Part 101

The =seventeenth= explanation is the following: the sea-serpent is nothing else but a gigantic =sea-weed=, detached from the bottom of the sea. In 1849 we meet for the first time with this suggestion. In the Zoologist of that year, p. 2541, we read the following statement of Captain HERRIMAN:

“Mr. J. A. Herriman, commander of the ship Brazilian, now lying near the principal entrance of the London Dock, makes the following curious and interesting statement:--

“He left the Cape on the 19 of February, running with a strong south-easterly wind for four days. On the morning of the 24th. the ship was becalmed in latitude 26° South, longitude 8° East, being about forty miles from the place in which Captain M’Quhae, R. N., is said to have seen the Great Sea-Serpent. About eight o’clock on that morning, whilst the captain was surveying the calm, heavy, rippleless swell of the sea through his telescope, the ship at the same time heading N. N. W., he perceived something right abeam, about half a mile to the westward, stretched along the water to the length of about twenty-five or thirty feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship with a steady, sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet above the waters, had something resembling a mane, running down to the floating portion, and within about six feet of the tail it forked out into a sort of double fin. Having read at Colombo the account of the monster said to have been seen by Captain M’Quhae in nearly the same latitude, Mr. Herriman was led to suppose that he had fallen in with the same animal, or one of the genus; he immediately called his chief officer, Mr. Long, with several of the passengers, who, after surveying the object for some time, came to the unanimous conclusion that it must be the sea-serpent seen by Captain M’Quhae. As the Brazilian was making no headway, Mr. Herriman, determining to bring all doubts to an issue, had a boat lowered down, and taking two hands on board, together with Mr. Boyd, of Peterhead, near Aberdeen, one of the passengers, who acted as steersman under the direction of the captain, they approached the monster, Captain Herriman standing on the bow of the boat armed with a harpoon, to commence the onslaught. The combat, however, was not attended with the danger which those on board apprehended; for on coming close to the object it was found to be nothing more than an immense piece of sea-weed, evidently detached from a coral reef, and drifting with the current, which sets constantly to the westward in this latitude, and which, together with the swell left by the subsidence of the gale, gave it the sinuous, snake-like motion.”

“But fore the calm, which afforded Captain Herriman an opportunity of examining the weed, we should have had an other “eye-witness” account of the great sea-serpent,--Mr. Herriman himself admitting that he should have remained under the impression that he had seen it. What appeared to be the head, crest, and mane of the immensum volumen, was but the large root which floated upwards, and to which several pieces of the coral reef still adhered. The Captain had it hauled on board, but as it began to decay, was compelled to throw it over. He now regrets that he had not preserved it in a water-butt for the purpose of exhibition in the Thames, where the conflicting motion produced by the tide and steamers would in all probability give it a like appearance.”

Again we read in the Times of February 13th., 1858, republished also in the Zoologist for 1858, p. 5990:

“In your paper of the 5th. inst. is a letter from Captain Harrington, of the ship Castilian, stating his belief that he had seen the great sea-serpent near St. Helena. His confidence is strengthened by the fact of something similar having been seen by H. M. Ship Daedalus near the same position. The following circumstance which occurred on board the ship Pekin, then belonging to Mrrs. T. & W. Smith, on her passage from Moulmein, may be of some service respecting this “queer fish.” On December 28th., 1848, being then in lat. 26° S., long. 6° E., nearly calm, saw, about half a mile on port beam, a very extraordinary looking thing in the water, of considerable length. With the telescope we could plainly discern a huge head and neck, covered with a long shaggy-looking kind of mane, which it kept lifting at intervals out of the water. This was seen by all hands, and declared to be the great sea-serpent. I determined on knowing something about it, and accordingly lowered a boat, in which my chief officer and four men went, taking with them a long small line in case it should be required. I watched them very anxiously, and the monster seemed not to regard their approach. At length they got close to the head. They seemed to hesitate, and then busy themselves with the line, the monster all the time ducking its head, and showing its great length. Presently the boat began pulling towards the ship, the monster following slowly. In about half an hour they got alongside; a tackle was got on the mainyard and it was hoisted on board. It appeared somewhat supple when hanging, but so completely covered with snaky-looking barnacles, about eighteen inches long, that we had it some time on board before it was discovered to be a piece of gigantic sea-weed, twenty feet long, and four inches diameter; the root end appeared when in the water like the head of an animal, and the motion given by the sea caused it to seem alive. In a few days it dried up to a hollow tube, and as it had rather an offensive smell, was thrown overboard. I had only been a short time in England when the Daedalus arrived and reported having seen the great sea-serpent,--to the best of my recollection near the same locality, and which I have no doubt was a piece of the same weed. 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.” Frederic Smith, New-castle-on-Tyne, February 10, 1858.”--

The Editor of the Zoologist adds the following quotation from HARVEY’S British Algae, p. 27, however, not as an explanation of the appearances of the sea-serpent, for he was a firm believer in its existence, but only as a note to the statement of Captain SMITH and to increase the knowledge of his readers as to the existence of these large weeds. We do the same.

“The plants of this family (Laminariaceae) are almost all of large size, and many of them gigantic, greatly exceeding in bulk any other marine vegetables. The Oarweeds and Tangles of our own coasts have frequently stems six or eight feet long, and fronds expanding from their summits to as great a length; and the Seathong (Chorda) often measures forty feet in length. But these dimensions are small, compared with their kindred on the shores of the Pacific ocean. The Nereocystis, a plant of this family inhabiting the north-western shores of America, has a stem, no thicker than whipcord, but upwards of 300 feet in length, bearing at its apex a huge vesicle, six or seven feet long, shaped like a barrel, and crowned with a tuft of upwards of fifty forked leaves, each from 30 to 40 feet in length. The vesicle being filled with air, buoys up this immense frond, which lies stretched along the surface of the sea: here the sea-otter has his favoured lair, resting himself upon the vesicle, or hiding among the leaves while he pursues his fishing. The cord-like stem which anchors this floating tree must be of considerable strength; and, accordingly, we find it used as a fishing-line by the natives of the coast.”

As soon as this suggestion was published, “an officer of H. M. S. Daedalus” and Captain HARRINGTON repeated their assurances that the creatures they saw were living animals. Nay, even Rear-Admiral HAMILTON took up the cudgels for Captain HARRINGTON, upon which Captain FREDERIC SMITH wrote the following paper (The Times of 23 February 1858):

“Sir,--I beg to explain, in answer to Rear-Admiral HAMILTON, that in the water, before being divested of its extraordinary-looking appendages, the diameter of my marine capture was above three feet. Some buckets full of splendidly-coloured blue and crimson crabs, varying from the size of a shilling to that of a man’s hand, were collected from it, and that this quantity of such animal life could be furnished with a refuge in the mats of snaky-looking creatures which constituted the moving monstrous-looking external will assist those who read my account in believing what I before stated that even when the object was laid on deck we had difficulty in making out what it was. Now, sea-weeds of gigantic growth abound near the islands of the group of Tristan d’Acunha. From decay or other causes, these will from time to time be detached at the roots, and with their living attachment will then, floating horizontally, be carried by the well-known currents, into the very positions where the sea-serpent delights in exhibiting himself. It is not disputed that such was the monster picked up by the boat’s crew of my ship. I do not doubt that more monstrous specimens may be seen from time to time, and I expect that your insertion of this correspondence will cause more attention to be given to their capture than, as on board of Her Majesty’s Ship Daedalus, to the forming of “sundry guesses”, causing the observers to “settle down” to the conclusion: “This must be the animal called the sea-serpent.” Had the monster I described not been taken, I should have believed, as firmly as Captain Harrington does, that I could confirm the statement of the commander of the Daedalus and that “the animal belonged to the serpent tribe.””

“Everybody knows what different notions are generated by momentary and unexpected appearances of things as compared with the things themselves when examined. Perhaps the nostril of the Daedalus sea-serpent was seen in the recollection of one spectator, the mouth in that of another, and so on. I take leave to question the possibility of these being “most distinctly visible”, when the object at its “nearest position” was 200 yards distant, the sea getting up, and the observers travelling in an opposite direction, the passing of the two being apparently at the rate of 20 miles an hour. Naturalists will say whether an animal to answer to the habits and attributes of that in question would have a nostril.”

“I am sure that Captain Harrington, of the Castilian, saw an extraordinary object, and described it according to his impression, and having a great respect for “a first-class certificate in the mercantile marine” (as I hold a “first-class extra” myself), and also for “Sir Colin Campbell, now in the East”, to whom Capt. Harrington is so well known, I feel equally sure that, so accredited, he has published his account with no other than a good object. Nevertheless, these circumstances do not prove to me that Captain Harrington saw the sea-serpent, because that “queer fish” so very nearly and completely took me in until I took him in.”

“I am, Sir, your most obedient servant

“Fred. Smith.”

Mr. GOSSE, in his Romance of Natural History, p. 320, inquiring whether the sea-serpent is an animal at all, treats of the sea-weed hypothesis. We will let him reason himself.

“To which of the recognised classes of created beings can this huge rover of the ocean be referred? And, first, is it an animal at all? That there are immense algae in the ocean, presenting some of the characters described, has been already shown; and on two occasions an object supposed to be the “sea-serpent” proved on examination to be but a sea-weed floating; the separated and inverted roots of which, projecting in the role of the swell, seemed a head, and the fronds (in the one case), and (in the other) a number of attached barnacles, resembled a shaggy mane washed about in the water.”

“But surely it must have been a very dim and indistinct view of the floating and ducking object, which could have mistaken this for a living animal; and it would be absurd in the highest degree to presume that of such a nature could be the creatures, going rapidly through the water at ten or twelve miles an hour, with the head and neck elevated, so distinctly seen by Captain M’Quhae and Mr. Davidson, the former at two hundred, the latter at thirty five yards’ distance. We may fairly dismiss the sea-weed hypothesis.”

Again in Nature of the 12th. of September, 1872, appears the following passage which also clearly shows that by some unbelievers the sea-weed hypothesis is admitted.

“The “dead season” has brought up its usual crop of reports of the reappearance of the sea-serpent, mostly easily resolvable into masses of floating sea-weed.”

Mr. ANDREW WILSON in his Leisure Time Studies speaking of this hypothesis says:

“That a long and connected string of sea-weed, extending for some fifty or sixty feet along the surface of a sea, slightly disturbed by a rippling breeze, may be moved by the waves in a manner strongly suggestive of the movements of a snake in swimming, is a statement to the correctness of which I can bear personal testimony, and to the truth of which even observant sea-side visitors may testify. The movements of an unusually long frond or group of fronds of tangle, attached to a rock, and set in motion at low water, by a light swell, has before now, and when seen indistinctly, suggested the idea of the existence at the spot of some large denizen of the sea, browsing on the sea-weeds, with the fore part of its body, represented by the tangle fronds, occasionally appearing at the surface of the water.”

Though the writer of the following story which originally appeared in the Madras Mail, but which I take from Nature of 13th. October, 1881, does not assert that the sea-serpent may be explained in this way, I firmly believe that such was, indeed, his purpose. I also think that this was the intention of the contributor who inserted it in the columns of Nature, of the man who sent a Dutch translation of it to the Nieuws van den Dag, of 26th. Nov., 1881, and of Professor P. HARTING who republished this translation in the Album der Natuur, of 1882, p. 66.

“In a letter to the Madras Mail of September 8, on the use of gigantic sea-weed as a protective agent for shores, Capt. J. H. Taylor, the Master-superintendent of Madras, gives the following interesting “sea-serpent”-story:--“A notable incident connected with this sea-weed, is recalled to my recollection, by Dr. Furnell’s letter. About fifteen years ago, while I was in my ship at anchor in Table Bay, an enormous monster, as it appeared, was seen drifting, or advancing itself round Green Point, into the harbour. It was more than one hundred feet in length, and moved with an undulating snake-like motion. Its head was crowned with what appeared to be long hair, and the keen-sighted among the affrighted observers declared they could see its eyes and distinguish its features. The military were called out, and a brisk fire poured into it at a distance of about five hundred yards. It was hit several times, and portions of it knocked off. So serious were its evident injuries, that on its rounding the point it became quite still, and boats went off to examine it and complete its destruction. It was found to be a specimen of the sea-weed above mentioned, and its stillness after the grievous injuries inflicted was due to its having left the ground swell and entered the quiet waters of the Bay.”

It will not be necessary to point out that this hypothesis is not deserving of any notice on our part.

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The =eighteenth= explanation is attempted by Mr. A. G. MORE (see Zoologist for 1856, p. 4948). He writes as follows:

“The sea-serpent having again risen phoenix-like from the deep, in the pages of the “Zoologist”, it may perhaps be pardonable to sollicit insertion for the following attempt at explaining his reality, in some at least of the many instances of his reported appearance. Any one who has looked at the preserved remains of the great =ribband or scabbard fishes=, or who has ever read the striking accounts of the huge size they sometimes attain, as well as their extreme rarety, may, like myself, have been thus reminded of those mysterious sea-monsters which are occasionally observed by the unlearned to be no less a puzzle to learned opinion. When, too, we know that these fishes are supposed often to swim at the surface, and thus to be driven ashore more readily, when the only example of whose healthy life we have a credible account, is described as advancing head above water, and by the undulating movement of his body (Yarrell, Vol. 1. p. 177), may we not reasonably suppose that there exists other and more gigantic forms of this most interesting race as yet uncaptured, and such as might easily simulate, in the waving of their long dorsal fin, the so called “mane” of the great sea-snake.”

The ribband or scabbard fish theory is briefly treated of by Mr. GOSSE in his Romance of Natural History in the following terms: