Long before sightings of Nessie were reported in Scotland, talk of a strange wild beast had the people of Limerick looking over their shoulders. Denis O’Shaughnessy recalls the legend of …

 

The Limerick Sea Monster

 

It was ninety years ago that Aldie Mackay, manager of the Drumnadrochit hotel in Scotland, burst into the bar one evening to tell dumbfounded patrons she had just witnessed a “water beast” in Loch Ness.It was this sighting – zealously reported in the Inverness Courier – that began the modern myth-making around an elusive monster surviving in the depths of the Highland loch – and last year hundreds of Nessie enthusiasts from all over the world took part in the biggest organised hunt for the mysterious creature in 50 years. Sadly, Nessie refused to co-operate and no sightings were made.

Limerick can lay claim to having its very own sea monster, witnessed purportedly by hundreds of awed spectators as it made its way up the Shannon into the centre of the city.

This was back in the summer of 1922 and the appearance of the creature caused no amount of excitement in an era not unused to sensation with the Civil War at its height.
Crowds of people were reported to have thronged the quays to get a glimpse of the phenomenon and Free State soldiers summoned to the scene fired shots after the monster as it made its way down the Shannon.

A major witness was Mr. A. E. Aldridge of Gloucestershire, master of a schooner lying in the Docks, who has left a written account of the sighting, published in the Limerick Leader. “Me and my crew were getting ready to sail on the high tide in the afternoon when the mate called me up from the cabin, ‘Captain! Come up here at once.’

“When I rushed to the deck I saw the quays on both sides of the river crowded with hundreds of people and they were watching the most amazing sea creature they or I had ever seen or read about.
“The object was close alongside my vessel, in fact only a few feet away, and my first impression on seeing it was of its resemblance in size and shape of a small submarine.
“It had a very long neck and at least twelve feet long held proudly erect and shaped like swan’s.
“It waved its small head from side to side and its bright shining eyes seemed to express alarm.
“Behind its long neck for a distance of ten or twelve feet, was a massive black-coned hump, which rose a few feet out of the water, but no part of the creature’s body could be seen between the hump and the neck, this part being submerged.”

Mr. Aldrige then stated that at this stage the monster was heading upstream at a very slow speed and seagulls in the vicinity flew off in fright. He then described how the creature eventually turned and headed downstream.

But this extraordinary story was not yet concluded.

“After we passed Foynes it was getting dark when I and the crew heard a blowing noise like a porpoise makes when it surfaces for air. And we saw the long neck of the sea creature shoot out of the water, it did it again and again, and eventually we left it behind, and that was the last we saw of it.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own