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 [pg 188]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.”