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.

Olaus Magnus has sometimes been mistaken for his brother and predecessor in the archiepiscopal see, Johan Magnus, author of a book entitled 'Gothorum, Suevorumque Historia.' Olaus was the last Roman Catholic archbishop of the Swedish church, and when the Reformation, supported by Gustavus Vasa, gained the ascendancy in Sweden, he remained true to his faith, and retired to Rome, where he wrote his work, 'Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus,' Romae, 1555. An English translation of this book was published by J. Streater, in 1658. It does not contain the illustrations.

Pontoppidan was not a fabricator of falsehoods; but, in collecting evidence relating to the "great beasts" living in "the great and wide sea," was influenced, as he tells us, by "a desire to extend the popular knowledge of the glorious works of a beneficent Creator." He gave too much credence to contemporary narratives and old traditions of floating islands and sea monsters, and to the superstitious beliefs and exaggerated statements of ignorant fishermen: but if those who ridicule him had lived in his day and amongst his people, they would probably have done the same; for even Linnaeus was led to believe in the Kraken, and catalogued it in the first edition of his 'Systema Naturae,' as 'Sepia Microcosmos.' He seems to have afterwards had cause to discredit his information respecting it, for he omitted it in the next edition. The Norwegian bishop was a conscientious and painstaking investigator, and the tone of his writings is neither that of an intentional deceiver nor of an incautious dupe. He diligently endeavoured to separate the truth from the cloud of error and fiction by which it was obscured; and in this he was to a great extent successful, for he correctly identifies, from the vague and perplexing descriptions submitted to him, the animal whose habits and structure had given rise to so many terror-laden narratives and extravagant traditions.

The following are some of his remarks on the subject of this gigantic and ill-defined animal. Although I have greatly abbreviated them, I have thought it right to quote them at considerable length, that the modest and candid spirit in which they were written may be understood:

"Amongst the many things," he says, "which are in the ocean, and concealed from our eyes, or only presented to our view for a few minutes, is the Kraken. This creature is the largest and most surprising of all the animal creation, and consequently well deserves such an account as the nature of the thing, according to the Creator's wise ordinances, will admit of. Such I shall give at present, and perhaps much greater light on this subject may be reserved for posterity.

"Our fishermen unanimously affirm, and without the least variation in their accounts, that when they row out several miles to sea, particularly in the hot summer days, and by their situation (which they know by taking a view of different points of land) expect to find eighty or a hundred fathoms of water, it often happens that they do not find above twenty or thirty, and sometimes less. At these places they generally find the greatest plenty of fish, especially cod and ling. Their lines, they say, are no sooner out than they may draw them up with the hooks all full of fish. By this they know that the Kraken is at the bottom. They say this creature causes those unnatural shallows mentioned above, and prevents their sounding. These the fishermen are always glad to find, looking upon them as a means of their taking abundance of fish. There are sometimes twenty boats or more got together and throwing out their lines at a moderate distance from each other; and the only thing they then have to observe is whether the depth continues the same, which they know by their lines, or whether it grows shallower, by their seeming to have less water. If this last be the case they know that the Kraken is raising himself nearer the surface, and then it is not time for them to stay any longer; they immediately leave off fishing, take to their oars, and get away as fast as they can. When they have reached the usual depth of the place, and find themselves out of danger, they lie upon their oars, and in a few minutes after they see this enormous monster come up to the surface of the water; he there shows himself sufficiently, though his whole body does not appear, which, in all likelihood, no human eye ever beheld. Its back or upper part, which seems to be in appearance about an English mile and a half in circumference (some say more, but I chuse the least for greater certainty), looks at first like a number of small islands surrounded with something that floats and fluctuates like sea-weeds. Here and there a larger rising is observed like sand-banks, on which various kinds of small fishes are seen continually leaping about till they roll off into the water from the sides of it; at last several bright points or horns appear, which grow thicker and thicker the higher they rise above the surface of the water, and sometimes they stand up as high and as large as the masts of middle-sized vessels. It seems these are the creature's arms, and it is said if they were to lay hold of the largest man of war they would pull it down to the bottom. After this monster has been on the surface of the water a short time it begins slowly to sink again, and then the danger is as great as before; because the motion of his sinking causes such a swell in the sea, and such an eddy or whirlpool, that it draws everything down with it, like the current of the river Male.

"As this enormous sea-animal in all probability may be reckoned of the Polype, or of the Starfish kind, as shall hereafter be more fully proved, it seems that the parts which are seen rising at its pleasure, and are called arms, are properly the tentacula, or feeling instruments, called horns, as well as arms. With these they move themselves, and likewise gather in their food.