MONSTERS OF THE DEEP.(48)
Mark Twain on Whales—A New Version of an Old Story—Whale as
Food—Whaling in 1670—The Great Mammal’s Enemy, the “Killer”—The
Animal’s Home—The So‐called Fisheries—The Sperm
Whale—Spermaceti—The Chase—The Capture—A Mythical Monster—The
Great Sea‐Serpent—Yarns from Norway—An Archdeacon’s
Testimony—Stories from America—From Greenland—Mahone Bay—A
Tropical Sea‐Serpent—What is the Animal?—Seen on a Voyage to
India—Off the Coast of Africa—Other Accounts—Professor Owen on the
Subject—Other Theories.
Some years ago, when an invalid wrote to Mark Twain seeking advice as to
the value of fish as “brain food,” the answer of that humourist was plain
indeed:—“Fish‐food is good: abounds in phosphorus and nutrition. In your
case I must recommend a small whale!” Unfortunately, Mark Twain fell into
a very common error. The whale is _not_ a fish; it is a mammal: it suckles
its young. The writer has eaten whale—that is, a little bit of one. Whale
brain, enclosed in batter, and treated as a fritter, is not to be
despised.
The British whaler of about 1670 is quaintly described by Frederic Martin,
who visited Spitzbergen and Greenland that year. He says:—“Whoever of the
ships’ crews sees a dead whale cries out, ‘Fish mine!’ and therefore the
merchants must pay him a ducat for his care and vigilance. Many of them
climb often into the mast in hopes to have a ducat, but in vain. When the
dead whale is thus fastened to the ship, two sloops hold on the other side
of the fish, or whale, and in each of them doth stand a man or boy that
has a long hook in his hands, wherewith he doth hold the boat to the ship,
and the harpooner stands before in the sloop or upon the whale, with a
leathern suit on, and sometimes they have boots on. Underneath the hook
are some sharp nails fixed, that they may be able to stand firm. These two
men that cut the fat off have their peculiar wages for it, viz., about
four or five rix dollars. First they cut a large piece from behind the
head, by the eyes, which they call the _kenter‐piece_, that is as much as
to say, the _winding‐piece_; for as they cut all the other fat all in rows
from the whale towards the end, so they cut this great _kenter‐piece_
larger and wider than all the rest. This piece, when it is cut round about
from the whale, reaches from the water to the cradle (that is, the round
circle that goes round about the middle of the mast, and is made in the
shape of a basket), whence you may guess of the bigness of a whale. A
strong and thick rope is fixed to this kenter‐piece, and the other end is
fixed to underneath the cradle, whereby the whale is as it were borne up
out of the water, that they may come at it, and by reason of the great
weight of the whale the ship leans towards that side. One may judge how
tough the fat is, for in this piece a hole is made, through which the rope
is fastened, yet not deep into the fat, wherewith they turn the fish at
pleasure. Then they cut another piece down hard by this, which is also
hauled up into the ship, where it is cut into pieces a foot square. The
knives used are, with their hafts, about the length of a man,” and so on.
Mr. Brierly tells us that the most important natural enemy of the whale on
the coast of Australia is the “killer,” a kind of large porpoise, with a
blunt head and large teeth. These “killers” often attack the whale, and
worry it like a pack of dogs, and sometimes kill it. The whalemen regard
these creatures as important allies, for when they see from the look‐out
that a whale has been “hove‐to” by them they are pretty sure of capturing
it. The killers show no fear of the boats, but will attack the whale at
the same time; and if a boat is stove in, which often happens, they will
not hurt the men when in the water. The Australian natives about Twofold
Bay say the killers are the spirits of their own people, and when they see
them will pretend to point out particular individuals they have known.
Some are very large, exceeding twenty‐five feet; they blow from the head,
in the same manner as the whale.
The homes of whales are hardly known. Where the northern whale breeds has
long been a puzzling question among whalemen. It is a cold‐water animal.
Maury asks:—“Is the nursery for the great whale in the Polar Sea, which
has been so set about and hemmed in with a ledge of ice that man may not
trespass there? This providential economy still further prompts the
question, Whence comes all the food for the young whales there? Do the
teeming whalers of the Gulf Stream convey it there also, in channels so
far in the depths of the sea that no enemy may waylay and spoil it in the
long journey? It may generally be believed that the northern whale, which
is now confined to the Polar Sea, descended annually into the temperate
region of the Atlantic, as far as the Bay of Biscay, and that it was only
the persecution of the whale‐fishers which compelled it to seek its frozen
retreat. This opinion is now shown to be erroneous, and to have rested
only on the confounding of two distinct species of whale. Like other
whales, the northern is migratory, and changes its quarters according to
the seasons; and the systematic registers of the Danish colonists of
Greenland show that often the same individual appears at the same epoch in
the same fiord. The females of the southern whale visit the coasts of the
Cape in June to bring forth their young, and return to the high seas in
August or September. It was supposed that the migration of the northern
whale was for a similar purpose. This, however, is not now considered to
be the case. Its movements are attributed to climatal changes alone, and
especially to the transport of ice into Baffin’s Bay. It lives entirely in
the midst of glaciers, and therefore is found in the south during winter
and in the north during summer. The whale‐fishery has diminished its
numbers, but not altered its mode of life. It is stated now that the whale
believed to have visited the North Atlantic Ocean is a totally different
species, a much more violent and dangerous animal than the northern whale,
also smaller, and less rich in oil. The fishery for the latter ceased
towards the end of the last century, but it is thought to be not wholly
extinct. On September 17th, 1854, a whale, with its little one, appeared
before St. Sebastian, in the Bay of Biscay; the mother escaped, but the
young one was taken, and from a drawing of a skeleton of the latter MM.
Eschricht and Rheinhardt, of Copenhagen, are convinced that it belonged to
a species distinct from the Greenland whale; so that the name of
‘Mysticete’ has been applied to various whales.”
[Illustration: THE NORTHERN WHALE (_Balina mysticetus_).]
The sperm whale, says Maury, is a warm water animal; the _right_ whale
delights in cold water. The log‐books of the American whalers show that
the torrid zone is to the right whale as a sea of fire, through which it
cannot pass; and that the right whale of the northern hemisphere and that
of the southern are two different animals; and that the sperm whale has
never been known to double the Cape of Good Hope—he doubles Cape Horn.
Mr. Beale has done more to elucidate the habits and form of this whale
than any other writer. Its great peculiarity of form is the head,
presenting a very thick, blunt extremity, about a third of the whole
length of the animal. The head, viewed in front, has a broad, flattened
surface, rounded and contracted above, considerably expanded on the sides,
and gradually contracted below, resembling in some degree the cut‐water of
a ship. On the right side of the nose is a cavity for secreting and
containing an oily fluid, which after death concretes into the substance
called spermaceti, of which in a large whale there is not unfrequently a
ton. The mouth extends nearly the whole length of the head, and the throat
is capacious enough to give passage to the body of a man, presenting a
strong contrast to the contracted gullet of the Greenland whale.
Immediately beneath the black skin of the sperm whale is the blubber, or
fat, termed “the blanket,” of a light yellowish colour, producing when
melted the sperm oil. A specimen taken in 1829 near Whitstable measured
sixty‐two feet in length. The oil was worth £320, exclusive of the
spermaceti.(49) Many years since the _Samuel Enderby_, whaler, returned
from the south with a cargo of sperm oil worth £40,000.
[Illustration: CUTTING UP THE WHALE.]
This whale swallows quantities of small fishes, and has been known to
eject from its stomach a fish as large as a moderate‐sized salmon. This
species is gregarious; and the herds, called “schools,” are females and
young males. Mr. Beale saw 500 or 600 in one school. With each female
school are one to three large “bulls,” or “schoolmasters,” as they are
termed by the whalers. The full‐grown males almost always go in search of
food. A large whale will yield eighty, and sometimes one hundred, barrels
of oil. Among the habits of the whale are “breaching,” or leaping clear
out of the water and falling back on its side, so that the breach may be
seen on a clear day from the mast‐head at six miles’ distance; in “going
ahead” the whale attains ten or twelve miles an hour, which Mr. Beale
believes to be its greatest velocity; “lob‐tailing” is lashing the water
with its tail. The dangers and hairbreadth escapes in the capture are very
numerous.
In 1839 there were discovered among rubbish in a tower of Durham Castle
the bones of a sperm whale, which, from a letter of June 20th, 1661, in
the Surtees Collection, is shown to have been cast ashore at that time,
and _skeletonised_ in order to ornament this old tower. Clusius describes,
in 1605, a sperm whale thrown ashore seven years before, near Scheveling,
where Cuvier supposed its head to be still preserved, and there is an
antiquity of the kind still shown there.
The whale chase is an exciting scene. Sometimes the whale places himself
in a perpendicular position, with the head downwards, and rearing his tail
on high, beats the water with awful violence. The sea foams, and vapours
darken the air; the lashing is heard several miles off, like the roar of a
distant tempest. Sometimes he makes an immense spring, and rears his whole
body above the waves, to the admiration of the experienced whaler, but to
the terror of those who see for the first time this astonishing spectacle.
Other motions, equally expressive of his boundless strength, attract the
attention of navigators at the distance of miles. The whole structure of
the whale exhibits most admirable adaptation to his situations and the
element in which he lives, in the toughness and thickness of his skin and
disposition of the coating of blubber beneath, which serves the purpose—if
we may be permitted to use so homely a simile—of an extra great‐coat to
keep him warm, and prevent his warm red blood from being chilled by the
icy seas. But provision is especially made to enable him to descend
uninjured to very great depths. The orifices of the nostrils are closed by
valves, wonderfully suited to keep out the water from the lungs,
notwithstanding the pressure. In one species they are shaped like cones,
which fit into the orifice like corks in the neck of a bottle, and the
greater the pressure the tighter they hold. The most surprising fact in
the whale, probably, is the power of descending to enormous depths below
the surface of the sea, and sustaining that almost inconceivable pressure
of the superincumbent water. On one occasion which fell under Mr.
Scoresby’s own observation a whale was struck from a boat. The animal
instantly descended, dragging down with him a rope nearly _one mile long_.
Having let out this much of the rope, the situation of the boat’s crew
became critical. Either they must have cut the line, and submitted to a
very serious loss, or have run the risk of being dragged under water by
the whale. The men were desired to retire to the stern, to counterbalance
the pulls of the whale, which dragged the bow down sometimes to within an
inch of the water. In this dangerous dilemma the boat remained some time,
vibrating up and down with the tugs of the monster, but never moving from
the place where it lay when the harpoon was first thrown. This fact proves
that the whale must have descended at once perpendicularly, as had he
advanced in any direction he must have pulled the boat along with him. Mr.
Scoresby and the crew were rescued by the timely arrival of another boat
furnished with fresh ropes and harpoons. A whale when struck will dive
sometimes to a depth of 800 fathoms; and as the surface of a large animal
may be estimated at 1,500 square feet, at this depth it will have to
sustain a pressure equal to 211,000 tons. The transition from that which
it is exposed to at the surface, and which may be taken at about 1,300
tons, to so enormous an increase, must be productive of the utmost
exhaustion.
Strange incidents are related of harpooning. On September 24th, 1864, as
the _Alexander_, belonging to Dundee, was steaming about in Davis’s
Straits, a whale of about twelve tons was observed not far distant from
her. Boats were put out, and the crew secured the animal. When they
cleansed it, they found embedded in its body, two or three inches beneath
the skin, a piece of a harpoon about eighteen inches long; on the one side
were engraved the words—“_Traveller_,” _Peterhead_, and on the other,
“1838.” This vessel was lost in 1856, in the Cumberland Straits whale‐
fishery; it is therefore clear that the harpoon must have remained in the
animal from that time.
A sailor gives the following description of sleeping _inside_ a whale;
not, however, quite as Jonah may have done. He says:(50)—“We were on a
little expedition in the long‐boat one voyage, and we had to encamp for
the night with as much comfort as our scant means would afford. The shore
was terrible for its wildness and desolation—it was indeed lonely, sad,
and sandy, but what was strange and welcome, was, great carcases of
whales, stranded like wrecks on the far‐reaching shore, in some cases the
backbone holding together like a good keel and the great ribs still round,
giving you an idea of an elongated hogshead without the staves. We landed
for the night, unbent our sails and stretched them over the bleached ribs
of a whale’s skeleton, and after supper took a comfortable sleep under the
most curious roof‐tree I ever rested under.” This was on the north‐west
coast of Africa; and the sailor came to the conclusion that whales come
ashore to die. “And to my mind,” says he, “it is as poetical as it is
welcome. I like to think of these mighty travellers in the mighty deep
hugging the shore when the fires of life burn low, and the mighty waves,
their playmates from their childhood, giving their last lift up on the
beach!”
And now for that great mythical or actual animal the sea‐serpent.
For ages an animal of immense size and serpentine form has been believed
to inhabit the ocean, though rarely seen. A strong conviction of its
existence has always prevailed in Norway and the fiords, where it has been
reported to have been frequently seen. It is also said that the coasts of
New England have been frequently visited by this marine monster many times
during this century.
Bishop Pontoppidan, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, wrote
a history of Norway, his native land, collected a quantity of testimonies
as to its occasional appearance. Among other evidence he mentions that of
Captain de Ferry, of the Norwegian Navy, who saw the serpent, while in a
boat rowed by eight men, near Molde, in August, 1774. A declaration of
this was made by the captain and two of the crew before a magistrate. The
animal was described as of the general form of a serpent stretched on the
surface in receding coils or undulations, and the head, which resembled
that of a horse, elevated some two feet out of the water.
In the summer of 1846 many respectable persons stated that in the vicinity
of Christiansand and Molde they had seen the marine serpent. The
affidavits of numerous persons were given in the papers, which, with some
discrepancies in minute particulars, agree in testifying that an animal of
great length (from about fifty to a hundred feet) had been seen at various
times, in many cases more than once. All agreed that the eyes were large
and glaring; that the body was dark‐brown and comparatively slender; and
that the head, which for size was compared to a ten‐gallon cask, was
covered with a long spreading mane.
An account of one of these encounters, which took place on the 28th May,
1845, was published by the Rev. P. W. Demboll, Archdeacon of Molde, those
present being J. C. Lund, bookseller and printer, G. S. Krogh, merchant,
Christian Flang, Lund’s apprentice, and John Elgenses, labourer. These men
were fishing on the Romsdal Fjord, and the appearance took place about
seven in the evening, a little distance from shore, near the ballast place
and the Molde Hove. Lund fired at the animal, which followed them till
they came to shallow water, when it dived and disappeared.
In 1817 the Linnæan Society of New England published “A Report relative to
a Large Marine Animal, supposed to be a Serpent, seen near Cape Ann,
Massachusetts, in August,” of that year. A good deal of care was taken to
obtain evidence, and the deposition of eleven witnesses of fair and
unblemished characters were certified on oath before the magistrates. The
length was estimated at fifty to a hundred feet, and the head compared to
that of a sea‐turtle, a rattlesnake, and a serpent generally, but in this
case there was no appearance of a mane.
Again, in the _Boston Daily Advertiser_ for November 25th, 1840, there is
a communication from the Hon. T. H. Perkins of that city, attesting his
own personal observation of the marine serpent at Gloucester Harbour, near
Cape Ann, in 1817. This communication took the form of a letter written to
a friend in 1820.
Captain Perkins speaks of the animal’s motion being the vertical movement
of the caterpillar, and not that of the common snake either on land or
water, and this confirms the account of Mr. M‘Clean, the minister of a
parish in the Hebrides, who saw in 1809 a serpentine monster about eighty
feet in length. He distinctly states that it seemed to move by undulations
up and down, which is not only contrary to all that is known of serpents,
but from the structure of their vertebræ impossible. Hans Egede mentions
the appearance of a marine snake off the coast of Greenland in 1734.
On the 15th of May, 1833, a party, consisting of Captain Sullivan,
Lieutenant Maclachlan and Ensign Malcolm of the Rifle Brigade, Lieutenant
Lyster of the Artillery, and Mr. Ince the ordnance store‐keeper at
Halifax, started from that town in a small yacht for Mahone Bay, on a
fishing excursion. When about half‐way they came upon a shoal of grampuses
in an unusual state of excitement, and to the surprise of the party they
perceived the head and neck of a snake, at least eighty feet in length,
following them. An account of this occurrence was published in the
_Zoologist_ for 1847. The editor stated that he was indebted for it to Mr.
W. H. Ince, who received it from his brother, Commander J. M. R. Ince,
R.N. It was written by one of the eye‐witnesses, Mr. Henry Ince, and
signed as follows:—
W. Sullivan, Captain Rifle Brigade, June 21, 1831.
A. Maclachlan, Lieut. „ „ August 5, 1824.
G. P. Malcolm, Ensign „ „ August 13, 1830.
B. O’Neal Lyster, Lieut. Artillery, June 7, 1816.
Henry Ince, Storekeeper at Halifax.
The dates affixed to the names were those on which the gentlemen received
their respective commissions.
Great interest was excited in 1848 by an account of a great sea‐serpent
seen in lat. 24° 44’ S., and long. 9° 20’ E., in the tropics, and not very
far from the coast of Africa, by the officers and crew of her Majesty’s
frigate _Dædalus_. It was not, as in other cases, in bright and fine
weather, but on a dark and cloudy afternoon, and with a long ocean swell.
Captain Peter M‘Quhæ, in his report to the Admiralty, published in the
_Times_ for the 13th of October, describes it with confidence as “an
enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly
above the surface of the sea;” and he adds: “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 _à 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 have easily recognised his
features with the naked eye; but 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 south‐west, 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 doubt that of a snake; and it was never during the
twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our glasses once below the
surface of the water; its colour a dark brown with yellowish white about
the throat. It had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or
rather a bunch of sea‐weed washed about its back.”
[Illustration: THE GREAT SEA‐SERPENT WHEN FIRST SEEN FROM H.M.S.
_DÆDALUS_.
(_After a Drawing by Captain M‘Quhæ, sent to the Lords of the Admiralty,
October, 1848._)]
Drawings prepared from a sketch by Captain M‘Quhæ were published in the
_Illustrated London News_ of 28th October, 1848. Lieutenant Drummond, the
officer of the watch at the time, also printed his own impression of the
animal, which differs in some slight points from the Captain’s account,
particularly in ascribing a more elongated form to the head, in the
mention of a back‐fin (whereas Captain M‘Quhæ expressly says no fins were
seen), and the lower estimate of the length of the portion of the animal
visible. Lieutenant Drummond’s words are:—“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 twenty 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 jaw a brownish white. It pursued a steady and undeviating
course, keeping its head horizontal with the water, and in rather a raised
position, disappearing occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief
interval, and not apparently for the purposes of respiration. It was going
at the rate of perhaps from twelve to fourteen miles an hour, and when
nearest was perhaps 100 yards distant. In fact, it gave one quite the idea
of a large snake or eel.” Lieutenant Drummond’s account is the more worthy
of regard, as it was derived from his journal, and so gives the exact
impressions of the hour, while Captain M‘Quhæ’s description was written
from memory after his arrival in England.
[Illustration: HEAD OF SEA‐SERPENT. (_After a Drawing by Captain
M‘Quhæ._)]
These statements caused much discussion at the time. It was suggested by
Mr. J. D. Morriss Stirling, a gentleman long living in Norway, and also by
a writer in the _Times_ of November 2, 1848, under the signature of “F. G.
S.,” that the monster had an affinity with the great fossil reptiles known
to geologists as the _Enaliosauria_, and particularly adduced the genus
_Plesiosaurus_, or gigantic lizard, with a serpent‐like neck. This is also
the opinion of Professor Agassiz, as given in the report of his lectures
in Philadelphia, in 1849, and reaffirmed in his “Geological Researches.”
A master in science, Professor Richard Owen, now appeared upon the field,
and in a most able article in the _Times_, November 11, 1848, gave his
verdict against the serpentine character of the animal, and pronounced it
to have been, in his judgment, a seal. He argued this partly from the
description of its appearance, and partly from the fact that no remains of
any dead marine serpent had ever been found. He says: “On weighing the
question whether creatures meriting the name of ‘great sea serpent’ do
exist, or whether any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary
deposits may have continued to live up to the present time, it seems to me
less probable that no part of the carcase of such reptiles should have
ever been discovered in a recent or unfossilised state, than that men
should have been deceived by a cursory view of a partly submerged and
rapidly moving animal, which might only be strange to themselves. In other
words, I regard the negative evidence from the utter absence of any of the
recent remains of great sea serpents, Krakens, or Enaliosauria, as
stronger against their actual existence than the positive statements which
have hitherto weighed with the public mind in favour of their existence. A
larger body of evidence from eye‐witnesses might be got together in proof
of ghosts than of the sea serpent.”
However, Captain M‘Quhæ gallantly returned to the charge, and combated the
idea that he had mistaken one of the _Phoca_ species for a snake; and he
was strongly corroborated by Mr. R. Davidson, Superintending Surgeon,
Nagpore Subsidiary Force, in a letter from Kamptee, published in the
_Bombay Bi‐monthly Times_, for January, 1849. This gentleman says that an
animal, “of which no more generally correct description could be given
than that by Captain M‘Quhæ,” passed within thirty‐five yards of the ship
_Royal Saxon_ while he and its commander, Captain Petrie, were standing on
the poop, when they were returning to India in 1829.
Again, a letter was printed in the _Zoologist_ for 1852, communicated by
Captain Steele, 9th Lancers, to his brother, Lieutenant‐Colonel Steele of
the Coldstream Guards, stating that while on his way to India in the
_Bartram_ he and _every one on board_ saw “the head and neck of an
enormous snake.” This was corroborated in a letter from one of the
officers of the ship, who says:—“His head appeared to be about sixteen
feet above the water, and he kept moving it up and down, sometimes showing
his enormous neck, which was surmounted with a huge crest in the shape of
a saw.”
Another theory was put forward in the London _Sun_ of the 9th July, 1849,
by Captain Herriman, of the British ship _Brazilian_, who, on the 24th
February, 1849, was becalmed on almost the same spot that Captain M‘Quhæ
saw his monster while on a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope.
“I perceived,” wrote Captain Herriman, “something right abeam, about half
a mile to the westward, stretched along the water to the length of about
twenty‐five to thirty feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship with a
steady sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet
above the water, had something resembling a mane running down to the
floating portion, and within six feet of the tail it forked out into a
sort of double fin.” On approaching in a small boat, however, Captain
Herriman discovered that his monster was nothing more formidable than “an
immense piece of sea‐weed, evidently detached from a coral reef, and
drifting with the current, which sets constantly to the westward in this
latitude, and which, together with the swell left by the subsidence of the
gale, gave it the sinuous snake‐like motion.”
In the _Times_ of 5th February, 1858, a letter from Captain Harrington, of
the ship _Castilian_, stating that he and his crew had seen a gigantic
serpent on the 12th December, 1857, about ten miles N.E. of St. Helena,
brought out another witness on the sea‐weed hypothesis. This was Captain
Fred. Smith, of the ship _Pekin_, who gave a very similar account to that
of Captain Herriman, stating that in lat. 26° S., long. 6° E., on the 28th
December, 1848, he captured what he believed to be a serpent, but what
turned out to be a gigantic piece of weed covered with snaky‐looking
barnacles.
This last imputation brought up “An Officer of H.M. ship _Dædalus_,” whose
testimony, in the _Times_ of 16th February, 1858, puts _hors de combat_
the sea‐weed theory in that renowned case. He states that, “at its nearest
position, being not more than 200 yards from us, _the eye_, _the mouth_,
the nostril, the colour and form, all being _most distinctly visible to
us_ ... my impression was it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine
character, as its movement was steady and uniform, _as if propelled by
fins_, not by any undulatory power.”
That there is some mighty denizen of the vasty deep, sometimes but seldom
seen, is more than possible, and highly probable; but to which of the
recognised classes of created being can this huge rover of the ocean be
referred? First of all, is it an animal at all? On two occasions monstrous
pieces of weed have been mistaken for the Kraken, but on each occasion the
distance from the vessel is estimated at half a mile; while Captain M‘Quhæ
says that he was within 200 yards, and Mr. Davidson within thirty‐five
yards of the animal. Under these circumstances we may fairly dismiss the
sea‐weed hypothesis.
Professor Owen would place the sea‐serpent among the mammalia, but _Phoca
proboscidea_ is the only seal which will bear comparison with the
_Dædalus_ animal in dimensions, it reaching from twenty to thirty feet.
The officers declare, however, that at least sixty feet of their animal
was visible at the surface. Again, the fore paws of the seal are placed at
about one‐third of the total length from the muzzle, and yet no appearance
of fins was seen. To continue, the great _Phoca proboscidea_ has no mane,
the only seals possessing what may be dignified with the title being the
two kinds of sea lions—the _Otaria jubata_ and _Platyrhynchus
leoninus_—which are far too small to come into the count.
It is quite possible that the great unknown is a reptile, and his marine
habits present no difficulty. In the Indian and Pacific Oceans there are
numerous specimens of true snakes (_Hydrophidæ_), which are exclusively
inhabitants of the sea. None of these, however, are known to exceed a few
feet in length, and none of them, so far as is known, have found their way
into the Atlantic.
The most probable solution of the riddle is the hypothesis of Mr. Morriss
Stirling and Professor Agassiz, that the so‐called sea‐serpent will find
its closest affinities with those extraordinary animals the
_Enaliosauria_, or marine lizards, whose fossil skeletons are found so
abundantly through the Oolite and the Lias. If the Plesiosaur could be
seen alive you would find nearly its total length on the face of the water
propelled at a rapid rate, without any undulation, by an apparatus
altogether invisible—the powerful paddles beneath—while the entire
serpentine neck would probably be projected obliquely, carrying the
reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and a mouth whose gape
did not extend behind the eye. Add to this a body of leathery skin like
that of the whale, give the creature a length of some sixty feet or more,
and you would have before you almost the very counterpart of the
apparition that wrought such amazement on board the _Dædalus_.
In evidence of the existence of such an animal, Captain the Hon. George
Hope states that when in H.M.S. _Fly_, in the Gulf of California, the sea
being perfectly smooth and clear, he saw at the bottom a large marine
animal with the head and general figure of an alligator, except that the
neck was much longer, and that, instead of legs, the animal had four large
flappers, something like those of turtles.
The two strong objections to this theory are—first, the hypothetical
improbability of such forms having been transmitted from the era of the
secondary strata to the present time; and, second, the entire absence of
any parts of the carcases or unfossilised skeletons of such animals in
museums. Many fossil types, however, of marine animals have been
transmitted, with or without interruption, from remote geological epochs
to the present time; among these may be mentioned the Port Jackson Shark
(_Cestracion_), and the gar‐pike (_Lepidosteus_), which have come down to
us without interruption, the _Chimæra percopsis_ of Lake Superior, and
soft‐shelled tortoises (_Trionychidæ_), with more or less apparent
disappearance. The non‐occurrence of dead animals is of little weight as
disproving the existence of the sea‐serpent; its carcase would float only
a short time, and the rock‐bound coasts of Norway would be very unlikely
to retain any fragment cast up by the waves; many whales being known to
naturalists only from two or three specimens in many centuries.
The conclusion of the best naturalists is that the existence of the sea‐
serpent is possibly a verity, and that it may prove to be some modified
type of the secondary _Enaliosaurians_, or possibly some intermediate form
between them and the elongated _Cetaceans_.