Sailors, scientists and 19th-century monsters of the deep
By Mark Greener
forteantimes.com
The 19th century was the golden age for sea serpents. Many of the most vivid and credible reports of “sea monsters” come from 19th-century sailors – sometimes in such detail, with such eloquence, with such verisimilitude, that only the most cynical sceptic can dismiss them as the products of overactive imaginations or hoaxes. Victorian scientific journals and magazines regularly carried reports of sea serpents being shot at, captured and even – from a certain point of view – being turned into knife handles. Yet around the turn of the 20th century, the number of reports began to decline.
The 19th-century scientific literature offers ‘rational’ explanations for sea monsters. Most sightings remain unexplained zoologically, even with the benefit of hindsight. However, many explanations smack of desperation, as field observations threatened academic Victorian biologists’ ordered worldview. As Robert Paddle notes in his excellent book on the thylacine, “prevailing constructions, as outlined by the ‘great men’ of science, are powerful [..] and not easily overturned by persons of supposedly less scientific consequence, no matter how accurate their observations in the field may be”. [1]
If all else failed, scientists could dismiss each sighting as misidentification augmented by a “credulous” mariner’s fear and imagination: a view that is not only patronising – partly a product of 19th-century class prejudice – but zoologically counterproductive.
Nevertheless, and in spite of such scientific hubris, some Victorian explanations stand the test of time, showing that monsters sometimes yield to cryptozoological scrutiny. In particular, mariners recognised some leviathans many years before zoologists. 
"MUCH RESPECTABLE TESTIMONY"
The 19th-century sea serpent stories have all the hallmarks of classic fortean phenomena: numerous reports indicating that reliable witness saw something, but little hard evidence to prove a physical existence. Even the generally sceptical Scientific American admitted to “much respectable testimony” that seemed to suggest that something lurked in the seas. However, the journal added, “[I]t is singular enough that no one connected with the department of Zoological science has ever seen one, nor is there any bones or fragments among any of the collections, in Europe or America.” [2]
Nevertheless, the scientific literature from the 18th and 19th centuries contains numerous examples of contemporary and historical sea serpent sightings, often from impeccable witnesses. For example, on 6 July 1734, Poul Egede, the son of a famous Danish-Norwegian missionary, saw a “most dreadful monster” off the coast of Greenland. The sighting became one of the most famous in cryptozoology. In his diaries, recollections and his father’s reports, Egede states that the head of the “enormously big creature” reached to – or was, in some accounts, higher than – the yardarm. The body was as thick as, and three to four times longer than, the ship. The beast had a long pointed nose, blew like a whale and swam using big broad flippers. “Shell work” or “scales” covered the rough, wrinkled skin. The rear resembled a serpent. When it submerged, it lifted itself backwards and then raised its tail from the water a ship’s length from the body. [3]
This classic case still attracts commentary. However, other less well-known cases attracted less scrutiny despite similarly impeccable witnesses. A few years after Egede’s sighting, a sea serpent frequenting Penobscot Bay (a river in Maine) attracted ecclesiastical commentary. The Reverend Alden Bradford wrote to future US president John Quincy Adams, during his tenure as Corresponding Secretary for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences between 1802 and 1809. [4] Bradford referred to Adams’s “attention to statements made under oath… by gentlemen of respectability… that a large sea serpent has been seen in the Penobscot Bay, and that the existence of such a monster could no longer be doubted.” [5]
A close encounter with a sea monster convinced even experienced sailors that they had “seen something very unusual”. In 1893, Admiral Francis Egerton wrote to the Century describing his encounter with a sea monster when serving as a midshipman in “1842 or 1843”. Although Egerton wrote many years after the event, he recorded the sighting in a letter home at the time. It is hard to image a greater bastion of respectability, a more reliable witness, in late Victorian England. Apart from rising to the rank of Admiral, Egerton sat as a Derbyshire MP between 1868 and 1886 and was the second son of Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere.
On the voyage, Egerton visited Nahant, Massachusetts, and was one of three sailors who went ashore. One of the landing party commented to the consul’s wife they had been surprised to see fishing boats working on a Sunday. The consul’s wife reported that the shoals of a specific (unnamed) fish “almost always precede the appearance of the sea serpent”. This suggests that the sea serpent was common enough for Nahant locals to understand its behavioural patterns and use that knowledge to inform fishing practice. Such pragmatic actions hardly seem to fit with a belief that sea serpents are the product of sailors’ imagination – they’d hardly risk the ire of the local clergy by fishing on a Sunday if they were merely chasing a nautical will-o’-the-wisp.
Egerton recollects that the landing party discussed the serpent “more in joke than in earnest”. After dinner, however, the sailors saw the creature through a telescope “probably not more than a couple of hundred yards” distant. The creature did not move with the tide and the sailors were convinced that it was not a shoal of fish. The dark-coloured serpent travelled at around five or 10 knots “with a slight, undulatory motion, and leaving a wake behind”. The experienced sailors watched the creature for four or five minutes. As Egerton recalls: “[W]e three Englishmen thought we had seen something very unusual.” [6]
THE DAEDELUS DEBATE
On 6 August 1848, Mr Sartoris, a midshipman on watch on the frigate Daedalus as she sailed between the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena in the South Atlantic, en route to Portsmouth, raised the alarm. Sartoris saw “something very unusual… rapidly approaching”. Captain Peter M’Quhae, his officers and crew spotted a sea serpent at five o’clock (Some reports say three or four o’clock – but the captain’s letters to his superiors places the time later.) They watched the beast for 20 minutes, often through glasses. However, in a letter to Admiral Sir WH Gage describing the events, M’Quhae commented: “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.” [7]
The animal kept its head and shoulders constantly about 4ft above the water. The head, M’Quhae wrote “was, without any doubt, that of a snake”. The creature was dark brown in colour with a yellowish white about the throat and some 15 or 16in in diameter. A mane “something like [that] of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea weed, washed about its back”. By comparing the creature with the main-topsail yardarm, they estimated that the visible body extended some 60ft in a straight line on the surface. The crew estimated that at least another 30 or 40ft remained submerged. The creature travelled at some 12–15 knots and remained on the surface the entire time. [8]
Back in London, the zoological establishment met the reports with incredulity. Richard Owen – a brilliant biologist who coined the term dinosaur and who was the driving force behind the Natural History Museum in London – believed that the crew had seen a sea lion, carried away from its natural habitat, marooned on an iceberg. Indeed, Owen pointed out that a sea lion rescued from this predicament was exhibited in London the previous spring.
The poor sea lion “would raise a head of the form and colour described and delineated by Captain M’Quhae … the thick neck passing into an inflexible trunk”, Owen wrote. Furthermore, Owen argued, the sea lion would propel itself using the terminal fins and tail. This “would create a long eddy, readily mistakable, by one looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea serpent in his mind’s eye, for an indefinite prolongation of the body”. Owen added that: “[I]t is very probable that not one on board the Daedalus ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean.”
Captain M’Quhae strongly denied Owen’s analysis. In a letter to Owen, and copied to the editor of The Times, M’Quhae stresses that the serpent was neither “a common seal nor a sea elephant; its great length, and its totally differing physiognomy” precluded that possibility. The head was “flat” and it lacked the inflexible trunk that Owen suggested a seal would have. M’Quhae also denied any preconception that it was a serpent as “quite contrary to the fact”. He claimed the officers and crew reached the conclusion that it was a sea serpent only when it made the nearest approach to the ship and the “great length” became apparent. M’Quhae also denied he and his crew could mistake an eddy for an “actual living body” at such close a range. [9]
Owen’s attempts to dismiss the serpent reminded me of the explanation for the falls of winkles, mussels and crabs over Worcester in 1881. Science couldn’t countenance a fall of seafood. So a fishmonger ‘must’ have disposed of the excess stock, employing unseen assistants to shovel the food over walls and onto roofs, and then vanishing without trace. The Worcester fishmonger became an icon in Charles Fort’s writing for desperate attempts to rationalise the unexplained. As John Michell and Robert Rickard commented: “The Worcester fishmonger [..] stood for all the inadequate, hopelessly overstretched explanations that rationalism, for want of anything better, must sometimes make do with”. [10]
The Daedelus monster is now another mainstay of sea serpent lore. The creature seen a few months later is less familiar. On 18 February 1849, the schooner Lucy and Nancy was about 12 miles from St John’s Bar, sailing between New York and Jacksonville. (I assume this refers to the St John’s Bar off Georgia.) At nine o’clock (presumably in the morning), the captain, crew and passengers saw a sea serpent. Importantly, the description accorded with the observations made by the crew of the Daedelus. [11]
Other examples of sightings from the golden age could fill a book – so two will have to suffice. In 1849, an “enormous sea serpent, half a mile long” chased the clipper ship Sophia Walker around Cape Horn. [12] A year later, reports emerged from the Cove of Cork, Ireland, telling of the discovery of some scales from the sea serpent. A Mr Travers even shot at the serpent, which leapt 30 fathoms – 180ft or 55m – from the water. Scientific American also took a pot shot: “He must be a flying fish as well as sea serpent at this rate.” [13]
RIBBONFISH: THE 19TH-CENTURY EXPLNATION
So just what did these and other reliable authorities see? Scientists in the 19th century often equated sea serpents with ribbonfish – then called Gymnetrus and now reclassified as Trachipteridæ. In 1854, Scientific American reported under the headline “capture of a sea serpent” that a “curious marine animal” caught off the coast of Caithness in Scotland had “a snake-like form, 16ft in length, covered with a long pendulous crest on the back of the head”. [14] This was probably Trachipterida. Six years later, Scientific American reported, “[T]he sea serpent has been caught at Bermuda.” This ribbonfish reached 30ft. [15]
Any ‘rational’ identification is, of course, little more than tentative. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it seems ribbonfish could account for some of the stories, especially if Trachipteridæ in the open ocean are larger than those caught closer to shore. Albany Hancock and Dennis Embleton offer a detailed description of a 12ft 3in ribbonfish caught lying on its side on the top of the water six miles off the coast of Northumberland on 26 March 1849. A long, “rich, dark crimson” fin ran from the neck to within a few inches of the fish’s tail. The body’s bright silvery hue made the fish “striking and attractive”. Hancock and Embleton remarked that fishermen caught all six of the ribbonfish captured off the North-East coast since 1759 during the spring. One caught around the turn of the 19th century near Fern Island was 18ft long.
Hancock and Embleton wondered whether the ribbonfish could “have deceived the eye of some credulous mariner, from its rapid undulating motion, linear form, and from its occasionally appearing at the surface, and leaving a lengthened wake behind it, thus creating an exaggerated idea of its extent” and led to stories of the sea serpent. Nevertheless, they dismissed the possibility after further investigation. “On consulting however the accounts which have appeared of the Sea Serpent, we find that they relate in most instances to creatures widely different from the Ribbon Fish, such as whales, seals, sharks, &c. seen under disadvantageous circumstances or imperfectly observed. Still, though the Gymnetrus may not have originated the idea of the existence of a marine serpent, we think it not improbable that the occasional appearance of this fish may very materially have tended to keep up among the Norwegian fishermen that faith which they are stated to hold in the existence of such a monster.”
There is no reason to suppose that there is a single species of sea serpent – the Norwegian species could be different from that in the North Sea or South Atlantic. I believe that ribbonfish remain a strong suspect for some sightings of sea serpents. A fisherman may well describe a ribbonfish as a ‘serpent’ or ‘monster’. A zoologist, with a different lexicon, would say ‘Gymnetrus’.
WHALES, SEAWEED AND KNIFE HANDLES
The idea that whales seen “under disadvantageous circumstances or imperfectly observed” [16] could account for the stories of sea serpents recurs repeatedly in the 19th-century scientific literature and remains a popular theme in the 21st. Certainly, whales and other cetaceans might account for some sightings, especially among less experienced observers – yet probably only a small proportion.
Hans Egede described and drew many whales in the northern seas. Yet he believed his “most dreadful monster” to be something different. Nevertheless, some zoologists believe that Egede saw a humpback whale (Megaptera novæangliæ), a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalæna glacialis) or a grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus), now sadly extinct in the North Atlantic. Whatever species, the whales would need to be free of the usual flukes, the two lobes that form the whale’s tail. [17]
Remarkably, whales can survive without flukes. Numerous watchers saw a grey whale without flukes (named ‘Stumpy’) that, for many years followed the Californian coast during its migration; biologists think a predator, net or disease could have led to the handicap. A picture of Stumpy taken in June 1983 near Santa Barbara has a serpentine appearance. [18]
Alternatively, some zoologists argue, Egede might have seen a male whale with an erection. Usually, a whale’s penis is retracted, but when aroused has a long, snake-like appearance. North Atlantic right whales and Pacific grey whales can have penises that are at least 1.8m (5ft 11in) long. This, the argument goes, could account for sightings of serpentine creatures. [19] As I discussed in detail in a previous issue (210:56–57), an eloquent and well-argued paper by Paxtona, Knatterudb & Hedleya offers a possible explanation for some sightings and a factor cryptozoologists should consider. However, I don’t believe this explanation accounts for Egede’s sighting, which I still contend – largely because of his experience as an observer – is of an otherwise unknown creature.
Nevertheless, misidentified cetaceans are a leitmotiv in 19th-century literature. Charles Hallock (1834–1917) commented that: “[A] school of grampuses [Orca or Risso’s Dolphin] passed by in single file, raising above the waves in long undulations, and to all appearances the veritable sea-serpent.” [20] “Three Months on Labrador” is a work of fiction. However, Hallock was a pioneering angler and naturalist, whose fiction has the observational veracity and verisimilitude of non-fiction. Indeed, a sea serpent spotted off Beaufort (I presume, as Scientific American picked this up from the Charleston Mercury, it’s the South Carolina Beaufort) in 1850 turned out to be four whales following each other in single file. [21]
While a misidentified whale, dolphin or shark could account for some reports, it seems unlikely to be a common mistake. After all, whaling was a huge, commercially successful business. For example, the Okhotsk Sea, in the western Pacific, lies off the eastern Siberian coast to the north of Japan. It’s about as far around the circumference of the world from the North Sea as you can get. However, the Okhotsk grounds proved rich enough to attract ships from France, Bremen in Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Russia and Chile. By the 1850s, each ship could catch six or seven whales in a season.
The most intensive fishing in the Okhotsk Sea occurred between 1847 and 1867, when the area hosted almost 1,400 vessel-seasons (some vessels returned for more than one season). Some 90 per cent of the whalers crossed the Pacific from the USA in vast armadas. In 1854, one logbook reported that 363 whaleboats were in sight from a single ship. Over the 20 years, the whalers took more than 15,000 Bowhead whales (Balæna mysticetus) and 2,400 North Pacific right whales (Eubalæna japonica). [22]
These mariners gained an intimate knowledge of whales’ anatomy, appearance and behaviour that, I suspect, often surpassed that of modern cetacean biologists. It strikes me as unlikely that such experienced mariners would readily mistake a whale – with or without a fluke, or with or without an erection – for a sea serpent. Indeed, sometimes zoologists have to catch up with sailors’ knowledge. Mariners reported seeing large beaked whales in the Pacific and Indian oceans years before the identification of Longman’s beaked whale (Indopacetus pacificus) by ichthyologists. [23]
Seaweed proved another popular, if even more improbable, explanation for sea serpents. In 1858, Scientific American reported the views of a “gentleman from Newcastle-upon-Tyne” who caught a sea serpent, which turned out to be “nothing but a gigantic sea-weed, the root of which formed the head, and the leaves the flowing mane so often described”. [24]
Four years later, Scientific American recorded that a Mr Ghislin of Hatton Gardens in London believed the sea serpent “is nothing but a species of sea-weed, which, when forced to the surface in oceanic commotions, floats about in masses sometimes 1,000ft long, and to a nautical imagination, presents the appearance of the sea-monster”. Ghislin, Scientific American reports, “nothing daunted by the traditions boldly seized the leviathan, brought him to land, and, having squeezed him into a substance called ‘laminite’, has turned him into excellent handles for knives and razors”. [25]
THE STORIES DRY UP
By the end of the 19th century, reports of sea monsters began to dry up. In his 1925 book, Animals of Land and Sea, Austin Clark, of the Smithsonian Institution, commented that reports of the sea serpent had declined “in the last 20 years”. Over the same time, Clark noted, the size of ships rapidly increased and steam ships replaced sailing vessels. These maritime advances meant, he argued, that the “vantage point” for observing the sea serpent moved “from the low and insecure wave-washed deck of a small sailing boat to the high, comfortable, secure, and relatively dry deck of a much larger steamer”. This shift in perspective “removed the element of fear and hence dulled the imagination so that sailors are now able to study calmly and report correctly what they see”. [26]
However, other factors could contribute to the decline in reports. Richard Owen’s scepticism reflected a more widespread academic discomfiture with reports of sea serpents. Perhaps reporting a sea serpent became a bad career move. Perhaps fishing depleted the food sources. A sea serpent is likely to be a top predator. The top predators in marine food webs have markedly declined worldwide. In some areas, large shark populations have declined by more than 90 per cent. [27]
Perhaps the acoustics of steam and then diesel-powered ships warned the serpents off. Ocean noise pollution from shipping is rising by 3db per decade, [28] and behaviour can change as mammals attempt to compensate for the increased noise. [29] The mass strandings – usually of beaked whales, but occasionally of other cetaceans – linked to the mid-frequency sonar used by the Navy offer a striking example of the link.
Beaching is markedly anomalous behaviour for a beaked whale. Beaked whales usually spend an hour or so at depths of around 1,200m. Beached beaked whales show blood in their ears and eyes, but the cause of death is usually elusive. The contribution of military sonar to whales beaching remains controversial. The military uses mid-frequency sonar to detect the murmur from submarines. Some researchers believe that the sonar forms bubbles in the whales’ tissues leading to fatal embolisms. Others suggest that sonar may disorientate the animal or sound similar to hunting killer whales. However, others argue that sonar is relatively unimportant. They estimate that naval sonar has caused the death of fewer than 300 whales since the 1950s. [30] Zoologists still have much to learn about these problems. They have even less understanding of the impact of noise pollution on other marine animals.
HERE BE MONSTERS
The fact remains – as is so often the case with fortean phenomena – that prosaic explanations cannot account for the whole plethora of sightings. In addition, some scientists have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss the possibility of a cryptozoological creature based on limited evidence: no firm evidence of a cryptid’s existence is not analogous to evidence that a creature does not exist.
That’s especially true of sea monsters when so many mysteries of the deep remain unexplored. Ichthyologists have identified around 16,000 species of marine fish and believe that they still need to discover and describe another 4,000 species. [31] The megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios), which, along with the basking whale, feeds on plankton, is a famous example. [32] Ichthyologists only identified M.pelagios in 1976. Between 1976 and May 2004, ichthyologists had examined only 22 specimens. Yet M.pelagios is hardly a minnow. An adult female washed ashore in Japan on 13 March 2004 was 5.63m long. [33]
Indeed, evidence for creatures we know exist can still be remarkably limited. Until recently, ichthyologists knew Longman’s beaked whale (I.pacificus) from only two examples of the cetacean’s skull and mandible. The first skull and mandible washed up on a beach at Mackay, northern Queensland, in 1882. The second skull and mandible turned up in a fertiliser factory in Danané, Somalia, in 1955. Our understanding of this enigmatic cetacean is increasing: samples from four specimens stranded in the western and central Indian Ocean recently underwent genetic analysis. I.pacificus remains “one of the rarest of all cetaceans”, despite adult males reaching some 7m in length, based on an analysis of the 1882 skull. [34]
Then there’s Architeuthis – the giant squid – an archetypal sea monster and, I believe, a possible inspiration for the humanoid creature Japanese fisherman call Umi-bozu, wonderfully illustrated in a beautiful print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. [35] (I don’t believe it was a simple misidentification – rather that the myths borrowed elements from nature to create a vivid allegoric chimera.) Architeuthis is the largest known invertebrate – the longest on record reached 18m – and has “featured as an ominous sea monster in novels and movies”. [36]
Clark suggests that “one of these great squid in a dying condition, somewhat distorted by an active imagination” could become a sea serpent. The squid’s tail lifted above the surface of the water accounts for the head with the frilled neck. “The long slender snake-like sea-serpents are the writhing arms of which the expanded ends look something like a head.”
Yet once again, fishermen were au fait with Architeuthis, which I believe makes misidentification less likely. In October 1875, American fishermen from the Massachusetts port of Gloucester – a port some 30 miles northeast of Boston – cut up between 25 and 30 giant squid on the Grand Banks to use as bait. The schooner Howard, captained by JW Collins, caught five that were between 10–15ft long, excluding the arms. [37] Is it likely that people who made their living from the sea, who could pull 30 squid up at a time and even used them as bait, would mistake the creature?
Despite considerable efforts, most attempts to view Architeuthis in its habitat were “singularly unsuccessful” until a Japanese group filmed an 8m-long squid in 2004 (see FT203:23). The squid was hunting during the day some 820m below the surface. Sperm whales also feed at this depth during the day and then rise in the water column to between 400 and 500m at night. The Japanese team believe that Architeuthis might also follow this behavioural pattern. [38]
Architeuthis, ribbonfish and misidentified cetaceans probably account for some of the observations made in the golden age of sea serpents. However, it seems unlikely that these accounts for all the observations.
Looking through the dusty archives at these old reports left me with the profound feeling that there was still at least one, probably more, unidentified species roaming the seas in the 19th century. I hope that it is still out there. As even the sceptical Scientific American remarked in 1850:
“It is by no means improbable that a species of serpent, huge in proportion, may exist in the seas.” [39]