In 1935, the MacThoys attended an audience with Queen Elizabeth II.  In their entourage was the Arch Duke Ferdinand, still in good health after his apparent assassination.

The Queen demanded to know why they never told anyone that he was still alive.  "Who thought he was dead?" asked one of the MacThoy.  The crack was sufficient to get them bounced from the royal presence.

There was a heavy silence and then the Queen was overhead to fume, "Damn the MacThoys!"  Her aides moved swiftly.  They designed and constructed an edifice which more than effectively dammed the Thoy Valley, and placed the MacThoy Keep under 150 feet of water.  The dam was completed in 1946 being delayed by World War II.

The Clan took it characteristically, complaining that water was only good as a chaser.  The Duke remained with them until his death three years later from a drinking stupor induced in 1937.  He never sobered.  The Clan reveres him as one of their own and the heartiest of drinkers. 

"Innards so pickled he'll never rot."
--Ernest MacThoy nee Hemingway

The timely invention of the aqualung enabled the MacThoys to continue visiting their ancestral home.  And droughts during in the last decade dropped the water level considerably.  For a few weeks in the summer, it is now possible to see the Keep poking defiantly out of the water.

The Clan MacThoi Society is laboring intensively to have the dam removed.  At this time it is doubtful that they will succeed.  The Loch is a popular recreation site.

Castle MacThoy at the bottom
of Loch Thoy, circa 1968.