Gloucester Harbour, near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, about thirty miles
from Boston. The Linnaean Society of New England investigated the matter,
and took much trouble to obtain evidence thereon. The depositions of
eleven credible witnesses were certified on oath before magistrates, one
of whom had himself seen the creature, and who confirmed the statements.
All agreed that the animal had the appearance of a serpent, but
estimated its length, variously, at from fifty to a hundred feet. Its
head was in shape like that of a turtle, or snake, but as large as the
head of a horse. There was no appearance of a mane. Its mode of
progressing was by vertical undulations; and five of the witnesses
described it as having the hunched protuberances mentioned by Captain de
Ferry and others. Of this, I can offer no zoological explanation. The
testimony given was apparently sincere, but it was received with
mistrust; for, as Mr. Gosse says, "owing to a habit prevalent in the
United States of supposing that there is somewhat of wit in gross
exaggeration or hoaxing invention, we do naturally look with a lurking
suspicion on American statements when they describe unusual or disputed
phenomena."
On the 15th of May, 1833, a party of British officers, consisting of
Captain Sullivan, Lieutenants Maclachlan and Malcolm of the Rifle
Brigade, Lieutenant Lister of the Artillery, and Mr. Ince of the
Ordnance, whilst crossing Margaret's Bay in a small yacht, on their way
from Halifax to Mahone Bay, "saw, at a distance of a hundred and fifty
to two hundred yards, the head and neck of some denizen of the deep,
precisely like those of a common snake in the act of swimming, the head
so far elevated and thrown forward by the curve of the neck, as to
enable them to see the water under and beyond it. The creature rapidly
passed, leaving a regular wake, from the commencement of which to the
fore part, which was out of water, they judged its length to be about
eighty feet." They "set down the head at about six feet in length
(considerably larger than that of a horse), and that portion of the neck
which they saw at the same." "There could be no mistake--no delusion,"
they say; "and we were all perfectly satisfied that we had been favoured
with a view of the true and veritable sea-serpent." This account was
published in the _Zoologist_, in 1847 (p. 1715), and at that date all
the officers above named were still living.
The next incident of the kind in point of date that we find recorded
carries us back to the locality of which Pontoppidan wrote, and in which
was seen the animal vouched for by Captain de Ferry. In 1847 there
appeared in a London daily paper a long account translated from the
Norse journals of fresh appearances of the sea-serpent. The statement
made was, that it had recently been frequently seen in the neighbourhood
of Christiansand and Molde. In the large bight of the sea at
Christiansand it had been seen every year, only in the warmest weather,
and when the sea was perfectly calm, and the surface of the water
unruffled. The evidence of three respectable persons was taken, namely,
Nils Roe, a workman at Mr. William Knudtzon's, who saw it twice there,
John Johnson, merchant, and Lars Johnoen, fisherman at Smolen. The
latter said he had frequently seen it, and that one afternoon in the
dog-days, as he was sitting in his boat, he saw it twice in the course
of two hours, and quite close to him. It came, indeed, to within six
feet of him, and, becoming alarmed, he commended his soul to God, and
lay down in the boat, only holding his head high enough to enable him to
observe the monster. It passed him, disappeared, and returned; but, a
breeze springing up, it sank, and he saw it no more. He described it as
being about six fathoms long, the body (which was as round as a
serpent's) two feet across, the head as long as a ten-gallon cask, the
eyes large, round, red, sparkling, and about five inches in diameter:
close behind the head a mane like a fin commenced along the neck, and
spread itself out on both sides, right and left, when swimming. The
mane, as well as the head, was of the colour of mahogany. The body was
quite smooth, its movements occasionally fast and slow. It was
serpent-like, and moved up and down. The few undulations which those
parts of the body and tail that were out of water made, were scarcely a
fathom in length. These undulations were not so high that he could see
between them and the water.
In confirmation of this account Mr. Soren Knudtzon, Dr. Hoffmann,
surgeon in Molde, Rector Hammer, Mr. Kraft, curate, and several other
persons, testified that they had seen in the neighbourhood of
Christiansand a sea-serpent of considerable size.
Mr. William Knudtzon, and Mr. Bochlum, a candidate for holy orders, also
gave their account of it, much to the same purport; but some of these
remarks are worthy of note for future comment. They say, "its motions
were in undulations, and so strong that white foam appeared before it,
and at the side, which stretched out several fathoms. It did not appear
very high out of the water; the head was long and small in proportion to
the throat: as the latter appeared much greater than the former,
probably it was furnished with a mane."
Sheriffe Goettsche testified to a similar effect. "He could not judge of
the animal's entire length; he could not observe its extremity. At the
back of the head there was a mane, which was the same colour as the rest
of the body."
We must take one more Norwegian account, for it is a very important
one. The venerable P. W. Deinbolt,[30] Archdeacon of Molde, gives the
following account of an incident that occurred there on the 28th of
July, 1845:
[30] Hitherto erroneously printed "Deinboll."
"J. C. Lund, bookseller and printer; G. S. Krogh, merchant;
Christian Flang, Lund's apprentice, and John Elgenses, labourer,
were out on Romsdal-fjord, fishing. The sea was, after a warm,
sunshiny day, quite calm. About seven o'clock in the afternoon, at
a little distance from the shore, near the ballast place and Molde
Hooe, they saw a long marine animal, which slowly moved itself
forward, as it appeared to them, with the help of two fins, on the
fore-part of the body nearest the head, which they judged by the
boiling of the water on both sides of it. The visible part of the
body appeared to be between forty and fifty feet in length, and
moved in undulations, like a snake. The body was round and of a
dark colour, and seemed to be several ells in thickness. As they
discerned a waving motion in the water behind the animal, they
concluded that part of the body was concealed under water. That it
was one continuous animal they saw plainly from its movement. When
the animal was about one hundred yards from the boat, they noticed
tolerably correctly its fore parts, which ended in a sharp snout;
its colossal head raised itself above the water in the form of a
semi-circle; the lower part was not visible. The colour of the head
was dark-brown and the skin smooth; they did not notice the eyes,
or any mane or bristles on the throat. When the serpent came about
a musket-shot near, Lund fired at it, and was certain the shots hit
it in the head. After the shot it dived, but came up immediately.
It raised its neck in the air, like a snake preparing to dart on
his prey. After he had turned and got his body in a straight line,
which he appeared to do with great difficulty, he darted like an
arrow against the boat. They reached the shore, and the animal,
perceiving it had come into shallow water, dived immediately and
disappeared in the deep. Such is the declaration of these four men,
and no one has cause to question their veracity, or imagine that
they were so seized with fear that they could not observe what took
place so near them. There are not many here, or on other parts of
the Norwegian coast, who longer doubt the existence of the
sea-serpent. The writer of this narrative was a long time
sceptical, as he had not been so fortunate as to see this monster
of the deep; but after the many accounts he has read, and the
relations he has received from credible witnesses, he does not dare
longer to doubt the existence of the sea-serpent.
"P. W. DEINBOLT.
"Molde, 29th Nov., 1845."
We may at once accept most fully and frankly the statements of all the
worthy people mentioned in this series of incidents. There is no room
for the shadow of a doubt that they all recounted conscientiously that
which they saw. The last quoted occurrence, especially, is most
accurately and intelligently described--so clearly, indeed, that it
furnishes us with a clue to the identity of the strange visitant.
Here let me say--and I wish it to be distinctly understood--that I do
not deny the possibility of the existence of a great sea serpent, or
other great creatures at present unknown to science, and that I have no
inclination to explain away that which others have seen, because I
myself have not witnessed it. "Seeing is believing," it is said, and it
is not agreeable to have to tell a person that, in common parlance, he
"must not trust his own eyes." It seems presumptuous even to hint that
one may know better what was seen than the person who saw it. And yet I
am obliged to say, reluctantly and courteously, but most firmly and
assuredly, that these perfectly credible eye-witnesses did not correctly
interpret that which they witnessed. In these cases, it is not the eye
which deceives, nor the tongue which is untruthful, but the imagination
which is led astray by the association of the thing seen with an
erroneous idea. I venture to say this, not with any insolent assumption
of superior acumen, but because we now possess a key to the mystery
which Archdeacon Deinbolt and his neighbours had not access to, and
which has only within the last few years been placed in our hands. The
movements and aspect of their sea monster are those of an animal with
which we are now well acquainted, but of the existence of which the
narrators of these occasional visitations were unaware; namely, the
great calamary, the same which gave rise to the stories of the Kraken,
and which has probably been a denizen of the Scandinavian seas and
fjords from time immemorial. It must be remembered, as I have elsewhere
said, that until the year 1873, notwithstanding the adventure of the
_Alecton_ in 1861, a cuttle measuring in total length fifty or sixty
feet was generally looked upon as equally mythical with the great
sea-serpent. Both were popularly scoffed at, and to express belief in
either was to incur ridicule. But in the year above mentioned, specimens
of even greater dimensions than those quoted were met with on the coasts
of Newfoundland, and portions of them were deposited in museums, to
silence the incredulous and interest zoologists. When Archdeacon
Deinbolt published in 1846 the declaration of Mr. Lund and his
companions of the fishing excursion, he and they knew nothing of there
being such an animal. They had formed no conception of it, nor had they
the instructive privilege, possessed of late years by the public in
England, of being able to watch attentively, and at leisure, the habits
and movements of these strangely modified mollusks living in great tanks
of sea-water in aquaria. If they had been thus acquainted with them, I
believe they would have recognised in their supposed snake the elongated
body of a giant squid.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--A CALAMARY SWIMMING AT THE SURFACE OF THE SEA.]
When swimming, these squids propel themselves backwards by the
out-rush of a stream of water from a tube pointed in a direction
contrary to that in which the animal is proceeding. The tail part,
therefore, goes in advance, and the body tapers towards this, almost to
a blunt point. At a short distance from the actual extremity two flat
fins project from the body, one on each side, as shown in Figs. 16 and
18, so that this end of the squid's body somewhat resembles in shape the
government "broad arrow." It is a habit of these squids, the small
species of which are met with in some localities in teeming abundance,
to swim on the smooth surface of the water in hot and calm weather. The
arrow-headed tail is then raised out of water, to a height which in a
large individual might be three feet or more; and, as it precedes the
rest of the body, moving at the rate of several miles an hour, it of
course looks, to a person who has never heard of an animal going tail
first at such a speed, like the creature's head. The appearance of this
"head" varies in accordance with the lateral fins being seen in profile
or in broad expanse. The elongated, tubular-looking body gives the idea
of the neck to which the "head" is attached; the eight arms trailing
behind (the tentacles are always coiled away and concealed) supply the
supposed mane floating on each side; the undulating motion in swimming,
as the water is alternately drawn in and expelled, accords with the
description, and the excurrent stream pouring aft from the locomotor
tube, causes a long swirl and swell to be left in the animal's wake,
which, as I have often seen, may easily be mistaken for an indefinite
prolongation of its body. The eyes are very large and prominent, and the
general tone of colour varies through every tint of brown, purple, pink,
and grey, as the creature is more or less excited, and the pigmentary
matter circulates with more or less vigour through the curiously moving
cells.
Here we have the "long marine animal" with "two fins on the forepart of
the body near the head," the "boiling of the water," the "moving in
undulations," the "body round, and of a dark colour," the "waving motion
in the water behind the animal, from which the witnesses concluded that
part of the body was concealed under water," the "head raised, but the
lower part not visible," "the sharp snout," the "smooth skin," and the
appearance described by Mr. William Knudtzon, and Candidatus Theologiae
Bochlum, of "the head being long and small in proportion to the throat,
the latter appearing much greater than the former," which caused them to
think "it was _probably_ furnished with a mane." Not that they _saw_ any
mane, but as they had been told of it, they thought they _ought to have
seen it_. Less careful and conscientious persons would have persuaded
themselves, and declared on oath, that they _did see it_.
I need scarcely point out how utterly irreconcileable is the
proverbially smooth, gliding motion of a serpent, with the supposition
of its passage through the water causing such frictional disturbance
that "white foam appeared before it, and at the side, which stretched
out several fathoms," and of "the water boiling around it on both sides
of it." The cuttle is the only animal that I know of that would cause
this by the effluent current from its "syphon tube." I have seen a
deeply laden ship push in front of her a vast hillock of water, which
fell off on each side in foam as it was parted by her bow; but that was
of man's construction. Nature builds on better lines. No swimming
creature has such unnecessary friction to overcome. Even the seemingly
unwieldy body of a porpoise enters and passes through the water without
a splash, and nothing can be more easy and graceful than the feathering
action of the flippers of the awkward-looking turtle.
We now come to an incident which, from the character of those who
witnessed it, immediately commanded attention, and excited popular
curiosity. In the _Times_ of the 9th of October, 1848, appeared a
paragraph stating that a sea-serpent had been met with by the _Daedalus_
frigate, on her homeward voyage from the East Indies. The Admiralty
immediately inquired of her commander, Captain M'Quhae, as to the truth
of the report; and his official reply, as follows, addressed to Admiral
Sir W. H. Gage, G.C.H., Devonport, was printed in the _Times_ of the
13th of October, 1848.
"H.M.S. _Daedalus_, Hamoaze,
October 11th, 1848.
"Sir,--In reply to your letter of this date, requiring information
as to the truth of the statement published in the _Times_
newspaper, of a sea-serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been
seen from H.M.S. _Daedalus_, under my command, on her passage from
the East Indies, I have the honour to acquaint you, for the
information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at 5
o'clock P.M. on the 6th of Aug. last, in lat. 24 deg. 44' S. and long.
9 deg. 22' E., the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the N.W.
with a long ocean swell from the W., the ship on the port tack,
head being N.E. by N., something very unusual was seen by Mr.
Sartoris, midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the
beam. The circumstance was immediately reported by him to the
officer of the watch, Lieut. Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr. Wm.
Barrett, the Master, I was at the time walking the quarter-deck.
The ship's company were at supper. On our attention being called to
the object it was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head
and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of
the sea, and, as nearly as we could approximate by comparing it
with the length of what our main-topsail yard would show in the
water, there was at the very least sixty feet of the animal _a
fleur d'eau_, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in
propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal
undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter
that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should easily have
recognised his features with the naked eye; and it did not, either
in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in
the slightest degree from its course to the S.W., which it held on
at the pace of from twelve to fifteen miles per hour, apparently on
some determined purpose.
"The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches
behind the head, which was without any doubt that of a snake; and
it was never, during the twenty minutes it continued in sight of
our glasses, once below the surface of the water; its colour dark
brown, and yellowish white about the throat. It had no fins, but
something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of seaweed,
washed about its back. It was seen by the quartermaster, the
boatswain's mate, and the man at the wheel, in addition to myself
and the officers above mentioned.
"I am having a drawing of the serpent made from a sketch taken
immediately after it was seen, which I hope to have ready for
transmission to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty by
to-morrow's post.--PETER M'QUHAE, Captain."
The sketches referred to in the captain's letter were made under his
supervision, and copies of them, of which he certified his approbation,
were published in the _Illustrated London News_ on the 28th of October,
1848. I am kindly permitted by the proprietors of that journal to
reproduce two of them, reduced in size to suit these pages--one showing
the relative positions of the "serpent" and the ship when the former was
first seen (_Frontispiece_), and the other (Fig. 19) representing the
animal afterwards passing under the frigate's quarter. An enlarged
drawing of its head was also given, which I have not thought it
necessary to copy.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--THE "SEA SERPENT" PASSING UNDER THE QUARTER OF
H.M.S. 'DAEDALUS.']
Lieutenant Drummond, the officer of the watch mentioned in Captain
M'Quhae's report, published his memorandum of the impression made on his
mind by the animal at the time of its appearance. It differs somewhat
from the captain's description, and is the more cautious of the two.
"I beg to send you the following extract from my journal. H.M.S.
'Daedalus,' August 6, 1848, lat. 25 deg. S., long. 9 deg. 37' E., St. Helena
1,015 miles. In the 4 to 6 watch, at about 5 o'clock, we observed a
most remarkable fish on our lee-quarter, crossing the stern in a
S.W. direction. The appearance of its head, which with the back fin
was the only portion of the animal visible, was long, pointed and
flattened at the top, perhaps ten feet in length, the upper jaw
projecting considerably; the fin was perhaps 20 feet in the rear of
the head, and visible occasionally; the captain also asserted that
he saw the tail, or another fin, about the same distance behind it;
the upper part of the head and shoulders appeared of a dark brown
colour, and beneath the under-jaw a brownish-white. It pursued a
steady undeviating course, keeping its head horizontal with the
surface of the water, and in rather a raised position, disappearing
occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval, and not
apparently for purposes of respiration. It was going at the rate of
perhaps from twelve to fourteen miles an hour, and when nearest was
perhaps one hundred yards distant; in fact it gave one quite the
idea of a large snake or eel. No one in the ship has ever seen
anything similar; so it is at least extraordinary. It was visible
to the naked eye for five minutes, and with a glass for perhaps
fifteen more. The weather was dark and squally at the time, with
some sea running.--EDGAR DRUMMOND, Lieut. H.M.S. 'Daedalus;'
Southampton, Oct. 28, 1848."
Statements so interesting and important, of course, elicited much
correspondence and controversy. Mr. J. D. Morries Stirling, a director
of the Bergen Museum, wrote to the Secretary of the British Admiralty,
Captain Hamilton, R.N., saying that while becalmed in a yacht between
Bergen and Sogne, in Norway, he had seen, three years previously, a
large fish or reptile of cylindrical form (he would not say "sea
serpent") ruffling the otherwise smooth surface of the fjord. No head
was visible. This appears to have been, like the others from the same
locality, a large calamary. Mr. Stirling unaware, doubtless, that Mr.
Edward Newman, editor of the _Zoologist_, had previously propounded the
same idea, suggested that the supposed serpent might be one of the old
marine reptiles, hitherto supposed only to exist in the fossil state.
This letter was published in the _Illustrated News_ of October 28th, and
four days afterwards, November 2nd, a letter signed F.G.S. appeared in
the _Times_, in which the same idea was mooted, and the opinion
expressed that it might be the _Plesiosaurus_. This brought out that
great master in physiology, Professor Owen, who in a long, and, it is
needless to say, most able letter to the _Times_, dated the 9th of
November, 1848, set forth a series of weighty arguments against belief
in the supposed serpent, which I regret that I am unable, from want of
space, to quote _in extenso_. The reasoning of the most eminent of
living physiologists of course had its influence on those who could best
appreciate it; but, as it went against the current of popular opinion,
it met with little favour from the public, and has been slurred over
much too superciliously by some subsequent writers. He suggested also
that the creature seen might have been a great seal, such as the leonine
seal, or the sea-elephant (the head, as shown in the enlarged drawing,
was wonderfully seal-like), but it was generally felt that this
explanation was unsatisfactory. The nature of his criticism of the
official statement will be seen from Captain M'Quhae's reply, which was
promptly given in the _Times_ of the 21st of November, 1848, as
follows:--
"Professor Owen correctly states that I evidently saw a large
creature moving rapidly through the water very different from
anything I had before witnessed, neither a whale, a grampus, a
great shark, an alligator, nor any of the larger surface-swimming
creatures fallen in with in ordinary voyages. I now assert--neither
was it a common seal nor a sea-elephant, its great length and its
totally differing physiognomy precluding the possibility of its
being a '_Phoca_' of any species. The head was flat, and not a
'capacious vaulted cranium;' nor had it a stiff, inflexible
trunk--a conclusion at which Professor Owen has jumped, most
certainly not justified by the simple statement, that no portion of
the sixty feet seen by us was used in propelling it through the
water either by vertical or horizontal undulation.
"It is also assumed that the 'calculation of its length was made
under a strong preconception of the nature of the beast;' another
conclusion quite contrary to the fact. It was not until after the
great length was developed by its nearest approach to the ship, and
until after that most important point had been duly considered and
debated, as well as such could be in the brief space of time
allowed for so doing, that it was pronounced to be a serpent by all
who saw it, and who are too well accustomed to judge of lengths and
breadths of objects in the sea to mistake a real substance and an
actual living body, coolly and dispassionately contemplated, at so
short a distance, too, for the 'eddy caused by the action of the
deeper immersed fins and tail of a rapidly moving gigantic seal
raising its head above the surface of the water,' as Professor Owen
imagines, in quest of its lost iceberg.