Series: Best of All
Type: Real Photo
Date of Issue: second half of 1934
Artist: Unknown
While some Nessie postcards of the 1930s bear a clear relationship to known sightings, others are more fanciful or obscure. Take this example, manufactured by Dundee-based giant J.B. White, which was issued in the summer of 1934.
It adopts as its basis a very well known view of Castle Urquhart, that had previously been published by the company several times. Such as in the lithographic version below, also issued in the flush of 1934, a boomtime for the region's postcard industry.
Perhaps in order to mirror the dramatic nature of the shot of the castle, the monster is depicted as an outsize dragon. This was a design choice very likely to appeal to children! Although fanciful, it seems to me that the appearance of Nessie on this card was shaped, albeit second or third hand, by a real sighting.
Compare the features of the monster, for example, on the very first Nessie postcard issued by J.B. White in or around December of 1933:
Faithfully reproduced on the later card are the catfish-like whiskers, the small "horns" (though enlarged), the two humps, and the fluke tail (like a whale!), which is a somewhat rare characteristic of Nessie sightings. Indeed, such features mostly go back to an early real-life sighting of the monster in September 1933 by Miss Fraser at the Half Way House on Loch Ness.
Unfortunately, there is little to no data concerning the artists who created these images. But it is interesting to see that even the most fanciful depictions of the monster from this time can have some relationship to the substance of actual Nessie sightings. This suggests that the cards themselves can be considered interesting documentary and supplementary pieces to the large body of iterature on these sightings.
That nessie looks half a mile long. These guys could have easily pulled off some fake photos?
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