Sea Serpent

Sea Serpent. The idea that a gigantic marine serpentiform animal exists appears in the works of old naturalists, but with such manifest exaggerations that their accounts of it may be dismissed as throwing little or no light on the subject. There is, moreover, little doubt that some of the appearances which have given rise to sea-serpent stories have been due to schools of porpoises at play, floating weed rising and falling with the waves, or flocks of seabirds, all of which may convey the impression of undulatory or serpentine motion. But accounts have been given by persons who claim to have had a view of the sea-serpent at close quarters, and these seem to establish the fact that the ocean depths contain gigantic creatures resembling, or presenting the appearance of, monstrous snakes. First in point of time comes the story of Captain Mcquhae, of HM.S. Daedalus, who, in his voyage home from the East Indies in 1848, sighted an enormous serpent with head and shoulders kept about 4 feet above the water, and there was about 60 feet of the creature visible, no part of which was used in propelling it through the water. The late Sir Richard Owen thought that the creature was an enormous seal, and a similar theory has been put forward more recently by a Dutch naturalist to account for all sea_serpent stories. Lieutenant Haynes, of the royal yacht Osborne, saw a sea-serpent off the coast of Sicily in 1877 (Graphic, June 30), and since then two or three other instances have been recorded. In September, 1893, Mr. Lydekker, when off the coast of Brazil, witnessed a finner whale attacked by killers (Orca gladiator), and apparently worrying the whale beneath the surface was what he took to be a "gigantic shark, allied to the thresher, but of a white colour, and probably armed with much larger teeth." He adds, "If so, we have evidence of a fish at present unknown to science. (Natural Science, March 1894.) What the sea-serpent is cannot be decided without further evidence. There is, however, no doubt that the belief in gigantic marine monsters has a basis of fact to rest on.