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Sir, – If it is true that one of those who observed the marine monster from the Nestor is still here, it is very desirable that he should give some fuller account of what he saw. Only a sciolist will deny the possibility of such a beast, and Professor Owen himself has remarked that the only absolutely incredible part of the accounts of those who have seen it, is the statement of its vertical sinuosity, which is impossible to any of the serpent tribe.

The monster seen by the Nestor, however, was probably one of the Chelonidæ, “the father of all the turtles,” as he is fitly called by the natives of Sumatra, who fully believe in his existence, and to whom he occasionally appears. Indeed, Baumgarten, in his Malaysien, published at Amsterdam in 1829, describes the monster, and estimates its length and breadth at one hundred and twenty and thirty cubits respectively, measurements which agree very nearly with those given by Captain Webster. Baumgarten²⁶⁸ adds that it is a general belief in Sumatra (vol. ii. p. 321, Ed. 1820), that whosoever sees him will die within the year. “This,” he says naively enough, “I have not been able to prove.”

Mr. David Aitken, of Singapore, wrote to the Daily Times as follows: —

Dear Sir, – Like many others, I have been astonished at the dimensions given by you of the sea-serpent. They are certainly enormous, and they far surpass anything I have ever seen or heard of. The largest snake ever I authentically heard about was one which passed between the surveying brigs Krishna and Menx when under the command of Lieutenant Ward, of the Indian Navy, when surveying off the coast of Sumatra, about the years 1858 and 1859. This monster passed by the brigs one Sunday morning when they were moored somewhere opposite Malacca. Its length was variously estimated at from the length of the Krishna to one hundred feet. Sixty feet was the moderate length set down for its frame.

In or near the same place, another monster had been seen by a previous surveying party.

Mr. Stephen Cave, M.P. for Shoreham, in 1861, communicated to Mr. Gosse a short statement, which throws some light upon the food of the monster. It is in the form of an extract from his journal written during a voyage to the West Indies, in 1846, as follows: —

“Thursday, December 10, off Madeira, on board R.M.S. Thomas, made acquaintance with a Captain Christmas, of the Danish Navy, a proprietor in Santa Cruz, and holding some office about the Danish court. He told me he once saw a sea-serpent between Iceland and the Faroe islands. He was lying-to in a gale of wind, in a frigate of which he had the command, when an immense shoal of porpoises rushed by the ship as if pursued; and, lo and behold, a creature with a neck moving like that of a swan, about the thickness of a man’s waist, with a head like a horse, raised itself slowly and gracefully from the deep, and, seeing the ship, it immediately disappeared again, head foremost, like a duck diving. He only saw it for a few seconds. The part above the water seemed about eighteen feet in length. He is a singularly intelligent man, and by no means one to allow his imagination to run away with him.”

Witty journalists had a good time over the publication of the story of the serpent seen by Captain Drevar, with which I shall wind up my list of apparitions. As will be seen, however, the captain stuck manfully to his guns, and I, for one, am of the belief that he really saw the incident which he narrates. I have not met the captain himself, but I did, in Singapore, meet with many who had heard the whole story from his own lips, and whose impression was that he was a truthful man.

The Barque “Pauline” Sea-serpent

To the Editor of the Calcutta Englishman

Sir, – As I am not sure that my statement respecting the sea-serpent reached the Shipping Gazette in London, I enclose a copy that may be interesting to your numerous readers. I have been sent plenty of extracts from English papers, nearly all of them ridiculing my statement. I can laugh and joke on the subject as well as anyone, but I can’t see why, if people can’t fairly refute my statement, they should use falsehood to do so. The Daily Telegraph says, “The ribs of the ill-fated fish were distinctly heard cracking one after the other, with a report like that of a small cannon; its bellowings ceased, &c. To use the eloquent words of the principal spectator, it ‘struck us all aghast with terror.’” If the writer knew anything of sailors, he would not write such bosh. Fear and terror are not in Jack’s composition; and such eloquent words he leaves to such correspondents as described the ever-doubtful “man-and-dog-fight.” I am just as certain of seeing what I described, as that I met the advertisement that the Telegraph has the largest circulation in the world staring me at every street corner in London. It is easy for such a paper to make any man, good, great, or interesting, look ridiculous. Little wonder is it that my relatives write saying that they would have seen a hundred sea-serpents and never reported it; and a lady also wrote that she pitied anyone that was related to anyone that had seen the sea-serpent. It is quite true that it is a sad thing for any man to see more, to feel more, and to know more, than his fellows; but I have some of the philosophy that made O’Connell rejoice in being the most abused man in the United Kingdom, for he also had the power of giving a person a lick with the rough side of his tongue. If I had any such power I would not use it, for contempt is the sharpest reproof; and this letter is the only notice I have taken of the many absurd statements, &c. &c. &c.

George Drevar,

Master of the Pauline.

Barque Pauline,

Chittagong, January 15, 1876.

Fig. 73. – Sea-Serpent attacking Whale, as seen byCapt. Drevar, of the Barque “Pauline,” in 1876.

Fig. 74. – Sea-Serpent attacking Whale. – The End of the Struggle.

Barque Pauline, January 8th, 1875, lat. 5° 13′ S., long. 35° W., Cape Roque, north-east corner of Brazil distant twenty miles, at 11 A.M.

The weather fine and clear, the wind and sea moderate. Observed some black spots on the water, and a whitish pillar, about thirty-five feet high, above them. At the first glance I took all to be breakers, as the sea was splashing up fountain-like about them, and the pillar, a pinnacle rock bleached with the sun; but the pillar fell with a splash, and a similar one rose. They rose and fell alternately in quick succession, and good glasses showed me it was a monster sea-serpent coiled twice round a large sperm whale. The head and tail parts, each about thirty feet long, were acting as levers, twisting itself and victim around with great velocity. They sank out of sight about every two minutes, coming to the surface still revolving, and the struggles of the whale and two other whales that were near, frantic with excitement, made the sea in this vicinity like a boiling cauldron; and a loud and confused noise was distinctly heard. This strange occurrence lasted some fifteen minutes, and finished with the tail portion of the whale being elevated straight in the air, then waving backwards and forwards, and laving [lashing?] the water furiously in the last death-struggle, when the whole body disappeared from our view, going down head-foremost towards the bottom, where, no doubt, it was gorged at the serpent’s leisure; and that monster of monsters may have been many months in a state of coma, digesting the huge mouthful. Then two of the largest sperm whales that I have ever seen moved slowly thence towards the vessel, their bodies more than usually elevated out of the water, and not spouting or making the least noise, but seeming quite paralysed with fear; indeed, a cold shiver went through my own frame on beholding the last agonising struggle of the poor whale that had seemed as helpless in the coils of the vicious monster as a small bird in the talons of a hawk. Allowing for two coils round the whale, I think the serpent was about one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy feet long, and seven or eight in girth. It was in colour much like a conger eel, and the head, from the mouth being always open, appeared the largest part of the body… I think Cape San Roque is a landmark for whales leaving the south for the North Atlantic… I wrote thus far, little thinking I would ever see the serpent again; but at 7 A.M., July 13th, in the same latitude, and some eighty miles east of San Roque, I was astonished to see the same or a similar monster. It was throwing its head and about forty feet of its body in a horizontal position out of the water as it passed onwards by the stern of our vessel. I began musing why we were so much favoured with such a strange visitor, and concluded that the band of white paint, two feet wide above the copper, might have looked like a fellow-serpent to it, and, no doubt, attracted its attention… While thus thinking, I was startled by the cry of “There it is again,” and a short distance to leeward, elevated some sixty feet in the air, was the great leviathan, grimly looking towards the vessel. As I was not sure it was only our free board it was viewing, we had all our axes ready, and were fully determined, should the brute embrace the Pauline, to chop away for its backbone with all our might, and the wretch might have found for once in its life that it had caught a Tartar. This statement is strictly true, and the occurrence was witnessed by my officers, half the crew, and myself; and we are ready, at any time, to testify on oath that it is so, and that we are not in the least mistaken… A vessel, about three years ago, was dragged over by some sea-monster in the Indian Ocean.

George Drevar,

Master of the Pauline.

Chittagong, January 15, 1876.

Captain George Drevar, of the barque Pauline, appeared on Wednesday morning at the Police-court, Dale-street, before Mr. Raffles, stipendiary magistrate, accompanied by some of his officers and part of the crew of the barque, when they made the following declaration: —

“We, the undersigned, captain, officers, and crew of the barque Pauline, of London, do solemnly and sincerely declare that on July 8th, 1875, in latitude 5° 13′, 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 large serpent. The head and tail appeared to have a length beyond the coils of about thirty feet, and its girth eight or nine 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 Drevar, Master,

“Horatio Thompson,

“Henderson Landello,

“Owen Baker,

“William Lewan.

“Again, on July 13th, a similar serpent was seen about two hundred 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 one ordinary seaman.

“George Drevar, Master.

“A few moments after, it was seen elevated some sixty feet perpendicularly in the air by the chief officer and the following able seamen, Horatio Thompson, Owen Baker, William Lewan. And we make this solemn declaration, conscientiously believing the same to be true.

“George Drevar, Master,

“William Lewan, Steward,

“Horatio Thompson, Chief Officer,

“John Henderson Landello, 2nd Officer,

“Owen Baker.”

Some confirmation of Captain Drevar’s story is afforded by one quoted by the Rev. Henry T. Cheeves, in The Whale and his Captors. The author says: —

“From a statement made by a Kinebeck shipmaster in 1818, and sworn to before a justice of the peace in Kinebeck county, Maine, it would seem that the notable sea-serpent and whale are sometimes found in conflict. At six o’clock in the afternoon of June 21st, in the packet Delia, plying between Boston and Hallowell, when Cape Ann bore west-south-west about two miles, steering north-north-east, Captain Shuback West and fifteen others on board with him saw an object directly ahead, which he had no doubt was the sea-serpent, or the creature so often described under that name, engaged in fight with a large whale…

“The serpent threw up its tail from twenty-five to thirty feet in a perpendicular direction, striking the whale by it with tremendous blows, rapidly repeated, which were distinctly heard, and very loud, for two or three minutes; they then both disappeared, moving in a south-west direction; but after a few minutes reappeared in-shore of the packet, and about under the sun, the reflection of which was so strong as to prevent their seeing so distinctly as at first, when the serpent’s fearful blows with his tail were repeated and clearly heard as before. They again went down for a short time, and then came up to the surface under the packet’s larboard quarter, the whale appearing first, and the serpent in pursuit, who was again seen to shoot up his tail as before, which he held out of water for some time, waving it in the air before striking, and at the same time his head fifteen or twenty feet, as if taking a view of the surface of the sea. After being seen in this position a few minutes, the serpent and whale again disappeared, and neither was seen after by any on board. It was Captain West’s opinion that the whale was trying to escape, as he spouted but once at a time on coming to the surface, and the last time he appeared he went down before the serpent came up.”

Fig. 75. – Sea-Serpent attacking Whale.

(From Sketches by Capt. Davidson, S.S. “Kiushiu-maru.”)

A remarkable and independent corroboration of modern date comes from the Japan seas. It was reported both in local papers and in the San Francisco Californian Mail-Bag for 1879, from which I extract the notice and the illustrative cuts (Fig. 75).

“The accompanying engravings are fac-similes of a sketch sent to us by Captain Davidson, of the steamship Kiushiu-maru,²⁶⁹ and is inserted as a specimen of the curious drawings which are frequently forwarded to us for insertion. Captain Davidson’s statement, which is countersigned by his chief officer, Mr. McKechnie, is as follows: —

“‘Saturday, April 5th, at 11.15 A.M., Cape Satano distant about nine miles, the chief officer and myself observed a whale jump clear out of the sea, about a quarter of a mile away.

“‘Shortly after it leaped out again, when I saw there was something attached to it. Got glasses, and on the next leap distinctly saw something holding on to the belly of the whale. The latter gave one more spring clear of the water, and myself and chief officer then observed what appeared to be a creature of the snake species rear itself about thirty feet out of the water. It appeared to be about the thickness of a junk’s mast, and after standing about ten seconds in an erect position, it descended into the water, the upper end going first. With my glasses I made out the colour of the beast to resemble that of a pilot fish.’”

There is an interesting story²⁷⁰ of a fight between a water-snake and a trout, by Mr. A. W. Chase, Assistant United States Coast Survey, which, magnis componere parva, may be accepted as an illustration of how a creature of serpentine form would have to deal with a whale; only, as on the surface or in mid-water it would be prevented from grasping any rocks by which to anchor itself, we may readily conceive it holding on with a tenacious grip of its extended jaws, and drawing itself up to the enemy until it could either embrace it in its coils or stun it with violent blows of the tail.²⁷¹

“The trout, at first sight, was lying in mid-water, heading up stream. It was, as afterwards appeared, fully nine inches in length… This new enemy of the trout was a large water-snake of the common variety, striped black and yellow. He swam up the pool on the surface until over the trout, when he made a dive, and by a dexterous movement seized the trout in such a fashion that the jaws of the snake closed its mouth. The fight then commenced. The trout had the use of its tail and fins, and could drag the snake from the surface; when near the bottom, however, the snake made use of its tail by winding it round every stone or root that it could reach. After securing this tail-hold, it could drag the trout towards the bank, but on letting go the trout would have a new advantage. This battle was continued for full twenty minutes, when the snake managed to get its tail out of the water and clasped around the root of one of the willows mentioned as overhanging the pool. The battle was then up, for the snake gradually put coil after coil around the root, with each one dragging the fish toward the land. When half its body was coiled it unloosed the first hold, and stretched the end of its tail out in every direction, and finding another root, made fast; and now, using both, dragged the trout on the gravel bank. It now had it under control, and, uncoiling, the snake dragged the fish fully ten feet up on the bank, and, I suppose would have gorged him,” &c. &c.

Captain Drevar follows Pontoppidan (probably unwittingly) in identifying the sea-serpent with the leviathan of Scripture, quoting Isaiah xxvii. 1, “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” As I read the above passage, it is the dragon that is in the sea, and not the leviathan, which should be identified with the sea-serpent, unless the two, dragon and leviathan, are in apposition, which does not seem to be the case.

These various narratives which I have collected are, for the most part, well attested by the signature, or declaration on oath, of well-known and responsible people. Captain Drevar, in the small pamphlet which he had printed for private circulation, says: “Does any thinking person imagine I could keep command over men with a deliberate lie in our mouths?” and a similar question may be asked, with, I think, the possibility of only one reply, in the case of the narratives of Captain M’Quhœ and other officers and commanders in various navies and merchant vessels, and of the numerous other reputable witnesses who have affirmed, either as a simple statement or on oath, that they have seen sundry remarkable sea-monsters. I used the expression, “I think,” because, of course, there is the possibility of scepticism.

“Authority, in matters of opinion, divides itself (say) into three principal classes: there is the authority of witnesses; they testify to matters of fact. The judgment upon these is commonly, though not always, easy; but this testimony is always the substitution of the faculties of others for our own, which, taken largely, constitutes the essence of authority.

“This is the kind which we justly admit with the smallest jealousy. Yet not always; one man admits, another refuses, the authority of a sea-captain and a sailor or two on the existence of a sea-serpent.”²⁷²

I, for my part, belong to the former of these two categories. I believe in the statements that I have recorded, and in the following reasoning address only those who do likewise.

That mistakes have occasionally occurred is undoubted. Mr. Gosse records two instances in which long patches of sea-weed so far excited the imagination of captains of vessels as to cause them to lower boats and proceed to the attack.

The credibility of ghost stories generally is much affected when supposed apparitions are investigated and traced to some simple cause; and the hypersceptical may argue on parallel grounds that the transformation, in some few instances, of a supposed sea-serpent into sea-weed, or the admission of the plausible suggestion that it has been simulated by a seal, a string of porpoises, or some other very ordinary animals, largely affects the whole question.

And this would undoubtedly be the case if the conditions of the several examples were at all similar. But the hesitation or temporary misapprehension of captains or crews, in a thousand instances, as to the nature of a string of weed, supine on the surface, and lashed into fantastic motion by the surge of the ocean waves, has absolutely no bearing on the positive stories of a creature which is seen in calm fjords and bays to roll itself coil after coil, uplift its head high above the water, exhibit capacious jaws armed with teeth, conspicuous eyes, and paws or paddles, which pursues and menaces boats, presents a tangible object to a marksman, and when struck disappears with a mighty splash.

The probability of a gigantic seal, or of a string of porpoises, being mistaken for a sea-serpent by post-captains and their officers in the Navy is small, but becomes almost, if not quite, impossible when the observers are fishermen on coasts like those of Norway, who have been in the habit of seeing seals and porpoises almost every day of their lives. We may, therefore, freely grant that occasional mistakes have arisen, just as we have admitted that undoubtedly many hoaxes have been indulged in.

A rational and commonplace explanation is quite possible in some cases, as, for example, in that of a creature of abnormal appearance seen by the crew of Her Majesty’s yacht, the Osborne, in the Mediterranean, which was suggested, with great probability, to have been, if I remember correctly, some species of shark; while the supposed sea-serpent, washed up on the Isle of Stronsa, in 1808, proved, on scientific examination, to be a shark of the genus Selache, probably belonging to the species known as “the barking shark.”

The great oceanic bone shark, known to few except whalers, which has been stated to reach as much as sixty feet in length, may also occasionally have originated a misconception; and there must be still remaining in the depths of the ocean undescribed species of fish, of bizarre form, and probably gigantic size, the occasional appearance of which would puzzle an observer.

For example, in November 1879, an illustration was given in the Graphic of “another marine monster,” professing to be a sketch in the Gulf of Suez from H.M.S. Philomel, accompanied by the following descriptive letter-press: —

“This strange monster,” says Mr. W. J. Andrews, Assistant Paymaster, H.M.S. Philomel, “was seen by the officers and ship’s company of this ship at about 5.30 P.M. on October 14, when in the gulf of Suez, Cape Zafarana bearing at the time N.W. seventeen miles, lat. 28° 56′ N., long. 32° 54′ E.

“When first observed it was rather more than a mile distant on the port bow, its snout projecting from the surface of the water, and strongly marked ripples showing the position of the body. It then opened its jaws, as shown in the sketch, and shut them again several times, forcing the water from between them as it did so in all directions in large jets. From time to time a portion of the back and dorsal fin appeared at some distance from the head. After remaining some little time in the above-described position, it disappeared, and on coming to the surface again it repeated the action of elevating the head and opening the jaws several times, turning slowly from side to side as it did so.

Fig. 76. – Another Marine Monster. A Sketch in the Gulf of Suez, from

H.M.S. “Philomel,” Oct. 14, 1879. (From the “Graphic,” Nov. 1879.)

“On the approach of the ship the monster swam swiftly away, leaving a broad track like the wake of a ship, and disappeared beneath the waves.

“The colour of that portion of the body that was seen was black, as was also the upper jaw. The lower jaw was grey round the mouth, but of a bright salmon colour underneath, like the belly of some kinds of lizard, becoming redder as it approached the throat. The inside of the mouth appeared to be grey with white stripes, parallel to the edges of the jaw, very distinctly marked. These might have been rows of teeth or of some substance resembling whalebone. The height the snout was elevated above the surface of the water was at least fifteen feet, and the spread of the jaws quite twenty-five feet.”

Strangely enough, a proximate counterpart of this fish, but of mimic size, was made known to science in 1882. My attention was called by Mr. Streich, of the German Consulate in Shanghai, to a description of this in the Daheim, an illustrated family paper, published in Leipzig, with an illustrative figure, from which I inferred that the monster seen by the crew of the Philomel was only a gigantic and adult specimen of a species belonging to the same order, perhaps to the same genus, as the Eurypharynx, adapted to live in the depths of the ocean, and only appearing upon the surface rarely and as the result of some abnormal conditions. I give fac-similes of both engravings, in order that my readers may draw their own comparison. The letter-press of the Daheim is as follows: —

“A New Fish.²⁷³

“The deep-sea explorations of last year, which extended over eight thousand metres in depth, brought to light some very extraordinary animals, of which, up to the present date, we have no idea. The most curious one was found by the French steamer Le Travailleur, on which there was a staff of naturalists, and of the number was M. Milne Edwards. They were entirely devoted to deep-sea dredging.

“Between Morocco and the Canary Islands, at two thousand three hundred metres depth, the dredge caught a most wonderful animal, which at the first glance nobody thought to be a fish. This fish, of which we give here a picture, dwells on the bottom of the sea where the water is +5 °Celsius,²⁷⁴ in a kind of red slime composed of the shells of small Globigerinæ. On account of its curious mouth it has been called Eurypharynx Pelicanoides, i. e. the Pelican-like Broad-jaws. This creature is distinguished from all its class by the peculiar construction of its mouth, its under jaw being of a structure different from that of any other fish, possessing only two small teeth and a big pouch of most expansible skin, similar to the sac which a pelican has on its under jaw. In this sac it (the Broad-jaw) collects its food, and as its stomach is of very small dimensions, we may, from analogy with other fishes, conclude that it digests partly in this sac.

Fig. 77. – Eurypharynx Pelicanoides. (From the Daheim.)

“The swimming apparatus of this fish is not much developed, and reduced to a number of spines erect from the back and the belly.

“The pectoral fins, which are immediately behind the eye, are also very small, so that we may conclude from this that this fish does not move much, and is not a good swimmer.

“It only inhabits the bottom of the sea. Its body decreases gradually backwards till it finishes in a string-like tail. The organs for breathing are not much developed. Six slits (gill apertures?) allow the water to enter.

“The colour of the fish (the size of which we do not find in our authority) is velvet black.”

Before proceeding further I must point out that we may dismiss from our minds the possibility of the so-called sea-serpent being merely a large example of those marine serpents of which several species and numerous individuals are known to exist on the coast of many tropical countries, for these are rarely more than from four to six feet in length, although Dampier²⁷⁵ mentions one which he saw on the northern coast of Australia, which was long (but the length is not specified) and as big as a man’s leg. He gives a curious instance of these biters being bit, which he observed not far from Scoutens Island, off New Guinea: —

“On the 23rd we saw two snakes, and the next morning another passing by us, which was furiously assaulted by two fishes that had kept in company five or six days. They were shaped like mackerel, and were about that bigness and length, and of a yellow-greenish colour. The snake swam away from them very fast, keeping his head above water. The fish snapped at his tail; but when he turned himself that fish would withdraw and another would snap; so that by turns they kept him employed. Yet he still defended himself, and swam away at a great pace, till they were out of sight.”

Leguat²⁷⁶ speaks of a marine serpent, over sixty pounds in weight, which he and his comrades in misfortune captured and tasted, when marooned by order of the Governor of the Mauritius on some small island off the harbour, about six miles from the shore. He says: —

“It was a frightful sea-serpent, which we in our great simplicity took for a large lamprey or eel. This animal seemed to us very extraordinary, for it had fins, and we knew not that there were any such creatures as sea-serpents. Moreover, we had been so accustomed to discover creatures that were new to us, both at land and at sea, that we did not think this to be any other than an odd sort of eel that we never had seen before, yet which we could not but think more resembled a snake than an eel. In a word, the monster had a serpent or crocodile’s head, and a mouth full of hooked, long and sharp teeth… When our purveyors came we related to them what had happened to us, and showed them the eel’s head, but they only said they had never seen the like.”

In spite of Leguat’s impression, I think it was only some species of conger eel.

Marine serpents are abundant on the Malay coast, and particularly so in the Indian Ocean. Niebuhr says: —

“In the Indian Ocean, at a certain distance from land, a great many water-serpents, from twelve to fifteen inches in length, are to be seen rising above the surface of the water. When these serpents are seen they are an indication that the coast is exactly two degrees distant. We saw some of these serpents, for the first time, on the evening of the 9th of September; on the 11th we landed in the harbour of Bombay.”²⁷⁷

These sea-snakes are reputed to be mostly, if not entirely, venomous. Their motion in the water is by undulation in a horizontal, not in a vertical, direction; they breathe with lungs; their home is on the surface, and they would perish if confined for any considerable period beneath it.

Fig. 78. – Scoliophis Atlanticus. Killed on the Sea-shore near Boston, in 1817, and at that time supposed to be the young of the Sea-Serpent.