Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained

Part 1

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(International Fisheries Exhibition LONDON, 1883)

SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED

HENRY LEE, F.L.S., F.G.S., F.Z.S.

SOMETIME NATURALIST OF THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM AND AUTHOR OF 'THE OCTOPUS, OR THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND FACT'

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES EXHIBITION AND 13 CHARING CROSS, S.W. 1883

PREFACE.

As I commence this little history of two sea monsters there comes to my mind a remark made to me by my friend, Mr. Samuel L. Clemens--"Mark Twain"--which illustrates a feeling that many a writer must have experienced when dealing with a subject that has been previously well handled. Expressing to me one day the gratification he felt in having made many pleasant acquaintances in England, he added, with dry humour, and a grave countenance, "Yes! I owe your countrymen no grudge or ill-will. I freely forgive them, though one of them did me a grievous wrong, an irreparable injury! It was Shakspeare: if he had not written those plays of his, I should have done so! They contain my thoughts, my sentiments! He forestalled me!"

In treating of the so-called "sea-serpent," I have been anticipated by many able writers. Mr. Gosse, in his delightful book, 'The Romance of Natural History,' published in 1862, devoted a chapter to it; and numerous articles concerning it have appeared in various papers and periodicals.

But, for the information from which those authors have drawn their inferences, and on which they have founded their opinions, they have been greatly indebted, as must be all who have seriously to consider this subject, to the late experienced editor of the Zoologist, Mr. Edward Newman, a man of wonderful power of mind, of great judgment, a profound thinker, and an able writer. At a time when, as he said, "the shafts of ridicule were launched against believers and unbelievers in the sea-serpent in a very pleasing and impartial manner," he, in the true spirit of philosophical inquiry, in 1847, opened the columns of his magazine to correspondence on this topic, and all the more recent reports of marine monsters having been seen are therein recorded. To him, therefore, the fullest acknowledgments are due.

The great cuttles, also, have been the subject of articles in various magazines, notably one by Mr. W. Saville Kent, F.L.S., in the 'Popular Science Review' of April, 1874, and a chapter in my little book on the Octopus, published in 1873, is also devoted to them. In writing of them as the living representatives of the kraken, and as having been frequently mistaken for the "sea-serpent," my deductions have been drawn from personal knowledge, and an intimate acquaintance with the habits, form, and structure of the animals described. It was only by watching the movements of specimens of the "common squid" (Loligo vulgaris), and the "little squid" (L. media), which lived in the tanks of the Brighton Aquarium, that I recognised in their peculiar habit of occasionally swimming half-submerged, with uplifted caudal extremity, and trailing arms, the fact that I had before me the "sea-serpent" of many a well-authenticated anecdote. A mere knowledge of their form and anatomy after death had never suggested to me that which became at once apparent when I saw them in life.

It is a pleasure to me to acknowledge gratefully the kindness I have met with in connection with the illustrations of this book. The proprietors of the Illustrated London News not only gave me permission to copy, in reduced size, their two pictures of the Daedalus incident, but presented to me electrotype copies of all others small enough for these pages--namely, "Jonah and the Monster," Egede's "Sea-Serpent," and the Whale as seen from the Pauline. Equally kind have been the proprietors of the Field. To them I am greatly indebted for their permission to copy the beautiful woodcuts of the "Octopus at Rest," "The Sepia seizing its Prey," and the arms of the Newfoundland squids, and also for "electros" of the two curious Japanese engravings, all of which originally appeared in their paper. From the Graphic I have had similar permission to copy any cuts that might be thought suitable, and the illustrations of the sea-serpent, as seen from Her Majesty's yacht Osborne and the City of Baltimore, are from that journal. Messrs. Nisbet most courteously allowed me to have a copy of the block of the Enaliosaurus swimming, which was one of the numerous pictures in Mr. Gosse's book, published by them, already referred to. And last, not least, I have to thank Miss Ellen Woodward, daughter of my friend, Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., for enabling me to better explain the movements and appearances of the squids when swimming, and when raising their bodies out of water in an erect position, by carefully drawing them from my rough sketches.

HENRY LEE.

SAVAGE CLUB; July 21st, 1883.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Frontispiece.--The Sea Serpent as first seen from H.M.S. Daedalus.

FIG. PAGE

1. Beak and Arms of a Decapod Cuttle 16

2. The Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) 18

3. The Cuttle (Sepia officinalis) 21

4. Hooked Tentacles of Onychoteuthis 23

5. Japanese fisherman attacked by a Cuttle 29

6. Arms of a great Cuttle exhibited in a Japanese fish-shop 29

7. Facsimile of De Montfort's "Poulpe colossal" 32

8. Gigantic Calamary caught by the French despatch vessel Alecton, near Teneriffe 39

9. Tentacle of a great Calamary (Architeuthis princeps) taken in Conception Bay, Newfoundland 43

10. Head and Tentacles of a great Calamary (Architeuthis princeps) taken in Logie Bay, Newfoundland 44

Part 2

11. Jonah and the Sea Monster 55

12. Sea Serpent seizing a man on board ship 58

13. Gigantic Lobster dragging a man from a ship 58

14. Pontoppidan's "Sea Serpent" 63

15. The Animal drawn by Mr. Bing as having been seen by Egede 66

16. The Animal which Egede probably saw 67

17. The Sea Serpent of the Wernerian Society (facsimile) 69

18. A Calamary swimming at the surface of the sea 77

19. The Sea Serpent passing under the quarter of H.M.S. Daedalus 81

20. The Sea Serpent and Sperm Whale as seen from the Pauline 91

21. The Sea Serpent as seen from the City of Baltimore 93

22. The Sea Serpent as seen from H.M. yacht Osborne. Phase 1 94

23. The Sea Serpent as seen from H.M. yacht Osborne. Phase 2 94

24. Skeleton of the Plesiosaurus, restored by Mr. Conybeare 98

25. The Sea Serpent on the Enaliosaurian hypothesis 100

SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED.

THE KRAKEN.

In the legends and traditions of northern nations, stories of the existence of a marine animal of such enormous size that it more resembled an island than an organised being frequently found a place. It is thus described in an ancient manuscript (about A.D. 1180), attributed to the Norwegian King Sverre; and the belief in it has been alluded to by other Scandinavian writers from an early period to the present day. It was an obscure and mysterious sea-monster, known as the Kraken, whose form and nature were imperfectly understood, and it was peculiarly the object of popular wonder and superstitious dread.

Eric Pontoppidan, the younger, Bishop of Bergen, and member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen, is generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the semi-fabulous Kraken, and is constantly misquoted by authors who have never read his work, and who, one after another, have copied from their predecessors erroneous statements concerning him. More than half a century before him, Christian Francis Paullinus, a physician and naturalist of Eisenach, who evinced in his writings an admiration of the marvellous rather than of the useful, had described as resembling Gesner's 'Heracleoticon,' a monstrous animal which occasionally rose from the sea on the coasts of Lapland and Finmark, and which was of such enormous dimensions, that a regiment of soldiers could conveniently manoeuvre on its back. About the same date, but a little earlier, Bartholinus, a learned Dane, told how, on a certain occasion, the Bishop of Midaros found the Kraken quietly reposing on the shore, and mistaking the enormous creature for a huge rock, erected an altar upon it and performed mass. The Kraken respectfully waited till the ceremony was concluded, and the reverend prelate safe on shore, and then sank beneath the waves.

'Natural History of Norway.' A.D. 1751.

Born 1643; died 1712.

And a hundred and fifty years before Bartholinus and Paullinus wrote, Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, in Sweden, had related many wondrous narratives of sea-monsters,--tales which had gathered and accumulated marvels as they had been passed on from generation to generation in oral history, and which he took care to bequeath to his successors undeprived of any of their fascination. According to him, the Kraken was not so polite to the laity as to the Bishop, for when some fishermen lighted a fire on its back, it sank beneath their feet, and overwhelmed them in the waters.

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