Part 32

Nobody can help laughing when he sees this figure, representing something very much like a black buoy, with white streaks and spots, and glittering in the sun, having a long rope attached to it! It is, however, pretty well done for one who cannot draw. As in so many other instances the figures and the text complete each other. The animal appears here nearly in the same position as it did in the Harbour of Gloucester, in 1817. The same astonishing lateral flexibility! “It lay down, in turning, in the form of a staple or horse-shoe” we have learned on that occasion, and “in doing so it nearly touched its head with its tail”, “the tail and the head then appeared only to be a few yards one from another”, once “it lay down in the form of an S”, &c. Though the Doctor does not describe this position, his figures tell it us. As the second ball apparently startled it, it changed its position, straightened itself out, disappeared, and came up after ten minutes, about forty yards further off. It behaved in the same way in the Harbour of Gloucester. The length may again be somewhat exaggerated, though I do not think such to be the case. The white streaks and spots on the head may have been the shining reflexion of day or sunlight, the head being thoroughly wet, as the animal raised and dropped it at intervals, which made the water run down every time, but it is also very possible that the individual was really spotted on its head.

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=131=.--1857, December 12.--(The _Times_ of February 5, 1858; the _Zoologist_ for 1858, p. 5989.).

“I beg to enclose you a copy of an extract from the meteorological journal kept by me on board the ship _Castilian_, on a voyage from Bombay to Liverpool. I have sent the original to the Board of Trade, for whom the observations have been made during my last voyage. I am glad to confirm a statement made by the commander of Her Majesty’s ship _Daedalus_, some years ago, as to the existence of such an animal as that described by him.--G. H. Harrington; 14 and 14¹⁄₂, South Castle Street, Liverpool, February 2, 1858.--

“Copy of an Extract from the Board of Trade Meteorological Journal, kept by Captain Harrington, of the ship _Castilian_, from Bombay to Liverpool.”

“Ship _Castilian_, December 12, 1857, north-east end of St. Helena, bearing north-west, distance 10 miles.”

“At 6.30 p. m., strong breezes and cloudy, ship sailing about twelve miles per hour. While myself and officers were standing on the lee-side of the poop, looking towards the island, we were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal, which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the ship, when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute, and then made its appearance in the same manner again, showing us distinctly its neck and head about ten or twelve feet out of the water. Its head was shaped like a long nun-buoy, and I suppose the diameter to have been seven or eight feet in the largest part, with a kind of scroll, or tuft of loose skin, encircling it about two feet from the top; the water was discoloured for several hundred feet from its head, so much so that, on its first appearance, my impression was that the ship was in broken water, produced, as I supposed, by some vulcanic agency since the last time I passed the island; but the second appearance completely dispelled those fears, and assured us that it was a monster of extraordinary length, which appeared to be moving slowly towards the land. The ship was going too fast to enable us to reach the mast-head in time to form a correct estimate of its extreme length, but from what we saw from the deck we conclude that it must have been over two hundred feet long. The boatswain and several of the crew who observed it from the top-gallant forecastle, state that it was more than double the length of the ship, in which case it must have been five hundred 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. Having a press of canvas on the ship at the time, I was unable to round to without risk, and therefore was precluded from getting another sight of this leviathan of the deep.”

“George Henry Harrington, Commander.”

“William Davies, Chief Officer.”

“Edward Wheeler, Second Officer.”

The animal seen by Captain HARRINGTON was no doubt a sea-serpent, of which at first sight, only the head and a small portion of the neck were exposed to the eyes of the spectators. Afterwards, when the animal moved slowly towards the land, its whole length must have been visible, and estimated at about two hundred feet. The head was seen in such a direction that it resembled a “nun-buoy”. The diameter of the head may have been six feet. At a moment that the animal contracted its neck, an annular fold was formed round the neck just behind the head, as may be seen in our sea-lions, and which led Captain HARRINGTON to write “with a kind of scroll, or tuft of loose skin, encircling it about two feet from the top” of the head, i. e. somewhat behind the occiput. The discolouring of the water has of course nothing at all to do with the animal or its appearance.

Some days afterwards (_Times_ of February 13, 1858; _Zoologist_ for 1858, p. 5990) this document was followed by an account of FREDERIC SMITH, who stated that on December 28th., 1848, commanding the ship PEKIN, they saw an extraordinary creature, which, when harpooned, and hoisted on board, proved to be a piece of a gigantic sea-weed, twenty feet long. “So like a huge living monster did this appear, that, had circumstances prevented my sending a boat to it, I should certainly have believed I had seen the great sea-snake.” Captain SMITH firmly believes that the animals of the _Daedalus_ and of the _Castilian_ were pieces of the same weed.

Hereupon, “An officer of H. M. S. _Daedalus_” wrote an apology in the _Times_ of 16th. February, which we have inserted in n^o. 118. This letter was immediately followed in the same paper of the same date by the two following:

“Sir.--A letter appears in the _Times_ of to-day signed “Frederic Smith” on the subject of the sea-serpent.

“The writer has this advantage over others who have reported the occasional appearance of what he fairly calls “this queer fish”--that he has handled as well as seen it. Still there would seem to be a considerable variety in the genus, for, while the specimen obtained by the _Pekin_ in 1848 was 4 inches in diameter and 20 feet in length, that seen from the _Circassian_ is described, if I remember rightly, in your paper of 4th. inst. as 10 feet or 11 feet in diameter, and upwards of 200 feet in length.”

“In this latter instance it was seen only, and but a passing sight; and testimony of this kind is just that which naturalists may be slow to receive as evidence of any new fact; nevertheless the practised vision of the _Circassian’s_ commander should go for something, and as it would appear from the following letter that Captain Harrington is to be in town next week and ready to answer any questions, it might be worth the while of some of our philosophers to examine a little into the question of what Capt. Harrington and his officers really did see.”

“I have the honour to be, Sir, your most obedient servant

“Blackheath, February 12.” “W. A. B. Hamilton.”

For _Circassian_ of course read _Castilian_.

“14, South Castle Street, Liverpool, February 8.

“Dear Sir,--I am in receipt of your favour of the 6th. of February, and should be glad if my communication to the _Times_ might be instrumental in dispelling many doubts respecting the existence of such a monster as that described by myself and my officers.”

“I communicated it to Capt. Schomberg, R. N., of this place, in the course of conversation, who advised me by all means to send a copy of it to the _Times_.”

“Notwithstanding the assertions of men of science to the contrary I am now sure that such animals exist. I could no more be deceived than (as a seaman) I could mistake a porpoise for a whale. If it had been at a great distance it would have been different, but it was not above 20 yards from the ship.”

“I am of opinion that this animal makes its appearance at the surface at long intervals only. I am informed by Messrs. Lamport and Holt, shipowners of this place, that one of their captains reported a similar thing about two years ago, off the Island of St. Helena, but they took no further notice of it, supposing, as your friend seems to do, that he might have been deceived.”

“Twenty people, including Mrs. Harrington and my two officers, saw it as distinctly as I now see the gas light which I am writing by. I am well known in London, having commanded a steam transport during the Russian war belonging to the North of Europe Steam Navigation Company.”

“Captain Claxton, R. N., of the Priory, Battersea, is a personal friend of mine. I am also well known to Sir Colin Campbell, who is now in the East. My present ship is 1604 tons new measurement, and a new ship, of which I own a good part myself. There are, therefore, many reasons (in addition to my holding a first-class certificate in the mercantile marine) to hinder me from propagating a report which can do me no good, and, if untrue, do injury to science in the room of assisting it to elicit the truth in so important a matter as the discovery of the inhabitants of the deep.”

“I shall be in town for three or four days in the early part of next week. A letter addressed to me at the Jerusalem Coffee-House will meet with attention, and, if my limited time permit, I should be glad to have an interview with yourself, or any of your friends who might wish to have a verbal explanation in this matter.”

“I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient servant

“G. H. Harrington.”

“To Rear-Admiral W. A. B. Hamilton”

This letter was again answered in a very witty way in the _Times_ of Febr. 23, 1858; this however, will be inserted in our chapter on Explanations.

In the _Zoologist_ for 1858, p. 6015, Mr. ALFRED CHARLES SMITH, an old acquaintance of ours (p. 299) now wrote the following remark:

“To one who firmly believes in the existence of some huge marine monster of the serpent-form, such as the Northmen love to descant upon (and I am not ashamed to own to such credulity, as I have already declared in my Notes on Norway (Zool. 3229)), the clear and minute account of Capt. Harrington, on the sea-monster which he and twenty people saw on the 12th of December last, off the coast of St. Helena, was exceedingly interesting; nor did the subsequent letter of Mr. F. Smith tend to shake my belief in the accuracy of Capt. Harrington’s statement, the particulars of the two alleged appearances being so very different. I am not, however, about to argue the point, the premises before us being far too unsatisfactory and vague to argue from. I merely write to express my hope that as you have admitted the first correspondence on the subject to the pages of the _Zoologist_, you will give both parties fair play, and insert the remaining letters, which appeared in the _Times_ of February 16th and 23 respectively, copies of which I enclose, so that naturalists may have an opportunity of studying the case in all its bearings, before they form their conclusions.--Alfred Charles Smith; Yatesbury Rectory, Calne, March 5, 1858.”

Of course, it was but natural that also foreign newspapers should take great delight in this polemic. So we find in the _Revue Britannique_, of 1858, n^o 2, Febr. p. 496, an article full of erroneous statements:

“Amongst the grave questions of the day, we did not think of meeting again, in the newspapers, with the famous sea-serpent, the problematic existence of which seemed to be banished to the world of apocryphal, or at least antediluvian animals; but no! three new eye-witnesses declare to have seen it, and very well too. Now a Captain Smith, of Newcastle, writes that he is convinced that these witnesses have been illuded, as he himself was on the 28th. of December, 1848, when after believing to see through his telescope an extraordinary monster, and after lowering the great net of the ship, he drew in only a gigantic sea-weed of twenty feet in length, which really had the form, attributed to the fantastic reptile. This indirect refutation, however, does not discourage the Rear-Admiral Harrington (imagine, a Rear-Admiral!) who in a second article in the _Times_, repeats that he is sure of the fact, that he has seen the sea-serpent twenty fathoms from his ship, that he has recognized it, as if he would have recognized a whale on the side of a porpoise, that his wife, who was on board, has seen it with him, as had his two officers, in short, that he will come to London, as soon as he has terminated his business at Liverpool, and will furnish all evidences demanded by science and scepticism. If he had only brought home the animal’s tail or one of its fins!”

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=132=.--1858, January 26.--The _Illustrated London News_ of March 20, 1858, mentions:

“The following is a report made by Captain Suckling, of the ship _Carnatic_, of London, of a Sea Serpent seen by him between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena:--“On the 26th of January, in latitude 19°10′ S., long 10°6′ W., about 5 minutes after noon, my attention was called by Captain Shuttleworth, a passenger on board the _Carnatic_ to a large spar sticking out of the water one end some thirty feet above the level of the sea. It appeared to me to be the lower mast of some wrecked vessel, and having the glass in my hand, with which I had been looking at an American vessel in sight, I examined it narrowly. It seemed to be passing very rapidly to the eastward, having altered its bearings several points in the course of a few minutes, when it suddenly disappeared, and came up shortly afterwards astern of the ship. It was seen by all those on deck at the time, and it is their opinion, as well as my own, that it was an enormous sea-serpent. The American ship _A. B. Thompson_ from Bombay to London, was in company at the time--wind light and variable, with clear weather”.--We have not space for the Sketch obligingly sent with this account”.

The comparison with a spar, an unwrought spar, or spruce, a log of timber, etc., has been made more than once, as the reader will remember, and when we compare the figures, drawn by an officer of H. M. S. _Plumper_ (fig. 31), and by Major SENIOR (fig. 46), we can easily imagine, that in this position the animal must have illuded the observers more than once. It is a pity that the sketch has not been published. How many interesting drawings have in this way got into the paper-basket!

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In 1860 Mr. P. H. GOSSE published his _Romance of Natural History_, First Series. The last chapter of this volume is entitled “the Great Unknown” and is entirely devoted to the Great Sea-Serpent. His manner of teaching Natural History to his readers was, as the able writer says himself, a poetical one. “In my many years’ wandering through the wide field of Natural History, I have always felt towards it something of a poet’s heart, though destitute of a poet’s genius”. I can recommend every zoologist and botanist to read his work in his leasure hours; I have read it with great interest and pleasure, increasing my knowledge, wandering with the writer from north to south and from east to west, from one pole to the other and from continents to the greatest depths of the ocean!

The sea-serpent’s question was such a favourite one of this romantic naturalist, that in his preface he wrote the following about it:

“If I may venture to point out one subject on which I have bestowed more than usual pains, and which I myself regard with more than common interest, it is that of the last chapter in this volume. An amount of evidence is adduced for the existence of the sub-mythic monster popularly known as “the sea-serpent”, such as has never been brought together before, and such as ought almost to set doubt at rest. But the cloudy uncertainty which has invested the very being of this creature; its home on the lone ocean; the fitful way in which it is seen and lost in its vast solitudes; its dimensions, vaguely gigantic; its dragon-like form; and the possibility of its association with beings considered to be lost in an obsolete antiquity;--all these are attributes which render it peculiarly precious to a romantic naturalist. I hope the statisticians will forgive me if they cannot see it with my spectacles.”

His chapter on the sea-serpent will also be read with great interest. But there are several facts which he seems not to have been able to explain. In describing the animal, seen near Cape Ann, 1817, he writes: “_no appearance of mane was seen by any_”, without giving any explanation; he has evidently underlined these words to draw the readers’ attention to this evidence, which is so quite contradictory to others, mentioned before and afterwards. On the same page (p. 284) when repeating the expression of one of the eye-witnesses “the mode of progression was like that of a caterpillar”, Mr. Gosse inserts his opinion in the following terms: “probably a looping or geometric caterpillar”. Now my readers will be at one with me, that the motion of the geometric caterpillar is the last with which that of the sea-serpent can be compared! The rapid motion of a common caterpillar of some butterfly, when tickled on its back part, will give the best idea.

The writer further tries to throw discredit on reports of Americans. He says (p. 287):

“Though the position and character of some of these witnesses add weight to their testimony, and seem to preclude the possibility of their being either deceived or deceivers, on a matter which depended on the use of their eyes, yet, owing to a habit prevalent in the United States, of supposing that there is somewhat of wit in gross exaggerations, or hoaxing inventions, we do naturally look with a lurking suspicion on American statements, when they describe unusual or disputed phenomena.”

I, however, am of the contrary opinion, and may turn his words in the following way: Though we generally and naturally look with a lurking suspicion on American statements, when they describe unusual or disputed phenomena, owing to a habit prevalent in the United States, of supposing that there is somewhat of wit in gross exaggerations, or hoaxing inventions, we are bound to admit all that is stated by such persons of unimpeachable character as Col. PERKINS and others, whose testimonies we have inserted in our papers. They evidently communicated what they saw, without any exaggeration and without any tendency to crack a joke or to hoax.

Again p. 318 of his work, after having treated of only a few of the different reports, that had come in up to his days (1860) Mr. GOSSE goes on in the following terms:

“A large mass of evidence has been accumulated; and I now set myself to examine it. In so doing, I shall eliminate from the inquiry all the testimony of Norwegian eye-witnesses, that obtained in Massachusetts in 1817, and various statements made by French and American captains since. Confining myself to English witnesses of known character and position, most of them being officers under the Crown, I have adduced the following testimonies.”

Here again I must point out that there is not a single reason to exclude all testimonies not coming from British navigators. With such reasoning Mr. GOSSE makes himself ridiculous in the eyes of all reasonable persons of his own and of other nations! That it is wrong to exclude reports, because they are of Americans or Norwegians, the reader himself will be ready to admit, I think, after having read the different reports mentioned in this volume.

“The following testimonies” now, alluded to by Mr. GOSSE, are:

“1. That of five British officers, who saw the animal at Halifax, N. S., in 1833” (n^o. 97).

“2. That of Captain M’Quhae and his officers, who saw it from the _Daedalus_ in 1848,” (n^o. 118).

“3. That of Captain Beechy, who saw something similar from the _Blossom_” (n^o. 104).

“4. That of Mr. Morries Stirling, who saw it in a Norwegian fjord” (n^o. 113).

“5. That of Mr. Davidson, who saw it from the _Royal Saxon_, in 1829” (n^o. 93).

“6. That of Captain Steele and others, who saw it from the _Barham_, in 1852.” (See our Chapter on Would-Be Sea-Serpents, 1852, August 28).

“7. That of Captain Harrington and his officers, who saw it from the _Castilian_, 1857” (n^o. 131).

To our great astonishment Mr. Gosse also alludes to n^o. 6: That of Captain STEELE, who saw it from the _Barham_, in 1852. Some pages before, Mr. Gosse himself throws great doubt on this report, believing that the animal seen by Captain STEELE and his officers was a scabbard-fish, (the reader, I hope, will take the trouble to look up the report of 1852, August 28, in my Chapter on Would-Be Sea-Serpents, to read there again Mr. GOSSE’S own opinion of this report), and now he uses this report amongst others to examine to which of the recognized classes of created beings this rover of the ocean can be referred!

Now Mr. GOSSE passes to this inquiry: first, he asks, is it an animal at all? And he comes to the conclusions that this must be so, for else the being could not move with that astonishing rapidity. Further he examines the sea-weed hypothesis, the seal-hypothesis, &c., and winds up with: “my own confident persuasion, that there exists some oceanic animal of immense proportions, which has not yet been received into the category of scientific zoology; and my strong opinion, that it possesses close affinities with the fossil _Enaliosauria_ of the lias.”

All the above-mentioned views will be considered in Chapter V.

To our great surprise we see that Mr. NEWMAN, the editor of the _Zoologist_, who ever was a warm defender of the sea-serpent, and like Mr. GOSSE firmly believed that there are still living _Plesiosauri_, is of another opinion in 1860. In this year, a very large riband fish was captured on the Bermuda Isles. Three descriptions of this fish appeared in the _Zoologist_ (p. 6934, p. 6986, p. 6989), the last by Mr. NEWMAN himself, who, thinking that it was a new species, gave it the name of _Regalecus Jonesii_. The second description was by Mr. JONES, the naturalist on the Bermudas, at whose deposal the fish was placed by Mr. TRIMINGHAM, the captor. Mr. JONES, after his description, points out some striking peculiarities, which this riband-fish and the sea-serpent seen by captain M’QUHAE, had in common, and concludes that a part of the reports of the great sea-serpent must have been caused by the appearance of riband fishes. Now, Mr. NEWMAN, after the description of his new species _Regalecus Jonesii_, as I have already said, seems to waver in his opinion, for he adds:

“In reference to the last question mooted by Mr. JONES, the similarity of _Regalecus Jonesii_ to Capt. M’QUHAE’S sea-serpent, I do not consider myself competent to express an opinion. I am quite willing for the present to allow every sea-serpent to hold on its own course; hereafter a better opportunity may be afforded on comparing and arranging the conflicting evidence already published in the “Zoologist.”

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=133=, =134=.--1861? August.--(_Zoologist_, 1862, p. 7850).--