Part 10

"Again, on July 13, 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 some 60 feet elevated perpendicularly in the air by the chief officer and the following seamen:--Horatio Thompson, Owen Baker, Wm. Lewarn. And we make this solemn declaration, conscientiously believing the same to be true."

In the Illustrated London News, of November 20th, 1875, there had previously appeared a letter from the Rev. E. L. Penny, Chaplain to H.M.S. London, at Zanzibar, describing this occurrence and also the representation of a sketch (which I am kindly permitted to reproduce here), drawn by him from the descriptions given by the captain and crew of the Pauline. "The whale," he said, "should have been placed deeper in the water, but he would then have been unable to depict so clearly the manner in which the animal was attacked." He adds that, "Captain Drevar is a singularly able and observant man, and those of the crew and officers with whom he conversed were singularly intelligent; nor did any of their descriptions vary from one another in the least: there were no discrepancies." The event took place whilst their vessel was on her way from Shields to Zanzibar, with a cargo of coals, for the use of H.M.S. London, then the guard ship on that station.

It is impossible to doubt for a moment the genuineness of the statement made by Captain Drevar and his crew, or their honest desire to describe faithfully that which they believed they had seen; but the height to which the snake is said to have upreared itself is evidently greatly exaggerated; for it is impossible that any serpent could "elevate its body some sixty feet perpendicularly in the air"--nearly one-third of the height of the Monument of the Great Fire of London. I have no desire to force this narrative of the master and crew of the Pauline into conformity with any preconceived idea. They may have seen a veritable sea-serpent; or they may have witnessed the amours of two whales, and have seen the great creatures rolling over and over that they might breathe alternately by the blow-hole of each coming to the surface of the water; or the supposed coils of the snake may have been the arms of a great calamary, cast over and around the huge cetacean. The other two appearances--1st, the animal "seen shooting itself along the surface with head and neck raised" (p. 77), and 2nd, the elevation of the body to a considerable height, as in Egede's sea monster, (p. 67), would certainly accord with this last hypothesis; but, taking the statement as it stands, it must be left for further elucidation.

On the 28th of January, 1879, a "sea-serpent" was seen from the s.s. City of Baltimore, in the Gulf of Aden, by Major H. W. J. Senior, of the Bengal Staff Corps. The narrator "observed a long, black object darting rapidly in and out of the water, and advancing nearer to the vessel. The shape of the head was not unlike pictures of the dragon he had often seen, with a bull-dog expression of the forehead and eyebrows. When the monster had drawn its head sufficiently out of the water, it let its body drop, as it were a log of wood, prior to darting forward under the water. This motion caused a splash of about fifteen feet in length on either side of the neck much in the 'shape of a pair of wings.'" This last particular of its appearance, as well as its movements, suggest a great calamary; but, as one with "a bull-dog expression of eyebrow, visible at 500 yards distance," does not come within my ken, I will not claim it as such.

In June 1877 Commander Pearson reported to the Admiralty, that on the 2nd of that month, he and other officers of the Royal Yacht Osborne, had seen, off Cape Vito, Sicily, a large marine animal, of which the following account and sketches were furnished by Lieutenant Haynes, and were confirmed by Commander Pearson, Mr. Douglas Haynes, Mr. Forsyth, and Mr. Moore, engineer.

"Lieutenant Haynes writes, under date, 'Royal Yacht Osborne, Gibraltar, June 6': On the evening of that day, the sea being perfectly smooth, my attention was first called by seeing a ridge of fins above the surface of the water, extending about thirty feet, and varying from five to six feet in height. On inspecting it by means of a telescope, at about one and a-half cables' distance, I distinctly saw a head, two flappers, and about thirty feet of an animal's shoulder. The head, as nearly as I could judge, was about six feet thick, the neck narrower, about four to five feet, the shoulder about fifteen feet across, and the flappers each about fifteen feet in length. The movements of the flappers were those of a turtle, and the animal resembled a huge seal, the resemblance being strongest about the back of the head. I could not see the length of the head, but from its crown or top to just below the shoulder (where it became immersed), I should reckon about fifty feet. The tail end I did not see, being under water, unless the ridge of fins to which my attention was first attracted, and which had disappeared by the time I got a telescope, were really the continuation of the shoulder to the end of the object's body. The animal's head was not always above water, but was thrown upwards, remaining above for a few seconds at a time, and then disappearing. There was an entire absence of 'blowing,' or 'spouting.' I herewith beg to enclose a rough sketch, showing the view of the 'ridge of fins,' and also of the animal in the act of propelling itself by its two fins."

PHASE I.]

PHASE 2.]

It seems to me that this description cannot be explained as applicable to any one animal yet known. The ridge of dorsal fins might, possibly, as was suggested by Mr. Frank Buckland, belong to four basking sharks, swimming in line, in close order; but the combination of them with long flippers, and the turtle-like mode of swimming, forms a zoological enigma which I am unable to solve.

This brings us face to face with the question: "Is it then so impossible that there may exist some great sea creature, or creatures, with which zoologists are hitherto unacquainted, that it is necessary in every case to regard the authors of such narratives as wilfully untruthful, or mistaken in their observations, if their descriptions are irreconcileable with something already known?" I, for one, am of the opinion that there is no such impossibility. Calamaries or squids of the ordinary size have, from time immemorial, been amongst the commonest and best known of marine animals in many seas; but only a few years ago any one who expressed his belief in one formidable enough to capsize a boat, or pull a man out of one, was derided for his credulity, although voyagers had constantly reported that in the Indian seas they were so dreaded that the natives always carried hatchets with them in their canoes, with which to cut off the arms or tentacles of these creatures, if attacked by them. We now know that their existence is no fiction; for individuals have been captured measuring more than fifty feet, and some are reported to have measured eighty feet, in total length. As marine snakes some feet in length, and having fin-like tails adapted for swimming, abound over an extensive geographical range, and are frequently met with far at sea, I cannot regard it as impossible that some of these also may attain to an abnormal and colossal development. Dr. Andrew Wilson, who has given much attention to this subject, is of the opinion that "in this huge development of ordinary forms we discover the true and natural law of the production of the giant serpent of the sea." It goes far, at any rate, towards accounting for its supposed appearance. I am convinced that, whilst naturalists have been searching amongst the vertebrata for a solution of the problem, the great unknown, and therefore unrecognized, calamaries by their elongated, cylindrical bodies and peculiar mode of swimming, have played the part of the sea-serpent in many a well-authenticated incident. In other cases, such as some of those mentioned by Pontoppidan, the supposed "vertical undulations" of the snake seen out of water have been the burly bodies of so many porpoises swimming in line--the connecting undulations beneath the surface have been supplied by the imagination. The dorsal fins of basking sharks, as figured by Mr. Buckland, or of ribbon-fishes, as suggested by Dr. Andrew Wilson, may have furnished the "ridge of fins;" an enormous conger is not an impossibility; a giant turtle may have done duty, with its propelling flippers and broad back; or a marine snake of enormous size may, really, have been seen. But if we accept as accurate the observations recorded (which I certainly do not in all cases, for they are full of errors and mistakes), the difficulty is not entirely met, even by this last admission, for the instances are very few in which an ophidian proper--a true serpent--is indicated. There has seemed to be wanting an animal having a long snake-like neck, a small head and a slender body, and propelling itself by paddles.

It must be noted, however, that in almost every case, except that of the Osborne, the paddles were supposed, not seen, and were invented to account for an animal of great length progressing at the surface of the water at the rate of twelve to fifteen miles an hour without its being possible to perceive, upon the closest and most attentive inspection, any undulatory movement to which its rapid advance could be ascribed. As the great calamaries were unknown, their mode of swift retrograde motion, by means of an outflowing current of water, was of course unsuspected.

The similarity of such an animal to the Plesiosaurus of old was remarkable. That curious compound reptile, which has been compared with "a snake threaded through the body of a turtle," is described by Dean Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise, as having "the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale." In the number of its cervical vertebrae (about thirty-three) it surpasses that of the longest-necked bird, the swan.

The form and probable movements of this ancient saurian agree so markedly with some of the accounts given of the "great sea-serpent," that Mr. Edward Newman advanced the opinion that the closest affinities of the latter would be found to be with the Enaliosauria, or marine lizards, whose fossil remains are so abundant in the oolite and the lias. This view has also been taken by other writers, and emphatically by Mr. Gosse. Neither he nor Mr. Newman insist that the "great unknown" must be the Plesiosaurus itself. Mr. Gosse says, "I should not look for any species, scarcely even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period to the present. Admitting the actual continuation of the order Enaliosauria, it would be, I think, quite in conformity with general analogy to find some salient features of several extinct forms."

Plesiosaurus Dolichodeirus restored by The Rev. W. D. Canybeare.]

The form and habits of the recently-recognized gigantic cuttles account for so many appearances which, without knowledge of them, were inexplicable when Mr. Gosse and Mr. Newman wrote, that I think this theory is not now forced upon us. Mr. Gosse well and clearly sums up the evidence as follows: "Carefully comparing the independent narratives of English witnesses of known character and position, most of them being officers under the crown, we have a creature possessing the following characteristics: 1st. The general form of a serpent. 2nd. Great length, say above sixty feet. 3rd. Head considered to resemble that of a serpent. 4th. Neck from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter. 5th. Appendages on the head, neck, or back, resembling a crest or mane. (Considerable discrepancy in details.) 6th. Colour dark brown, or green, streaked or spotted with white. 7th. Swims at surface of the water with a rapid or slow movement, the head and neck projected and elevated above the surface. 8th. Progression, steady and uniform; the body straight, but capable of being thrown into convolutions. 9th. Spouts in the manner of a whale. 10th. Like a long nun-buoy." He concludes with the question--"To which of the recognized classes of created beings can this huge rover of the ocean be referred?"

I reply: "To the Cephalopoda. There is not one of the above judiciously summarized characteristics that is not supplied by the great calamary, and its ascertained habits and peculiar mode of locomotion.

"Only a geologist can fully appreciate how enormously the balance of probability is contrary to the supposition that any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary deposits should have continued to live up to the present time. And yet I am bound to say, that this does not amount to an impossibility, for the evidence against it is entirely negative. Nor is the conjecture that there may be in existence some congeners of these great reptiles inconsistent with zoological science. Dr. J. E. Gray, late of the British Museum, a strict zoologist, is cited by Mr. Gosse as having long ago expressed his opinion that some undescribed form exists which is intermediate between the tortoises and the serpents."

Dr. Gray wrote in his 'Synopsis of Genera of Reptiles,' in the Annals of Philosophy, 1825: "There is every reason to believe from general structure that there exists an affinity between the tortoises and the snakes; but the genus that exactly unites them is at present unknown to European naturalists; which is not astonishing when we consider the immense number of undescribed animals which are daily occurring. If I may be allowed to speculate from the peculiarities of structure which I have observed, I am inclined to think that the union will most probably take place by some newly discovered genera allied to the marine or fluviatile soft-skinned turtles and the marine serpent."

After Mr. P. H. GOSSE, F.R.S.]

Professor Agassiz, too, is adduced by a correspondent of the Zoologist (p. 2395), as having said concerning the present existence of the Enaliosaurian type that "it would be in precise conformity with analogy that such an animal 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."

On this point, Mr. Newman records, in the Zoologist (p. 2356), an actual testimony which he considers, "in all respects, the most interesting natural-history fact of the present century." He writes:

"Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. '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 the alligator, except that the neck was much longer, and that instead of legs the creature had four large flappers, somewhat like those of turtles, the anterior pair being larger than the posterior; the creature was distinctly visible, and all its movements could be observed with ease; it appeared to be pursuing its prey at the bottom of the sea; its movements were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of annulations, or ring-like divisions of the body, was distinctly perceptible. Captain Hope made this relation in company, and as a matter of conversation. When I heard it from the gentleman to whom it was narrated, I enquired whether Captain Hope was acquainted with those remarkable fossil animals Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, the supposed forms of which so nearly correspond with what he describes as having seen alive, and I cannot find that he had heard of them; the alligator being the only animal he mentioned as bearing a partial similarity to the creature in question."

Unfortunately, the estimated dimensions of this creature are not given.

That negative evidence alone is an unsafe basis for argument against the existence of unknown animals, the following illustrations will show:

During the deep-sea dredgings of H.M.S. Lightning, Porcupine, and Challenger, many new species of mollusca, and others which had been supposed to have been extinct ever since the chalk epoch, were brought to light; and by the deep-sea trawlings of the last-mentioned ship, there have been brought up from great depths fishes of unknown species, and which could not exist near the surface, owing to the distension and rupture of their air-bladder when removed from the pressure of deep water.

Mr. Gosse mentions that the ship in which he made the voyage to Jamaica was surrounded in the North Atlantic, for seventeen continuous hours by a troop of whales of large size of an undescribed species, which on no other occasion has fallen under scientific observation. Unique specimens of other cetaceans are also recorded.