Pleasant Ways in Science

by Richard A. Proctor

The sea-weed theory of the sea-serpent was broached in February, 1849, and supported by a narrative not unlike the last. When the British ship Brazilian was becalmed almost exactly in the spot where M’Quhæ had seen his monster, Mr. Herriman, the commander, perceived something right abeam, about half a mile to the westward, “stretched along the water to the length of about 25 or 30 feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship with a steady, sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet above the waters, had something resembling a mane, running down to the floating portion, and within about 6 feet of the tail it forked out into a sort of double fin.” Mr. Herriman, his first mate, Mr. Long, and several of the passengers, after surveying the object for some time, came to the unanimous conclusion that it must be the sea-serpent seen by Captain M’Quhæ. “As the Brazilian was making no headway, Mr. Herriman, determining to bring all doubts to an issue, had a boat lowered down, and taking two hands on board, together with Mr. Boyd, of Peterhead, near Aberdeen, one of the passengers, who acted as steersman under the direction of the captain, they approached the monster, Captain Herriman standing on the bow of the boat, armed with a harpoon to commence the onslaught. The combat, however, was not attended with the danger which those on board apprehended; for on coming close to the object it was found to be nothing more 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.”

A statement was published by Captain Harrington in the Times of February, 1858, to the effect that from his ship Castilian, then distant ten miles from the north-east end of St. Helena, he and his officers had seen a huge marine animal within 20 yards of the ship; that it disappeared for about half a minute, and then made its appearance in the same manner again, showing distinctly its neck and head about 10 or 12 feet out of the water. “Its head was shaped like a long nun-buoy,” proceeds Captain Harrington, “and I suppose the diameter to have been 7 or 8 feet in the largest part, with a kind of scroll, or tuft, of loose skin encircling it about 2 feet from the top; the water was discoloured for several hundred feet from its head.... From what we saw from the deck, we conclude that it must have been over 200 feet long. The boatswain and several of the crew who observed it from the top-gallant forecastle,[26] (query, cross-trees?) state that it was more than double the length of the ship, in which case it must have been 500 feet. Be that as it may, I am convinced that it belonged to the serpent tribe; it was of a dark colour about the head, and was covered with several white spots.”

This immediately called out a statement from Captain F. Smith, of the ship Pekin, that on December 28, not far from the place where the Dædalus had encountered the supposed sea-serpent, he had seen, at a distance of about half a mile, a creature which was declared by all hands to be the great sea-serpent, but proved eventually to be a piece of gigantic sea-weed. “I have no doubt,” he says, that the great sea-serpent seen from the Dædalus “was a piece of the same weed.”

It will have been noticed that the sea-weed sea-serpents, seen by Captain F. Smith and by Captain Herriman, were both at a distance of half a mile, at which distance one can readily understand that a piece of sea-weed might be mistaken for a living creature. This is rather different from the case of the Dædalus sea-serpent, which passed so near that had it been a man of the captain’s acquaintance he could have recognized that man’s features with the naked eye. The case, too, of Captain Harrington’s sea-serpent, seen within 20 yards of the Castilian, can hardly be compared to those cases in which sea-weed, more than 800 yards from the ship, was mistaken for a living animal. An officer of the Dædalus thus disposed of Captain Smith’s imputation:—“The object seen from the ship was beyond all question a living animal, moving rapidly through the water against a cross sea, and within five points of a fresh breeze, with such velocity that the water was surging against its chest as it passed along at a rate probably of ten miles per hour. Captain M’Quhæ’s first impulse was to tack in pursuit, but he reflected that we could neither lay up for it nor overhaul it in speed. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to observe it as accurately as we could with our glasses as it came up under our lee quarter and passed away to windward, being at its nearest position not more than 200 yards from us; the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour, and the form, all being most distinctly visible to us.... My impression was that 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.”

But all the evidence heretofore obtained respecting the sea-serpent, although regarded by many naturalists, Gosse, Newman, Wilson, and others, as demonstrating the existence of some as yet unclassified monster of the deep, seems altogether indecisive by comparison with that which has recently been given by the captain, mates, and crew of the ship Pauline. In this case, assuredly, we have not to deal with a mass of sea-weed, the floating trunk of a tree, a sea-elephant hastening to his home amid the icebergs, or with any of the other more or less ingenious explanations of observations previously made. We have either the case of an actual living animal, monstrous, fierce, and carnivorous, or else the five men who deposed on oath to the stated facts devised the story between them, and wilfully perjured themselves for no conceivable purpose—that, too, not as men have been known to perjure themselves under the belief that none could know of their infamy, but with the certainty on the part of each that four others (any one of whom might one day shame him and the rest by confessing) knew the real facts of the case.

The story of the Pauline sea-serpent ran simply as follows, as attested at the Liverpool police-court:—“We, the undersigned, captain, officers, and crew of the bark Pauline, of London, do solemnly and sincerely declare, that on July 8, 1875, in latitude 5° 13´ S., longitude 35° W., we observed three large sperm whales, and one of them was gripped round the body with two turns of what appeared to be a huge serpent. The head and tail appeared to have a length beyond the coils of about 30 feet, and its girth 8 or 9 feet. The serpent whirled its victim round and round for about fifteen minutes, and then suddenly dragged the whale to the bottom, head first.—George Drevat, master; Horatio Thompson, chief mate; John H. Landells, second mate; William Lewarn, steward; Owen Baker, A.B. Again on the 13th July a similar serpent was seen about 200 yards off, shooting itself along the surface, head and neck being out of the water several feet. This was seen only by the captain and an ordinary seaman.—George Drevat. A few moments afterwards it was seen elevated some 60 feet perpendicularly in the air by the chief officer and two seamen, whose signatures are affixed.—Horatio Thompson, Owen Baker, William Lewarn.”

The usual length of the cachalot or sperm whale is about 70 feet, and its girth about 50 feet. If we assign to the unfortunate whale which was captured on this occasion, a length of only 50 feet, and a girth of only 35 feet, we should still have for the entire length of the supposed serpent about 100 feet. This can hardly exceed the truth, since the three whales are called large sperm whales. With a length of 100 feet and a girth of about 9 feet, however, a serpent would have no chance in an attempt to capture a sperm whale 50 feet long and 35 feet in girth, for the simple reason that the whale would be a good deal heavier than its opponent. In a contest in open sea, where one animal seeks to capture another bodily, weight is all-important. We can hardly suppose the whale could be so compassed by the coils of his enemy as to be rendered powerless; in fact, the contest lasted fifteen minutes, during the whole of which time the so-called serpent was whirling its victim round, though more massive than itself, through the water. On the whole, it seems reasonable to conclude—in fact, the opinion is almost forced upon us—that besides the serpentine portion of its bulk, which was revealed to view, the creature, thus whirling round a large sperm whale, had a massive concealed body, provided with propelling paddles of enormous power. These were at work all the time the struggle went on, enabling the creature to whirl round its enemy easily, whereas a serpentine form, with two-thirds of its length, at least, coiled close round another body, would have had no propulsive power left, or very little, in the remaining 30 feet of its length, including both the head and tail ends beyond the coils. Such a creature as an enaliosaurus could no doubt have done what a serpent of twice the supposed length would have attempted in vain—viz., dragged down into the depths of the sea the mighty bulk of a cachalot whale.

When all the evidence is carefully weighed, we appear led to the conclusion that at least one large marine animal exists which has not as yet been classified among the known species of the present era. It would appear that this animal has certainly a serpentine neck, and a head small compared with its body, but large compared with the diameter of the neck. It is probably an air-breather and warm-blooded, and certainly carnivorous. Its propulsive power is great and apparently independent of undulations of its body, wherefore it presumably has powerful concealed paddles. All these circumstances correspond with the belief that it is a modern representative of the long-neck plesiosaurians of the great secondary or mesozoic era, a member of that strange family of animals whose figure has been compared to that which would be formed by drawing a serpent through the body of a sea-turtle.

Against this view sundry objections have been raised, which must now be briefly considered.

In the first place, Professor Owen pointed out that the sea-saurians of the secondary period have been replaced in the tertiary and present seas by the whales and allied races. No whales are found in the secondary strata, no saurians in the tertiary. “It seems to me less probable,” he says, “that no part of the carcase of such reptiles should have ever been discovered in a recent unfossilized 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.”