Is there a monster in Cork Harbour?

In Portland, Maine there is a story about a beast that has come into the community and it is all the locals are talking about. The lady who first spotted it said it was about the size of a truck and it looked like a snake and had a head that was the size of a basketball. The legend began and the creature has been given the name “Wessie” and visitors are coming from far and wide to get a glimpse of him. Or her.

Riverbank Park seems to be the haunt of the new monster and it has been seen there on a number of occasions. Residents were cynical at first until a policeman said that he had seen it as well. He described it as a ten foot long snake. A city official then joined the small group of witnesses and reported seeing a large snake in the same area. He took a photo with his phone but it’s not very clear apparently.

Whatever it is, or even if it exists at all, it has brought some prosperity to the community. A clothing company has printed “Where’s Wessie” T-shirts and they’re selling like hot cakes. A local brewing company brewed a drink in the snake’s name and it’s proving to be a hit.

Apart from ordinary tourists, Wessie is also responsible for attracting the kind of hunters that like to track down monsters and strange creatures. Even though snakes are not an unusual phenomenon in that part of the world, these sightings of something unusual are causing quite a stir and the locals are not complaining.

It’s a story that is not that far removed from the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. Nessie has been on the go for a long time now and there are probably few who haven’t heard of him at this stage. It is estimated that about a million people visit Loch Ness and the surrounding area every year, with the value to the economy worth about £25m and the majority of those visitors come to the area because of Nessie. That’s not to be sneezed at.

Something I didn’t know is that while the story of the Loch Ness Monster has been around since the sixth century, it was an Irish monk who started it all off. Saint Columba witnessed locals burying a man who had been attacked by a ‘water beast’ and it was his report that sparked the first search.

A whole industry has been built around the search for the Loch Ness Monster who supposedly lives in the depths of the loch and while he has been described in many different shapes, the size is generally the same, huge. All sorts of experts and modern technology have been used over the years to try to find supporting evidence of Nessies existence but nothing has been found so far. But that hasn’t deterred the Scots and they continue to fill their sporrans with money thanks to the reclusive monster.

So what exactly is Nessie supposed to be? There is an image that was captured by an Apple map satellite which shows a shape swimming under the water that is around 100 feet long and it seems to have wings. It has also been described as a shiny whale with a long neck and a dinosaur type creature. Another person who supposedly saw it said it had a long tapering eel like head and was about 40 feet long. Its size can vary from being ten feet long to one hundred feet long and it can have either one hump or eight depending on who you listen to.

There are other elusive creatures too like the Yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman. The Yeti figure has its origins in folklore. The character is an ancient and important part of the legends and history of the Sherpa, the communities that live at an average altitude of 12,000 feet in eastern Nepal.

Shiva Dhakal collected 12 traditional stories in his book Folk Tales of Sherpa and Yeti. In the stories, the animal is always a figure of danger. For example, “The Annihilation of the Yeti” is about Sherpas seeking revenge on a tormenting group of Yetis. They make a show of drinking alcohol and fighting to encourage the Yetis to follow suit and destroy each other. Instead, the surviving Yetis declare revenge and move up high into the mountains to continue their depredations.

Despite the lack of any concrete proof, people still go looking for The Loch Ness Monster in Scotland and for Yetis in the Himalayas. The search goes on because while on the one hand there is no evidence to suggest that they even exist, neither is there any evidence to prove that they don’t. And until it is proven one way or the other there will always be those who want to have a look for themselves and these people bring with them some prosperity to the local communities.

So all this has got me thinking. It was an Irishman who started the whole Loch Ness Monster business so we have previous history for being involved in this kind of thing. In Cork, we have the second largest natural harbour in the world and who knows what lies beneath. Just imagine what we could do if we had our own local monster.

So here’s the plan. I need someone who can take a bad, out of focus, grainy photograph to meet me in Cobh on some foggy morning. It must be early so there won’t be any witnesses about. Then I’ll run up and down the quayside screaming about a big, 90 foot long, hairy monster with three eyes. That should start the ball rolling. We can call him “Corkey”, that would fit nicely on the T-shirts.