Part 30

We observe that many so-called great sea-serpents are to be explained by reference to known animals. There are, however, a great many sea-serpents which don’t answer to the description of any known being at all, unless we venture upon a suggestion which is either wrong, forced, or premature, and which can be accepted only with a smile or a shrug of the shoulders.

Some sea-serpent explainers are in the habit of explaining one single sea-serpent, say by reference to a row of porpoises, and then try to account for others by this suggestion, the upshot of which is that the explainer does no longer see his way clear of the difficulties which beset him, and driven to his wits’ end, cuts the Gordian knot, leaving a great many sea-serpents unexplained.

Others, like Mr. GOSSE, Mr. ANDREW WILSON, and Mr. HENRY LEE, were prepossessed with opinions which made of every sea-serpent a Plesiosaurus, an extraordinarily developed Hydrophis, or a large Calamary (Architeuthis).

But none of them hit on the plan to put all the accounts, tales, and reports of this great unknown animal side by side, to point out the statements which are immediately recognizable as strange, or explicable by reference to some known animal, and finally to decide which of the known animals may have been bold enough to present itself as a deceitful serpentine creature, or, if the result is negative and leads to the conclusion that the sea-serpent does not belong to any known species of animal, to decide, what kind of animal does exist, though unknown to zoologists! And to this inquiry we pass now.

IV.

The various accounts and reports concerning observations of Sea-Serpents, chronologically arranged and thoroughly discussed; and criticisms of the papers written about the subject.

An account of the appearance of a Sea-Serpent, published in Nature of Nov. 18, 1880, induced me to make a study of that subject. A few months afterwards I wrote a little paper for the Album der Natuur, a Dutch periodical, designed to bring the latest progress and problems of Science in a very popular manner under the eyes of non-scientific readers.

In that paper I discussed the probability of the existence of an animal which was unknown to zoologists, but which nevertheless existed, and gave rise to all the narratives of the Great Sea-Serpent.

In January, 1889, I happened to come across a paper on the same subject by Mr. HENRY LEE. In this work “Sea Monsters Unmasked” the sea-serpent is explained in several manners, as having been a row of porpoises following one another, as some gigantic sea-weed, as huge calamaries, and though hesitatingly as any still unknown animal belonging to a genus of reptiles, the representatives of which are only known in the fossil state.

Having given another explanation in my above-mentioned paper, and seeing that Mr. LEE did not mention my supposition, I am now so bold as to repeat my attempt at explaining the Sea-Serpent in another manner; I have chosen the English language as being known to all zoologists and to all navigators.

The Sea-Serpents and other serpents of extraordinary dimensions, quoted by ARISTOTELES (History of Animals, Book 8, chapt. 28), PLINIUS (Naturalis Historiae, Lib. 4, cap. 23, Lib. 8, cap. 14), VALERIUS MAXIMUS (de Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus, Lib. 1, cap. 8, 1st. century), FLORUS (Lib. 2), SENECA (litt. 82), SILVIUS ITALICUS (Lib. 6), AULUS GELLIUS (Lib. 6, cap. 3), OROSIUS, ZONARES, DIODORUS SICULUS, VOLETERRANUS (Commentariorum Urbanorum libri 38, book 12), PETR. MARTYR (Decad. 1, lib. 10), BAKIUS (Posidonii Vita et Reliquiae, p. 115), AELIANUS, VERGILIUS, etc., were most probably nothing but pythons.

The various kinds of Serpens marinus alluded to by ARISTOTELES and PLINIUS, and afterwards described and figured by many other authors, evidently belong to the sea-eels, e. g. those of Père JEAN BAPTISTE LABAT in 1722, or were doubtless real sea-snakes, which reach no greater length than about twelve feet.

For these reasons we will pass all the descriptions of these different animals, and review only reports of no earlier date than the year 1500 A. D.

Having examined all the descriptions and figures of the Great Sea-Serpent published from 1500 A. D. up to this day, we come to the conclusion, as we have already stated above, that some of the so-called sea-serpents were fishes of slender form, others were cuttles of extraordinary dimensions (Cephalopoda Decapoda Chondrophora). In all these cases it is not impossible, and sometimes not difficult for a zoologist, who is familiar with these creatures and their habits, to explain those observations, but the greater part of the accounts of Great Sea-Serpents do not agree with the well-known shape of sea-weeds and cuttles, nor with the habits of porpoises. Mr. LEE tries a few times to identify the Sea-Serpent with these kinds of animals, but all who saw the sea-serpent moving with vertical undulations, and figured it thus, knew the habits of those animals, and some of them testified, that it could not have been porpoises, which they knew well enough to be sure of it. I will add here that porpoises move irregularly and have dorsal fins, which must of course be visible whenever they appear on the surface, whilst in none of the accounts mentioning the sea-serpent moving in vertical undulations, there is any question of dorsal fins visible on the coils of the sea-serpent.

But let us now pass to the accounts that have come within our reach, and peruse them in order of their date.

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=1=.--1522.--(See OLAUS MAGNUS, Historia de gentibus, etc.) “There is also another serpent of an astonishing size in an island called Moos, in the diocese of Hammer: which portends a change in the Kingdom of Norway, as a comet does in the whole world, as it was seen, anno 1522, raising itself high above the surface of the water and circling like a spire. Seen from afar this serpent was estimated by conjecture to be fifty cubits long; this event was followed by the banishment of King Christiernus and by a great persecution of the Bishops; and it also showed the destruction of the country, as Isidorus tells us of the birds of Diomedes.”

In the original Latin we read atque in modum sphaerae convolvens (and wrinkling like a ball), but as this has no sense, I am convinced that we have to do with a misprint, and that the author evidently wrote atque in modum spirae convolvens, which I have translated above “and circling like a spire”. This evidently signifies that the observer saw the animal swimming with vertical undulations, parts of which were visible above the surface of the water.

Further we must direct our attention to the statement that the animal raised itself high above the surface of the water.

Finally that it was estimated to be fifty cubits long, i. e. about seventy-five feet.

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OLAUS MAGNUS, the Archbishop of Upsala wrote in 1555 as follows:

“They who, either to trade, or to fish, sail along the shores of Norway, relate with concurring evidence a truly admirable story, namely that a very large serpent of a length of upwards of 200 feet, and 20 feet in diameter lives in rocks and holes near the shore of Bergen; it comes out of its caverns only on summernights and in fine weather to devour calves, lambs and hogs, or goes into the sea to eat cuttles, lobsters and all kinds of sea-crabs. It has a row of hairs of two feet in length, hanging from the neck, sharp scales of a dark colour, and brilliant flaming eyes. It attacks boats, and snatches away the men, by raising itself high out of the water, and devours them: and commonly this does not happen without a terrible event in the Kingdom, without a change being at hand, either that the princes will die or will be banished, or that a war will soon break out.”

This narrative tells us that the sea-serpent frequents the shores of Norway, that it appears mostly in summer, that it has large dimensions, and a considerable thickness. It has a row of hairs hanging down from its neck, its colour is dark, its eyes are brilliant and flaming. It only appears in fine weather.

We consider its devouring hogs, lambs and calves, and its appearance on summernights on land to take its prey to be a fable. The eating of squids, cuttles, crabs and lobsters may be a fiction, or it may have been truly witnessed, the animal chewing them with its head above water, as seals and sea-lions do. The story of snatching away a man from the ships is evidently confounded with another tale, as it is not mentioned anywhere else with regard to the sea-serpent. It evidently refers to gigantic calamaries which occasionally attack boats and snatch away one of the crew. (See LEE, Sea Monsters Unmasked, I, The Kraken.). Its being covered with scales must be fictitious too, for they who saw a sea-serpent at a short distance, are unanimous in stating that it had no scales but a smooth skin.

On the same page of the text, OLAUS MAGNUS has figured a sea-serpent in the act of swallowing a man from a boat, which has just anchored on a rock, wherein the serpent has its hole. I give a facsimile of that figure in Fig. 14.--Mr. HENRY LEE who mostly sees calamaries and no other animals in the tales and figures representing the Great Sea-Serpent, tells us that: “the presumed body of the serpent was one of the arms of the squid, and the two rows of suckers thereto belonging are indicated in the illustration by the medial line traversing its whole length (intended to represent a dorsal fin) and the double row of transverse septa, one on each side of it”.--As to the snatching away a man of the crew, I quite agree with Mr. LEE, as already said above, but as to the figure of the serpent itself, I am strongly convinced that OLAUS MAGNUS or his draughtsman had no other intention than to delineate a large snake, and they gave it the large scales, mentioned in the text, but the scales are badly drawn. They further gave it a medial row of scales, as all snakes have such a medial row.

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GESNER in his Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, 1560, gives two figures of the sea-serpent of which I give facsimiles in Fig. 15 and 16.--GESNER says that there is a large map of Scandinavia in OLAUS MAGNUS’ work, and on this map our fig. 15 is drawn in the Baltic Sea, and our fig. 16 in the Atlantic Ocean. In the original edition of 1555 there is but a small map of Scandinavia, which shows only the heads of several animals in the sea. I therefore conclude that there still exists another edition of MAGNUS’ work which I don’t know. Returning to our figures we immediately observe that the drawer has delineated large snakes, the one without scales, and swimming with vertical undulations, the other with large scales, and that he did not intend to represent a dorsal fin by the medial line, but only a medial row of scales, unequal to the lateral. On the head three transversal rows of protuberances are visible, which evidently serve to represent the long hairs hanging down from the neck of the animal.