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Dan Scott Taylor, Jr. : Obituary
by Loren Coleman |
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Dan Taylor died last Saturday (July 23, 2005) due to complications
from surgery. His webmaster posted something quietly respectful up
on the expedition page--
http://www.nessaexpedition.com/index.html
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Remembering Dan Taylor, Captain of the 1969 Loch Ness Minisub
(1940-2005)
Some thoughts from Loren Coleman
In 1998, Dan invited me to take a ride in his minisub, to join him
to dive down into Loch Ness. After he shared with me stories that
he'd never told the media, of how in 1969, the hatch leaked and he
had to take an umbrella abroad to keep dry, I thought, whoa, this
could be quite an adventure.
In 1998, I was his first pick, he said, to come on board, and he
named me the project's "Mission Cryptozoologist." But Dan had his
troubles with money and local politics and such. He never made the
1999 trip, and moved on to other "mission cryptozoologists." However
the brief overlapping of our lives allowed me to get to know Dan
rather well. I went on with my two sons to Loch Ness in 1999, for a
two-week surface search, a talk, and good meetings with Robert Rines,
Gary Campbell, Dick Raynor, Adrian Shine, and others. Dan stayed
home, and worked on his dreams. I'm sorry he never made it back to
the Loch.
Here's my unedited entry, the one I wrote about Dan, for
Cryptozoology A to Z, in 1999:
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The waters calmed, the surface appeared as a finely polished
mirror, and the wait was finally over for the man in the yellow
submarine. The sponsor, World Book Encyclopedia, had wanted this
moment to take place for months. The year was 1969, and Dan
Scott Taylor, Jr., in a one-person minisub he personally built,
amid terrific fanfare, was diving to the bottom of Loch Ness.
Down and down Taylor sank. Finally on one of his last dives,
Taylor was bumped by what he believes must have been Nessie. As
he gave chase, Taylor clocked the beast at about 14 knots. But
the minisub was too slow, and ever after he was haunted by a
sense of
failure.
Late in September 1998 Taylor announced his intention to return
to Loch Ness. As J.R. Moehringer of the Los Angeles Times wrote,
"Dan Taylor wakes up two hours before dawn and stares at the
dark, thinking about the monster. When the swirling sky above
the ocean looks like the creamy frosting on a birthday cake, the
clouds like pink roses, he brews a pot of coffee and wakes
Margaret, his wife of 22 years, and together they sit by the
window, watching the sun rise and talking about the monster."
As Moehringer, a continent away from the Carolinian Taylor,
would observe about this man who is building a new vessel for
his quest: "Something in him needs that monster."
Taylor learned about submarines as a crew member in the Navy and
about building them at Georgia Tech. He built the original
"yellow submarine" to seek the Monster in that 1969 expedition
headed by University of Chicago biologist Roy Mackal, and is now
building a four man sub to "finish the job he set out to do in
'69." He calls his new expedition the Nessa Project.
The Nessa, as the submarine will be christened, takes its name
from the Gaelic Goddess of Water, Nessa, after whom the River
Ness, Loch Ness, and the monster, Nessie, were named. The Nessa
Project plans to launch the minisub in June 1999. The Nessa
Project, by then perhaps the Nessa Expedition will attempt to
return with film, sonar, and tissue sample proof of the
creatures' existence.
In 1969 Taylor operated his one-man sub, the Viperfish, in the
murky waters of Loch Ness. Taylor soon discovered, despite hints
of a couple intriguing encounters, that this earlier sub was too
small and too slow and lacked the battery capacity to complete
the mission. Taylor hopes to have more success with the Nessa, a
larger, more mobile, swifter underwater craft.
Taylor has sold his house, already sunk a quarter of a million
dollars into the new sub, and has been busy working on
completing the construction. It will be 40 feet long, 30 tons,
with a 500-horsepower motor pulled from a locomotive, which will
help him reach speeds of 20 knots or about 23 miles an hour.
"It'll sound like a freight train a-comin'," Taylor says. "But
it'll move like a freight train, too! This thing is going to be
a cross between a research submarine and a locomotive, because
that's what it will take."
The Nessa is set to be a stable and sturdy minisub with an
overall length will be about forty two feet. Her batteries must
be charged in port and a charge will give her about ten hours
down at two knots or twenty knots for a little over twenty
minutes. Taylor has spent $250,000 to produce the painted steel
cylinders that are its backbone. He will need several hundred
thousand more to finish equipping the sub, get it to Scotland
and spend several months there, but he is optimistic about
finding a sponsor. He estimates he will sink $1 million into the
project by the time he is done.
Copyright Loren Coleman 1999
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