The Singapore Daily News, April 6, 1878, in its Australian news quotes from Wellington (New Zealand), Feb. 26 (this month corresponds with August north of the Line): “The captain of the steamship Durham reports having seen a monster serpent off Nerowas Island. Thirty feet of the monster was visible out of the water. The crew and passengers corroborate the report.”
Fig. 71.—Sea-Serpent seen from the Ship “Sacramento,” July 30, 1877.
(From the “Australian Sketcher.”)
The Australian Sketcher for November 24, 1877, states: “Captain W. H. Nelson, of the American ship Sacramento, which arrived in this port from New York on October 20, reported that he saw the sea-serpent on his voyage. The Argus paragraph on the subject stated: ‘The date on which the creature was seen was on July 30, the ship then being in lat. 31° 59′ N. and long. 37° W. The man at the wheel was the first to observe the monster, and he at once called Captain Nelson, telling him what he saw; but the latter, having the same feeling of incredulity with regard to the sea-serpent as most other people, did not hurry from below. On coming on deck, however, he was rewarded with a distant glimpse of the supposed sea-serpent, which the helmsman, for his part, declared he saw quite plainly. Some forty feet of the monster was alleged to be observable. It appeared to be about the size of a flour-barrel in girth, and its colour was yellowish; the head is described as being flat. The eyes were plainly visible. Captain Nelson is convinced that what he saw was some extraordinary marine monster.’ We have obtained from John Hart, the man at the wheel, a pencil sketch of the creature, of which we give an engraving. The sketch is accompanied with a further description, in which the writer says: ‘This is a correct sketch of the sea-serpent seen by me while on board the ship Sacramento, on her passage from New York to Melbourne, I being at the wheel at the time. It had the body of a very large snake; its length appeared to me to be about fifty feet or sixty feet. Its head was like an alligator’s, with a pair of flippers about ten feet from its head. The colour was of a reddish brown. At the time seen it was lying perfectly still, with its head raised about three feet above the surface of the sea, and as it got thirty or forty feet astern, it dropped its head.’”
I confess that I do not attach much weight to this last example, from the suspicious resemblance which the illustration given in the Sketcher bears to an alligator, suggesting that possibly such a creature may have been blown by winds or carried by currents to the position where it was seen. It is true that Mr. Gosse quotes the size of the largest alligator on record as only seventeen feet and a half, whereas the estimated length of the supposed sea-serpent in this instance was from forty to sixty. But against that may be argued the difficulty of estimating lengths or heights when you have but a short inspection, and no object immediately near with which to institute a comparison[264]; while I am by no means certain that Mr. Gosse’s maximum is correct. Dr. Dennys, of Singapore, has assured me that some years back an alligator, approaching thirty feet in length, haunted for some days the small tidal creek which runs through, and for some miles above, that town; while I very well remember Mr. Gregory, the Surveyor-General of Queensland, informing me that in the rivers in the north of that colony there were alligators equalling in length a whale-boat, say twenty-eight feet.
Fig. 72.—Sea-Serpent seen from the S.S. “City of Baltimore,” in the Gulf of Aden,
Jan. 28, 1879. (From the “Graphic” of April 19, 1879.)
The Graphic of April 19th, 1879, contains a drawing of “a marine monster seen from S.S. City of Baltimore, in the Gulf of Aden, January 28th.” The descriptive letter-press is as follows:—
“The following is an abstract of the account given by our correspondent, Major H. W. I. Senior, of the Bengal Staff Corps, to whom we are indebted for the sketch from which our engraving is taken: ‘On the 28th January 1879, at about 10 A.M., I was on the poop deck of the steamship City of Baltimore, in latitude 12° 28′ N., longitude 43° 52′ E. I observed a long black object a-beam of the ship’s stern on the starboard side, at a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, darting rapidly out of the water and splashing in again with a noise distinctly audible, and advancing nearer and nearer at a rapid pace. In a minute it had advanced to within half-a-mile, and was distinctly recognisable as the “veritable sea-serpent.” I shouted out “Sea-serpent! sea-serpent! Call the captain!” Dr. C. Hall, the ship’s surgeon, who was reading on deck, jumped up in time to see the monster, as did also Miss Greenfield, one of the passengers on board. By this time it was only about five hundred yards off, and a little in the rear, owing to the vessel then steaming at the rate of about ten knots an hour in a westerly direction. On approaching the wake of the ship, the serpent turned its course a little way, and was soon lost to view in the blaze of sunlight reflected on the waves of the sea. So rapid were its movements, that when it approached the ship’s wake, I seized a telescope, but could not catch a view, as it darted rapidly out of the field of the glass before I could see it. I was thus prevented from ascertaining whether it had scales or not; but the best view of the monster obtainable, when it was about three cables’ length, that is, about five hundred yards, distant, seemed to show that it was without scales. I cannot, however, speak with certainty. The head and neck, about two feet in diameter, rose out of the water to a height of about twenty or thirty feet, and the monster opened its jaws wide as it rose, and closed them again as it lowered its head and darted forward for a dive, reappearing almost immediately some hundred yards ahead. The body was not visible at all, and must have been some depth under water, as the disturbance on the surface was too slight to attract notice, although occasionally a splash was seen at some distance behind the head. The shape of the head was not unlike pictures of the dragon I have often seen, with a bull-dog appearance of the forehead and eye-brow. When the monster had drawn its head sufficiently out of the water, it let itself drop, as it were, like a huge log of wood, prior to darting forward under the water.’”
Major Senior’s statement is countersigned by the two persons whom he mentions as co-witnesses.