Part 73

“The very interesting account of the sea-serpent seen by Captain M’Quhae, and the drawing in your paper, are to my mind quite satisfactory as to the existence of the animal, and I have no doubt we shall hear of his being again seen sooner or later. But my object in writing to you is to remark on the conclusions come to by Mr. Owen, in his letter to the Editor of the Times, of November 9th., that it was not of the serpent species, because “they failed to detect any undulations of the body”, whereas the fact of there being “no vertical or horizontal undulations perceptible” stamps the character of the animal; for it is well known by all observers of snakes in India, that when the animal is in chase of game, small or great, or when scared away, and moving at a rapid pace, he is propelled entirely by the tail, or the smaller half of the body, while the other portion, with a curve of the head, is kept quite stiff--and this exactly corresponds with the Captain’s account, that it held on at the pace of twelve to fifteen miles an hour, apparently on some determined purpose.”

In May, 1854, Dr. T. S. TRAILL read a paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, comparing the animal of the Daedalus, with the Animal of Stronsa. The part of his dissertation concerning the present occurrence runs as follows:

“In their statements there are no suspicious affectations of minute detail. Their simple narrative appears to deserve more attention than it has yet received from naturalists; and I strongly incline to the belief, that the animal seen by the crew of the Daedalus was an analogue of, if not the very same species, as the animal cast ashore in Orkney in 1808.”

“Considering the derision with which, in this country, the subject of the sea-serpent has been treated, and the ridicule attempted to be thrown on all who were bold enough to assert that they had seen such an animal, nothing but a consciousness of his unimpeachable veracity could have tempted the gallant Captain M’QUHAE to encounter the sneers of his incredulous countrymen. From all I have heard of his character for sagacity and veracity, from those who intimately knew him, I have not the smallest doubt that he has faithfully described what he and his crew saw distinctly, and at a short distance from the ship.”

“It was seen rapidly approaching before the beam.” Captain M’Quhae says: “On our attention being called to the object, it was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea. The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches behind the head; its colour of a dark brown, with yellowish-white about the throat.”

“The Captain could discover no fins, but “something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about its back.” He thought that its head did certainly resemble that of a snake; but the drawing which he transmitted to the Admiralty has not, to the eye of a naturalist, the form of that of any snake. The figure published in the Illustrated London News for October 28, 1848, is said to be an accurate copy of that drawing.”

“Captain M’Quhae estimates the length of its body at the surface of the water, “à fleur d’eau, at the very least equal to sixty feet, no part of which was to our perception used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulations. It passed rapidly, but so close under our quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance, I should easily have recognized his features with the naked eye, and it did not, either in approaching the ship, or after it had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the S. W., which it held on at the pace of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, apparently on some determined purpose.”

“If we may judge from the engraving, the cranium is very convex, of moderate size, with a short obtuse muzzle, a mouth reaching beyond the eye; which last organ is round, and of a moderate size. The surface of the body is represented as smooth, and destitute of scales--of which they were enabled to judge, because it passed close under the quarter of the ship. It was in sight for twenty minutes.”

“The description certainly does not belong to any Ophidian; and as certainly militates against an opinion thrown out by Mr. Owen, that it might be a specimen of the leonine seal, which has, it is alleged, occasionally reached those latitudes. The leonine seal never exceeds twenty-five feet in length, and such would have a circumference at its shoulders of twenty feet, while this appears to be eel-shaped, with a diameter of not more than fifteen or sixteen inches behind the head; the mane too, of the male of the leonine seal extends only over the head and neck; but in the other, it extended down the back.”

“With all deference to so eminent a naturalist as Mr. Owen, I humbly conceive that his conjecture respecting the identity of Captain M’QUHAE’s animal with the leonine seal, is not more probable than Home’s identification of the Basking shark with the Orkney animal.”

“Both M’QUHAE’s and the Orkney animal would appear to be a cartilaginous fish, totally different from any genus known to naturalists.”

Three years afterwards Captain HARRINGTON’s report (n^o. 131) was published in the Times. Some days afterwards Captain FREDERIC SMITH published his encounter with a sea-serpent, which after being harpooned and hoisted on board, proved to be a piece of a gigantic sea-weed, and the sea-serpents of the Daedalus and of Captain HARRINGTON were in his opinion undoubtedly pieces of the same kind of weed.

Now “An Officer of Her Majesty’s Ship Daedalus felt obliged to state again that it was a living animal. As in this letter further particulars of the animal are mentioned, I insert it here in toto, (The Times of Febr. 16th., 1858):

“Sir,--Observing in your paper of yesterday’s date a letter from a correspondent to the marine animal commonly called the “sea-serpent”, in the concluding paragraph of which he mentions that he has no doubt the object seen from Her Majesty’s Ship Daedalus in the month of August, 1848, when on the passage from the Cape of Good-Hope to St. Helena, was a piece of the same sea-weed observed by himself, I beg to state that the object seen from her Majesty’s ship was, beyond all question, a living animal, moving rapidly through the water against a cross sea, and within five points of a fresh breeze, with such velocity that the water was surging under its chest, as it passed along at a rate probably of ten miles per hour. Captain M’QUHAE’s first impulse was to tack in pursuit, ourselves being on a wind on the larboard tack, when he reflected that we could neither lay up for it nor overhaul it in speed. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to observe it as accurately as we could with our glasses, as it came up under our lee quarter and passed away to windward, at its nearest position being not more than two hundred yards from us; the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour and form, all being most distinctly visible to us. We all felt greatly astonished at what we saw, though there were sailors among us of thirty and forty years’ standing, who had traversed most seas and seen many marvels in their day. The captain was the first to exclaim: “This must be that animal called the sea-serpent”, a conclusion which, after sundry guesses, we all at last settled down to. My impression was that it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine character, as its movement was steady and uniform, as if propelled by fins, not by any undulatory power. It was in sight, from our first observing it, about ten minutes, as we were fast leaving one another on opposite tacks with a freshening breeze and the sea getting up.”

“I feel, Sir, I have already occupied more of your time and space than is justifiable, and have the honour to remain your obedient servant,

“An Officer of Her Majesty’s ship Daedalus.”

Now let us run over all the prominent important particulars in the reports of the appearance of the sea-serpent as seen from the Daedalus. The first report, which appeared in the Times of October, 9, 1848, contains the description of the mouth: “and when it extended its jaws, which were full of large and jagged teeth, they seemed sufficiently capacious to admit of a tall man standing upright between them.” It is not said from whom the report came, nor is it signed. All the details, except this last, were afterwards substantiated by Captain M’QUHAE himself and by Lieutenant DRUMMOND. To me it seems quite impossible that the head was longer than three feet; as the neck is estimated at 16 inches in diameter, or one foot and a third, the breadth of the head, according to what we already know of the relative dimensions, cannot have been more than about two feet, and the length not more than about three feet. So the jaws, when extended, may open the mouth to about one and a half or two feet, a space which never can admit “of a tall man standing upright between them!”

The animal seen by the captain and some of the officers and crew of the Daedalus, was as follows: It swam with its body in a straight line. About sixty feet of its body were visible. Its head appeared to be about four feet out of the water. The part of the body hidden under water was estimated at thirty feet at least. The diameter of the neck behind the head was estimated at one foot and a third. When the animal opened its mouth, large jagged teeth were seen. “It moved with such velocity that the water was surging under its chest” (read throat, for the very chest, situated between the foreflappers, was invisible and much farther back). The head and a portion of the neck (Captain M’QUHAE says, though without any reason, shoulders) were kept above the surface of the sea. The animal was, during the time it was in sight, never once below the surface. Lieutenant DRUMMOND, however, says: the head disappeared occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval. The colour of the animal was a dark brown, with yellowish white under the throat. Something like the mane of a horse, or rather like a bunch of sea-weed, washed about its back. Though the Captain says: it had no fins. Lieutenant DRUMMOND stated, that there was “a backfin” which was perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head, “and visible occasionally”. If this were a true back-fin, it ought to have been constantly visible. As, however, it was only occasionally seen, we conclude that it was nothing else but one of the animal’s foreflappers, occasionally coming above the surface of the water. “The captain also asserted that he saw the tail, or another fin about the same distance behind it.” This of course must have been one of the animal’s hind flappers. Lieutenant DRUMMOND must have been mistaken as to the length of the head, which he described as “perhaps ten feet.” His calculation evidently includes a portion of the neck. The head moreover was rather pointed, rather blunt, flattened at the top; the upper-jaw projecting considerably. He too, uses the terms of shoulders in saying: “the upper part of the head and shoulders appeared of a dark brown colour, and beneath the under-jaw a brownish-white.”

The three figures are tolerably well drawn; in fact they are the best of all the sketches ever made of this animal. They are as if they were delineated after the description above, but they were in reality “made from a sketch taken immediately after the animal was seen.” Here, as in foregoing reports, the figures and the text complete one another. The head is not that of a serpent, but that of a mammal. The proportions of length and height, the outlines of the jaws, the length of the mouth-split, the exact place of the eye, even the flattened appearance of forehead and nose are true mammalian characters. No whiskers or bristles on the upper-lips, and no ears or earholes are drawn, or mentioned. The distance, when nearest, was about one hundred yards. It is clear that they were not visible at that distance. The nostrils are indicated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle, and are afterwards mentioned as having been visible.

In short, the descriptions as well as the figures agree with our present notion of the external appearance of the animal, known as the sea-serpent. I only wish to point out here that in none of the three figures the head can boast of great correctness; for such a head would never have been described as resembling that of a snake. It is clear that it is drawn too high, too short and not flat enough.

I will insert here a single remark on a passage in Prof. OWEN’s reply. It is the following: Prof. OWEN rejects the existence of the sea-serpent in the Norwegian Seas. “Few sea-coasts have been more sedulously searched, or by more acute naturalists (witness the labours of Sars and Lovén) than those of Norway. Krakens and sea-serpents ought to have been living and dying thereabouts from long before Pontoppidan’s time to our day, if all tales were true; yet they have never vouchsafed a single fragment of the skeleton to any Scandinavian collector.” It may be true that Mssrs. SARS and LOVÉN often navigated along the coasts of Norway and yet never saw a sea-serpent. Prof. OWEN forgets that his own countryman, Mr. MORRIES STIRLING, saw one with his own eyes! Is this proof not decisive enough? The absence of remains is not a proof of the non-existence of the sea-serpent, as there are whales with two backfins, which are seen by three different naturalists, yet not one single bone has ever fallen under the notice of zoologists. Prof. OWEN also mentions the Kraken. Now my readers know well enough that the Krakens are abundant enough, being gigantic calamaries; it is, however, possible that before the year 1848 there was no official report of such a calamary. At present, however, they may be found by scores! It may be remarked here, too, that it was not before the year 1861, that a piece of a Kraken, or gigantic calamary, was brought to Paris by the commander of the Alecton, nota bene notwithstanding Prof. OWEN’s assertion that they did not exist, as else the naturalists of Norway, and amongst them especially SARS and LOVÉN, would have found them!!

Of course it was impossible that the statement of Capt. M’QUHAE agreed in details with that of Lieutenant DRUMMOND, because the latter was immediately written after the appearance of Aug. 6th., whilst the letter of Captain M’QUHAE was addressed to the Admiralty on the 11th. of October, two months afterwards and apparently written from memory.

Mr. ANDREW WILSON in his Leisure Time Studies says of the “fin” mentioned by Lieutenant DRUMMOND:

“This fin evidently corresponds to the structure described in the captain’s report as “something like a mane of a horse”, and which the introduction of the word “like” (as I have inserted it in parentheses after the word “rather” in his description) serves to correlate with the “bunch of sea-weed” which “washed about its back”.”

I believe to have clearly shown that the “fin” of Lieutenant DRUMMOND was nothing but one of the animal’s fore-flappers and the other fin, “twenty feet more backward”, was one of the animal’s hind-flappers, and I believe that I may express my conviction that Mr. ANDREW WILSON was just as wrong in supposing this, as in his conviction that the sea-serpent of Captain M’QUHAE was merely an extraordinarily developed sea-snake! A few pages further on, viz., the writer of Leisure Time Studies, quoting the report of Captain M’QUHAE says:

“The idea that the animal observed in this instance was a huge serpent, seems to have been simply slurred over without that due attention, which this hypothesis undoubtedly merits.” (!)

And on the following page:

“Suppose that a sea-snake of gigantic size is carried out of ordinary latitude, and allow for slight variations and inaccuracies in the accounts given by Captain M’Quhae, and I think we have in these ideas the nearest possible approach to a reasonable solution of this interesting problem.” (!!)