DALE DRINNON: Some Corrections to the Witness Sketch directed by J. Mackintosh Bell of his sighting off the Island of Hoy, Orkneys, 1919

Original sketch left, amended by Dale right

The sighting by Bell is THE classical long-necked seal sighting. And as the drawing has usually been reproduced, it is very much misleading.

This account is arguably the most convincing for a seal with a long neck and took place off the Orkneys (Hoy) in 1919. The witness was on holiday in the Orkney Islands and helping some friends out on a fishing boat. His friends had seen the animal previously and had just commented about it when, right on cue, it appeared. A full account can be found in Heuvelmans, In The Wake of The Sea Serpents, pages 402-404. The animal was described as being about 20ft long and the sketches made by the witness appear to leave little doubt as to what sort of creature was seen.

The witness was lawyer Mr J. Mackintosh-Bell. On the morning of August 5th, from the deck of a cod-line fishing boat off Hoy he saw a monster with "a long neck as thick as an elephant's front leg, all rough looking like an elephant's hide." The head was like that of a dog, with small, black eyes.

There is a specific description of the animals neck as "thick" right off, a point that has escaped most commentators. An elephant's foreleg is something like 18 inches through. The length of the neck is therefore not much more than three times the diameter.

Some more estimated measurements also follow. Bell told Rupert Gould that the entire length of the creature when extended would be 18-20 feet long from the tip of the snout to the end of the tail flippers, the head and neck stuck up out of the water 5-6 feet and the body would be 4-5 feet across. The head was said to be the size of a retriever dog "say 6" long by 4" broad"

Which is complete poppycock. A retriever dog's head would never be that size unless it was only a puppy.

This only goes to show that the measurements were only hazy in Bell's mind. And there is much uncertainty in the outline of the creature in the drawing.

The drawing was not made by Bell himself but by his wife, under his direction. And people have made far too much out of that drawing.

In the case of the described measurements, the neck and tail flippers are about the same length. The length of the body is about twice that and about twice its width. The width of the body is very nearly the same as the length of the neck, and the head is more nearly 16 inches long than 6 inches (18 to 20 inches would be even better)

Re-calculating these dimensions and increasing the thickness of the neck to resemble an elephant's foreleg produces the second, revised drawing for the Mackintosh Bell sighting.

It is very likely the same sort of creature as the Isle of Man SS seen around 1928 by Michael Peer Groves and family, also in In The Wake of The Sea-Serpents, figure 106, p.434. It is also quite possibly behind several of the Irish (specifically the Irish) freshwater reports in In Search of Lake Monsters.

It would basically be a sea lion the size of a walrus and 12-13 feet long as an adult (subtracting the tail flippers from Bell's estimate) I include a photo mockup to indicate the scale in comparison with a walrus and a more ordinary sea lion.