep of the waters by an underwater robot operated by Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime, which has been conducting a two-week investigation of the loch. The model is lying at a depth of around 600ft.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"We have found a monster, but not the one many people might have expected," said Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine.

"The model was built with a neck and two humps and taken alongside a pier for filming in 1969. The director did not want the humps and asked that they be removed, despite warnings I suspect from the rest of the production that this would affect its buoyancy. And the inevitable happened. The model sank."

The underwater robot has made "other interesting findings", says The Guardian, including a 26ft-long shipwreck, a crashed Wellington bomber from the Second World War and a 100-year-old Zulu-class fishing vessel.

Parts of John Cobb's speed-record attempt craft, Crusader, which crashed while travelling at more than 200mph in 1952, were also discovered.

In January, retired fisherman Keith Stewart posited "the existence of a 'Nessie trench', which would allow the monster to hide", The Guardian reports, but that has now been ruled out.

Stewart claimed to have recorded a depth of 889ft using his boat's sonar equipment, but the robot's more comprehensive survey has confirmed that the maximum depth of Loch Ness is 754ft, as previously believed.