Whether the sea contains any creature at all answering to the popular
idea of a 'sea-serpent'--that ophidian monster which is annually
reported to have been interviewed by various crews and persons--is
a problem which will only be solved by the actual capture of one of
those visitors. There are, as will presently be pointed out, certain
well-known true sea-snakes, the _Hydrophidæ_ of the Indian Ocean,
which swim by means of their compressed fin-like tails; but whether
these marine serpents will correspond to the 'sea-serpents' of popular
tales, is a matter deserving further investigation. The wide ocean
presents features well suited to tempt the imagination to stray into
the wildest flights. Its vastness; the difficulty of exploring even
a small portion of its surface, as well as its enormous depths; its
capacity for containing the strangest and most gigantic objects that
fancy can picture: these are attributes of the mighty deep that have
ever attracted the attention and prompted the weird imaginings of man.
It is a curious fact that recent scientific research has revealed
the existence in the sea, at the greatest depths, of most minute
and wonderfully formed organisms, the beauty and rarity of which
necessarily secure our admiration; but instances of animals of enormous
size being met with beyond those already known, are few and far
between. This fact may be accounted for by the circumstance that while
it is easy to construct instruments for capturing the smaller creatures
living in the deep, it is a very different matter to entrap and secure
an unseen monster, whose very size must endow him with enormous
strength. The whale, so far as we know, is the largest denizen of the
deep. Whether it is possible that it can be equalled by giants of some
other order or race, is the point which public curiosity is very keen
to have settled.
The appearance of great snakes at sea is recorded by more than one old
voyager; but it would seem to have been only of late years that the
idea of their existence has been generally confined to one, familiar
to us all as the 'Great sea-serpent.'
In _Opuscula Omnia Botanica, Thomæ Johnsoni_, 1629, we have an account
of a great serpent captured off Sandwich by two men, who found it
stranded among the shoal water by the sea-shore. It is described as
being fifty feet long, and of a fiery colour. We are also told that
they conveyed the carcase home, and after _eating_ it, stuffed the skin
with hay, to preserve it 'as a perpetual remembrance of the fact.'
In David Crantz's _History of Greenland_, published in 1766, we have
an extract (illustrated by a drawing) concerning the _kraken_, from
the narrative of a Captain Paul Egede, supposed to be the brother of a
famous Danish missionary of the same name. The kraken, it is however
necessary to remark, is the northern name for a giant cuttle-fish, the
existence of such a monster being now a matter of scientific fact.
'On the 6th of July 1734,' says this old seaman, 'as I was proceeding
on my second voyage to Greenland, in the latitude of the Cape of Good
Hope, a hideous monster was seen to raise its body so high above the
water that its head overtopped our main-sail. It had a pointed nose,
and spouted out water like a whale; instead of fins it had great broad
flaps like wings; its body seemed to be grown over with shell-work,
and its skin was very rugged and uneven; when it dived into the water
again, it threw up its tail, which was like that of a serpent, and was
at least a whole ship's length above the water; we judged the body to
be equal in bulk to our ship, and to be three or four times as long.'
Eric Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, celebrated in his days as a
naturalist, though he never actually saw it or met any one who _had_
seen it, believed implicitly in the great sea-serpent existing
somewhere; and in his writings has a good deal to tell us about its
ways and habits; and it is upon record that Sir Lawrence de Ferry,
commander of the old castle of Bergen, not only saw the monster, but
shot at it on the high seas, wounded it, was pursued by it, in its pain
and fury, so closely that he narrowly escaped with his life.
In 1801 there was cast ashore on the coast of Dorsetshire a snake
twenty-eight feet in length and twenty feet in circumference; but this
has since been alleged to have been a Basking-shark; and the same has
been said of a great snake-like carcase that was beaten to pieces by a
tempest, and cast ashore on one of the Orkney Isles in the autumn of
1809, and some fragments of which, the _Scots Magazine_ for that year
states, were lodged in the Museum of the Edinburgh University.
A very distinct description of the sea-serpent occurs in Dr Hooker's
_Testimony_ respecting it, and communicated to Dr Brewster's _Journal
of Science_. About half-past six o'clock on a cloudless evening at sea,
the doctor heard suddenly a rushing noise ahead of the ship, which
at first he supposed to be a whale spouting, but soon found to be a
colossal serpent, of which he made a sketch as it passed the vessel at
fifty yards' distance, slowly, neither turning to the right nor left.
'As soon as his head had reached the stern, he gradually laid it down
in a horizontal position with his body, and floated along like the
mast of a vessel. That there was upwards of sixty feet visible, is
shewn by the circumstance that the length of the ship was a hundred
and twenty feet, and that at the time his head was off the stern, the
other end had not passed the main-mast.... His motion in the water was
meandering, like that of an eel; and the wake he left behind him, was
like that occasioned by a small craft passing through the water.... The
humps on his back resembled in size and shape those of a dromedary.'
Dr Hooker states further, that the description precisely accorded with
that of a serpent seen five years before by Captain Bennet of Boston.
At a later period, three officers in Her Majesty's service--namely,
Captain Sullivan, Lieutenant Maclachlan, and Ensign Malcolm of the
Rifle Brigade--beheld a similar creature gambolling in the sea near
Halifax; but they asserted that it was at least one hundred and eighty
feet in length, and thicker than the trunk of a moderately sized tree.
Nor must we forget the official account which was transmitted in
1848 to the Lords of the Admiralty, by Captain Peter M'Quhae of Her
Majesty's ship _Dædalus_, past which, he and his crew saw the great
sea-serpent swimming merrily--a document which produced, or provoked,
a learned paper in the _Westminster Review_; while Professor Owen
asserted that what was seen from the deck of the _Dædalus_, would be
nothing more than a large seal borne rapidly southward on a floe or
iceberg.
Recently, the appearances of the serpent have been amusingly frequent
and clearly detailed. He has been seen in the north seas and the south
seas, and in many places nearer home; in the Firth of Forth, off Filey
Bay and the North Foreland, off Hastings and the Isle of Arran, the
Menai Strait and Prawle Point; and in 1875, a battle between it and a
whale was viewed from the deck of the good ship _Pauline_ of London,
Captain Drevar, when proceeding with a cargo of coals from Shields to
Zanzibar, destined for Her Majesty's ship _London_. When the _Pauline_
reached the region of the trade-winds and equatorial currents, she was
carried out of her course, and after a severe storm, found herself
off Cape Roque, where several sperm-whales were seen playing about
her. While the crew were watching them, they suddenly beheld a sight
that filled every man on board with terror. Starting straight from the
bosom of the deep, a gigantic serpent rose and wound itself twice in
two mighty coils round the largest of the whales, which it proceeded
to crush in genuine boa-constrictor fashion. In vain did the hapless
whale struggle, lash the water into foam, and even bellow, for all its
efforts were as nothing against the supernatural powers of its dreadful
adversary, whose strength 'may be further imagined,' says a leader in
the _Daily Telegraph_, 'from the fact that the ribs of the ill-fated
fish were distinctly heard cracking one after the other with a report
like that of a small cannon. Soon the struggles of the wretched whale
grew fainter and fainter; its bellowings ceased, and the great serpent
sank with its prey beneath the surface of the ocean.'
Its total length was estimated at fifty yards, and its aspect was
allowed to be simply 'terrific.' Twice again it reared its crest sixty
feet out of the water, as if meditating an attack upon the _Pauline_,
which bore away with all her canvas spread. Her crew told their
terrible story. But critics there were who averred that what they had
seen was no serpent at all, but only a bottle-nosed whale attacked by
grampuses!
In a letter to the London prints concerning this affair, we have
another description of our old friend the serpent, as he appeared off
St David's Head, to John Abes, mate of a merchantman, in 1863. 'I was
the first who saw the monster, and shouted out. A terrible-looking
thing it was! Seen at a little distance in the moonlight, his two
eyes appeared about the size of _plates_, and were very bright and
sparkling.' All on board thought his length about ninety feet; but as
he curled and twirled rapidly, it was a difficult matter to determine.
Captain Taylor ordered him to be noosed lasso-fashion with a rope;
which John Abes tells us he got on the bowsprit to throw, but in the
attempt, threw himself overboard. 'The horror of my feelings at the
moment I must leave you to imagine,' continues this remarkable epistle
(which is dated from Totterdown, Bristol, September 19, 1875). 'The
brute was then within a few yards of me, with its monstrous head and
wavy body, looking ten times more terrible than it did on board the
brig. I shiver even now when I think of it. Whether the noise made by
throwing the ropes over to save me scared him, I cannot say; but he
went down suddenly, though not more so than I came up. After a few
minutes he appeared some distance from us, and then we lost him.'
When next we hear of the sea-serpent after his adventure off Cape
Roque, he was beheld by the crew of no less a ship than Her Majesty's
yacht the _Osborne_, the captain and officers of which, in June
1877, forwarded an official Report to the Admiralty, containing an
account of the monster's appearance off the coast of Sicily on the
2d of that month. 'The time was five o'clock in the afternoon. The
sea was exceptionally smooth, and the officers were provided with
good telescopes. The monster had a smooth skin, devoid of scales, a
bullet-shaped head, and a face like an alligator. It was of immense
length, and along the back was a ridge of fins about _fifteen_ feet in
length and _six_ feet apart. It moved slowly, and was seen by all the
ship's officers.'
This account was further supplemented by a sketch in a well-known
illustrated paper, from the pencil of Lieutenant W. P. Hynes of the
_Osborne_, who to the above description adds, that the fins were of
irregular height, and about forty feet in extent, and 'as we were
passing through the water at ten and a half knots, I could only get a
view of it "end on."' It was about fifteen or twenty feet broad at the
shoulders, with flappers or fins that seemed to have a semi-revolving
motion. 'From the top of the head to the part of the back where it
became immersed, I should consider about fifty feet, and that seemed
about a third of the whole length. All this part was smooth, resembling
a seal.'
In the following month, the Scottish prints reported, that when the
Earl of Glasgow's steam-yacht _Valetta_ was cruising off Garroch Head,
on the coast of Bute, with a party of ladies and gentlemen on board,
an enormous fish or serpent, forty feet in length and about fifteen
in diameter, suddenly rose from the sea. Under sail and steam the
_Valetta_ gave chase. A gentleman on board speared it with a salmon
'leister;' on which the serpent dived, and after a time reappeared with
the iron part of the weapon sticking in its back. The monster scudded
along for some minutes, again dived, and was not seen afterwards.
There is little doubt, however, that the animal which figured in this
instance was a very large basking-shark (_Selache maxima_).
An animal of exactly similar shape and dimensions was reported as being
seen in the subsequent August by twelve persons in Massachusetts Bay;
and soon after on three different occasions in the same quarter by the
crew of a coasting vessel.
In May 1877, the 'sea-serpent' would seem to have shifted his quarters
to the Indian Ocean, which it must be remarked is the habitat of the
true sea-snakes. On the 21st of that month, in latitude 2° north and
longitude 90° 53′ east, the monster was alleged to have been seen by
the crew of the barque _Georgina_, bound from Rangoon to Falmouth. It
seemed to be about fifty feet long, 'gray and yellow in colour, and ten
or eleven inches thick. It was on view for about twenty minutes, during
which time it crossed the bow, and ultimately disappeared under the
port quarter.' A second account of this affair stated, that 'for some
days previously the crew had seen several smaller serpents, of from six
to ten feet in length, playing about the vessel.'
Strange as all these stories seem, it is difficult to suppose they are
all quite untrue, for nautical superstition apart, we have the ready
testimony of various men of education and veracity. That there is
only one serpentine monster in the ocean, is an idea which the great
disparity in the various descriptions would seem to contradict; and
certainly the most astounding aspect presented by this supposed and
most ubiquitous animal, was his form and size when seen by the officers
of the Queen's yacht off the coast of Sicily; though it is somewhat
singular that these gentlemen made no attempt to kill or capture the
mighty fish, or whatever it was they saw.
By way of conclusion to these remarks we may briefly summarise the
chief facts presented by 'sea-serpent tales' as they appear under the
light of scientific criticism. There is, it must firstly be remarked,
nothing in the slightest degree improbable in the idea that an ordinary
species of sea-snake, belonging to a well-known group of reptiles,
may undergo a gigantic development and appear as a monster serpent of
the deep. The experience of comparative anatomists is decidedly in
agreement with such an opinion. Largely developed individuals of almost
every species of animals and plants occasionally occur. Within the past
few years new species of cuttle-fishes--of dimensions compared with
which the largest of hitherto known forms are mere pigmies--have been
brought to light. And if huge cuttle-fishes may thus be developed,
why, it may be asked, may not sea-snakes of ordinary size be elevated,
through extraordinary development, to become veritable 'leviathans'
of the deep? That there is a strong reason for belief in the veracity
of sea-serpent tales, is supported by the consideration of the utter
want of any motive for prevarication, and by the very different and
varied accounts given of the monsters seen. That the appearances cannot
always be explained on the supposition that lifeless objects, such
as trees, sea-weed, &c. have been seen, is equally evident from the
detailed nature of many of the accounts of the animals, which have
been inspected from a near distance. And it may also be remarked that
in some cases, in which largely developed sea-snakes themselves may
not have appeared, certain fishes may have represented the reptilian
inhabitants of the ocean. As Dr Andrew Wilson has insisted, a giant
tape-fish viewed from a distance would personate a 'sea-serpent' in a
very successful manner; and there can be no doubt that tape-fishes have
occasionally been described as 'sea-serpents.'
On the whole, if we admit the probability of giant-developments of
ordinary species of sea-snakes; or the existence (and why not?) of
enormous species of sea-snakes and certain fishes _as yet unknown to
science_, the solution of the sea-serpent problem is not likely to be
any longer a matter of difficulty.