Part 20

At this stage a very eminent naturalist entered the field—Professor Owen. He dwelt first on a certain characteristic of Captain M’Quhæ’s letter which no student of science could fail to notice—the definite statement that the creature _was_ so and so, where a scientific observer would simply have said that the creature presented such and such characteristics. “No sooner was the captain’s attention called to the object,” says Professor Owen, “than ‘it was discovered to be an enormous serpent,’” though in reality the true nature of the creature could not be determined even from the observations made during the whole time that it remained visible. Taking, however, “the more certain characters,” the “head with a convex, moderately capacious cranium, short, obtuse muzzle, gape not extending further than to beneath the eye, which (the eye) is rather small, round, filling closely the palpebral aperture” (that is, the eyelids fit closely[25]); “colour and surface as stated; nostrils indicated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle. All these,” proceeds Owen, “are the characters of the head of a warm-blooded mammal, none of them those of a cold-blooded reptile or fish. Body long, dark brown, not undulating, without dorsal or other apparent fins, ‘but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about its back.’” He infers that the creature had hair, showing only where longest on the back, and therefore that the animal was not a mammal of the whale species but rather a great seal. He then shows that the sea-elephant, or _Phoca proboscidea_, which attains the length of from 20 to 30 feet, was the most probable member of the seal family to be found about 300 miles from the western shore of the southern end of Africa, in latitude 24° 44´. Such a creature, accidentally carried from its natural domain by a floating iceberg, would have (after its iceberg had melted) to urge its way steadily southwards, as the supposed sea-serpent was doing; and probably the creature approached the _Dædalus_ to scan her “capabilities as a resting-place, as it paddled its long, stiff body past the ship.” “In so doing it would raise a head of the form and colour described and delineated by Captain M’Quhæ”—its head only, be it remarked, corresponding with the captain’s description. The neck also would be of the right diameter. The thick neck, passing into an inflexible trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper part of which would give rise to the idea “explained by the similes above cited” (of a mane or bunch of sea-weed), the paddles would be out of sight; and the long eddy and wake created by the propelling action of the tail would account for the idea of a long serpentine body, at least for this idea occurring to one “looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent in his mind’s eye.” “It is very probable that not one on board the _Dædalus_ ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean.” The excitement produced by the strange spectacle, and the recollection of “old Pontoppidan’s sea-serpent with the mane,” would suffice, Professor Owen considered, to account for the metamorphosis of a sea-elephant into a maned sea-serpent.

This was not the whole of Professor Owen’s argument; but it may be well to pause here, to consider the corrections immediately made by Captain M’Quhæ; it may be noticed, first, that Professor Owen’s argument seems sufficiently to dispose of the belief that the creature really was a sea-serpent, or any cold-blooded reptile. And this view of the matter has been confirmed by later observations. But few, I imagine, can readily accept the belief that Captain M’Quhæ and his officers had mistaken a sea-elephant for a creature such as they describe and picture. To begin with, although it might be probable enough that no one on board the _Dædalus_ had ever seen a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean—a sight which Professor Owen himself had certainly never seen—yet we can hardly suppose they would not have known a sea-elephant under such circumstances. Even if they had never seen a sea-elephant at all, they would surely know what such an animal is like. No one could mistake a sea-elephant for any other living creature, even though his acquaintance with the animal were limited to museum specimens or pictures in books. The supposition that the entire animal, that is, its entire length, should be mistaken for 30 or 40 feet of the length of a serpentine neck, seems, in my judgment, as startling as the ingenious theory thrown out by some naturalists when they first heard of the giraffe—to the effect that some one of lively imagination had mistaken the entire body of a short-horned antelope for the neck of a much larger animal!

Captain M’Quhæ immediately replied:—“I assert that neither was it a common seal nor a sea-elephant; its great length and its totally different physiognomy precluding the possibility of its being a _Phoca_ of any species. The head was flat, and not a capacious vaulted cranium; nor had it a stiff, inflexible trunk—a conclusion to which Professor Owen has jumped, most certainly not justified by my simple statement, that ‘no portion of the 60 feet seen by us was used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation.’” He explained that the calculation of the creature’s length was made before, not after, the idea had been entertained that the animal was a serpent, and that he and his officers were “too well accustomed to judge of lengths and breadths of objects in the sea to mistake a real substance and an actual living body, coolly and dispassionately contemplated, at so short a distance too, for the ‘eddy caused by the action of the deeply immersed fins and tail of a rapidly moving, gigantic seal raising its head above the water,’ as Professor Owen imagines, in quest of its lost iceberg.” He next disposed of Owen’s assertion that the idea of clothing the serpent with a mane had been suggested by old Pontoppidan’s story, simply because he had never seen Pontoppidan’s account or heard of Pontoppidan’s sea-serpent, until he had told his own tale in London. Finally, he added, “I deny the existence of excitement, or the possibility of optical illusion. I adhere to the statement as to form, colour, and dimensions, contained in my report to the Admiralty.”

A narrative which appeared in the _Times_ early in 1849 must be referred to in this place, as not being readily explicable by Professor Owen’s hypothesis. It was written by Mr. R. Davidson, superintending surgeon, Najpore Subsidiary Force Kamptee, and was to the following effect (I abridge it considerably):—When at a considerable distance south-west of the Cape of Good Hope, Mr. Davidson, Captain Petrie, of the _Royal Saxon_, a steerage passenger, and the man at the wheel, saw “an animal of which no more correct description could be given than that by Captain M’Quhæ. It passed within 35 yards of the ship, without altering its course in the least; but as it came right abreast of us it slowly turned its head towards us.” About one-third of the upper part of its body was above water, “in nearly its whole length; and we could see the water curling up on its breast as it moved along, but by what means it moved we could not perceive.” They _saw this creature in its whole length_ with the exception of a small portion of the tail which was under water; and by comparing its length with that of the _Royal Saxon_, 600 feet, when exactly alongside in passing, they calculated it to be in length as well as in other dimensions greater than the animal described by Captain M’Quhæ.

In the year 1852 two statements were made, one by Captain Steele, 9th Lancers, the other by one of the officers of the ship _Barham_ (India merchantman), to the effect that an animal of a serpentine appearance had been seen about 500 yards from that ship (in longitude 40° E. and 37° 16´ S., that is, east of the south-eastern corner of Africa). “We saw him,” said the former, “about 16 or 20 feet out of the water, and he _spouted_ a long way from his head”—that is, I suppose, he spouted to some distance, not, as the words really imply, at a part of his neck far removed from the head. “Down his back he had a crest like a cock’s comb, and was going very slowly through the water, but left a wake of about 50 or 60 feet, as if dragging a long body after him. The captain put the ship off her course to run down to him, but as we approached him he went down. His colour was green with light spots. He was seen by every one on board.” The other witness gives a similar account, adding that the creature kept moving his head up and down, and was surrounded by hundreds of birds. “We at first thought it was a dead whale.... When we were within 100 yards he slowly sank into the depths of the sea; while we were at dinner he was seen again.” Mr. Alfred Newton, the well-known naturalist, guarantees his personal acquaintance with one of the recipients of the letters just quoted from. But such a guarantee is, of course, no sufficient guarantee of the authenticity of the narrative. Even if the narrative be accepted, the case seems a very doubtful one. The birds form a suspicious element in the story. Why should birds cluster around a living sea creature? It seems to me probable that the sea-weed theory, presently to be noticed, gives the best explanation of this case. Possibly some great aggregation of sea-weed was there, in which were entangled divers objects desirable to birds and to fishes. These last may have dragged the mass under water when the ship approached, being perhaps more or less entangled in it—and it floated up again afterwards. The spouting may have been simply the play of water over the part mistaken for the head.

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.”

To this it has been replied that genera are now known to exist, as the _Chimæra_, the long-necked river tortoise, and the iguana, which are closely related to forms which existed in the secondary era, while no traces have been found of them in any of the intermediate or tertiary strata. The chimæra is a case precisely analogous to the supposed case of the enaliosaurus, for the chimæra is but rarely seen, like the supposed enaliosaurus, is found in the same and absent from the same fossiliferous strata. Agassiz is quoted in the _Zoologist_, page 2395, as saying that it would be in precise conformity with analogy that such an animal as the enaliosaurus should exist in the American seas, as he had found numerous instances in which the fossil forms of the Old World were represented by living types in the New. In close conformity with this opinion is a statement made by Captain the Hon. George Hope, that when in the British ship _Fly_, in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm and transparent, he saw at the bottom a large marine animal, with the head and general figure of an alligator, but the neck much longer, and with four large paddles instead of legs. Here, then, unless this officer was altogether deceived, which seems quite unlikely under the circumstances, was a veritable enaliosaurus, though of a far smaller species, probably, than the creature mistaken for a sea-serpent.

As for the absence of remains, Mr. Darwin has pointed out that the fossils we possess are but fragments accidentally preserved by favouring circumstances in an almost total wreck. We have many instances of existent creatures, even such as would have a far better chance of floating after death, and so getting stranded where their bones might be found, which have left no trace of their existence. A whale possessing two dorsal fins was said to have been seen by Smaltz, a Sicilian naturalist; but the statement was rejected, until a shoal of these whales were seen by two eminent French zoologists, MM. Quoy and Gaimard. No carcase, skeleton, or bone of this whale has ever been discovered. For seventeen hours a ship, in which Mr. Gosse was travelling to Jamaica, was surrounded by a species of whale never before noticed—30 feet long, black above and white beneath, with swimming paws white on the upper surface. Here, he says, was “a whale of large size, occurring in great numbers in the North Atlantic, which on no other occasion has fallen under scientific observation. The toothless whale of Havre, a species actually inhabiting the British Channel, is only known from a single specimen accidentally stranded on the French coast; and another whale, also British, is known only from a single specimen cast ashore on the Elgin roast, and there seen and described by the naturalist Sowerby.