Part 78

“Captain Claxton, R. N., of the Priory, Battersea, is a personal friend of mine. I am also well known to Sir Colin Campbell, who is now in the East. My present ship is 1604 tons new measurement, and a new ship, of which I own a good part myself. There are, therefore, many reasons (in addition to my holding a first-class certificate in the mercantile marine) to hinder me from propagating a report which can do me no good, and, if untrue, do injury to science in the room of assisting it to elicit the truth in so important a matter as the discovery of the inhabitants of the deep.”

“I shall be in town for three or four days in the early part of next week. A letter addressed to me at the Jerusalem Coffee-House will meet with attention, and, if my limited time permit, I should be glad to have an interview with yourself, or any of your friends who might wish to have a verbal explanation in this matter.”

“I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient servant

“G. H. Harrington.”

“To Rear-Admiral W. A. B. Hamilton”

This letter was again answered in a very witty way in the Times of Febr. 23, 1858; this however, will be inserted in our chapter on Explanations.

In the Zoologist for 1858, p. 6015, Mr. ALFRED CHARLES SMITH, an old acquaintance of ours (p. 299) now wrote the following remark:

“To one who firmly believes in the existence of some huge marine monster of the serpent-form, such as the Northmen love to descant upon (and I am not ashamed to own to such credulity, as I have already declared in my Notes on Norway (Zool. 3229)), the clear and minute account of Capt. Harrington, on the sea-monster which he and twenty people saw on the 12th of December last, off the coast of St. Helena, was exceedingly interesting; nor did the subsequent letter of Mr. F. Smith tend to shake my belief in the accuracy of Capt. Harrington’s statement, the particulars of the two alleged appearances being so very different. I am not, however, about to argue the point, the premises before us being far too unsatisfactory and vague to argue from. I merely write to express my hope that as you have admitted the first correspondence on the subject to the pages of the Zoologist, you will give both parties fair play, and insert the remaining letters, which appeared in the Times of February 16th and 23 respectively, copies of which I enclose, so that naturalists may have an opportunity of studying the case in all its bearings, before they form their conclusions.--Alfred Charles Smith; Yatesbury Rectory, Calne, March 5, 1858.”

Of course, it was but natural that also foreign newspapers should take great delight in this polemic. So we find in the Revue Britannique, of 1858, n^o 2, Febr. p. 496, an article full of erroneous statements:

“Amongst the grave questions of the day, we did not think of meeting again, in the newspapers, with the famous sea-serpent, the problematic existence of which seemed to be banished to the world of apocryphal, or at least antediluvian animals; but no! three new eye-witnesses declare to have seen it, and very well too. Now a Captain Smith, of Newcastle, writes that he is convinced that these witnesses have been illuded, as he himself was on the 28th. of December, 1848, when after believing to see through his telescope an extraordinary monster, and after lowering the great net of the ship, he drew in only a gigantic sea-weed of twenty feet in length, which really had the form, attributed to the fantastic reptile. This indirect refutation, however, does not discourage the Rear-Admiral Harrington (imagine, a Rear-Admiral!) who in a second article in the Times, repeats that he is sure of the fact, that he has seen the sea-serpent twenty fathoms from his ship, that he has recognized it, as if he would have recognized a whale on the side of a porpoise, that his wife, who was on board, has seen it with him, as had his two officers, in short, that he will come to London, as soon as he has terminated his business at Liverpool, and will furnish all evidences demanded by science and scepticism. If he had only brought home the animal’s tail or one of its fins!”

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=132=.--1858, January 26.--The Illustrated London News of March 20, 1858, mentions:

“The following is a report made by Captain Suckling, of the ship Carnatic, of London, of a Sea Serpent seen by him between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena:--“On the 26th of January, in latitude 19°10′ S., long 10°6′ W., about 5 minutes after noon, my attention was called by Captain Shuttleworth, a passenger on board the Carnatic to a large spar sticking out of the water one end some thirty feet above the level of the sea. It appeared to me to be the lower mast of some wrecked vessel, and having the glass in my hand, with which I had been looking at an American vessel in sight, I examined it narrowly. It seemed to be passing very rapidly to the eastward, having altered its bearings several points in the course of a few minutes, when it suddenly disappeared, and came up shortly afterwards astern of the ship. It was seen by all those on deck at the time, and it is their opinion, as well as my own, that it was an enormous sea-serpent. The American ship A. B. Thompson from Bombay to London, was in company at the time--wind light and variable, with clear weather”.--We have not space for the Sketch obligingly sent with this account”.

The comparison with a spar, an unwrought spar, or spruce, a log of timber, etc., has been made more than once, as the reader will remember, and when we compare the figures, drawn by an officer of H. M. S. Plumper (fig. 31), and by Major SENIOR (fig. 46), we can easily imagine, that in this position the animal must have illuded the observers more than once. It is a pity that the sketch has not been published. How many interesting drawings have in this way got into the paper-basket!

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In 1860 Mr. P. H. GOSSE published his Romance of Natural History, First Series. The last chapter of this volume is entitled “the Great Unknown” and is entirely devoted to the Great Sea-Serpent. His manner of teaching Natural History to his readers was, as the able writer says himself, a poetical one. “In my many years’ wandering through the wide field of Natural History, I have always felt towards it something of a poet’s heart, though destitute of a poet’s genius”. I can recommend every zoologist and botanist to read his work in his leasure hours; I have read it with great interest and pleasure, increasing my knowledge, wandering with the writer from north to south and from east to west, from one pole to the other and from continents to the greatest depths of the ocean!

The sea-serpent’s question was such a favourite one of this romantic naturalist, that in his preface he wrote the following about it:

“If I may venture to point out one subject on which I have bestowed more than usual pains, and which I myself regard with more than common interest, it is that of the last chapter in this volume. An amount of evidence is adduced for the existence of the sub-mythic monster popularly known as “the sea-serpent”, such as has never been brought together before, and such as ought almost to set doubt at rest. But the cloudy uncertainty which has invested the very being of this creature; its home on the lone ocean; the fitful way in which it is seen and lost in its vast solitudes; its dimensions, vaguely gigantic; its dragon-like form; and the possibility of its association with beings considered to be lost in an obsolete antiquity;--all these are attributes which render it peculiarly precious to a romantic naturalist. I hope the statisticians will forgive me if they cannot see it with my spectacles.”

His chapter on the sea-serpent will also be read with great interest. But there are several facts which he seems not to have been able to explain. In describing the animal, seen near Cape Ann, 1817, he writes: “no appearance of mane was seen by any”, without giving any explanation; he has evidently underlined these words to draw the readers’ attention to this evidence, which is so quite contradictory to others, mentioned before and afterwards. On the same page (p. 284) when repeating the expression of one of the eye-witnesses “the mode of progression was like that of a caterpillar”, Mr. Gosse inserts his opinion in the following terms: “probably a looping or geometric caterpillar”. Now my readers will be at one with me, that the motion of the geometric caterpillar is the last with which that of the sea-serpent can be compared! The rapid motion of a common caterpillar of some butterfly, when tickled on its back part, will give the best idea.

The writer further tries to throw discredit on reports of Americans. He says (p. 287):

“Though the position and character of some of these witnesses add weight to their testimony, and seem to preclude the possibility of their being either deceived or deceivers, on a matter which depended on the use of their eyes, yet, owing to a habit prevalent in the United States, of supposing that there is somewhat of wit in gross exaggerations, or hoaxing inventions, we do naturally look with a lurking suspicion on American statements, when they describe unusual or disputed phenomena.”

I, however, am of the contrary opinion, and may turn his words in the following way: Though we generally and naturally look with a lurking suspicion on American statements, when they describe unusual or disputed phenomena, owing to a habit prevalent in the United States, of supposing that there is somewhat of wit in gross exaggerations, or hoaxing inventions, we are bound to admit all that is stated by such persons of unimpeachable character as Col. PERKINS and others, whose testimonies we have inserted in our papers. They evidently communicated what they saw, without any exaggeration and without any tendency to crack a joke or to hoax.

Again p. 318 of his work, after having treated of only a few of the different reports, that had come in up to his days (1860) Mr. GOSSE goes on in the following terms:

“A large mass of evidence has been accumulated; and I now set myself to examine it. In so doing, I shall eliminate from the inquiry all the testimony of Norwegian eye-witnesses, that obtained in Massachusetts in 1817, and various statements made by French and American captains since. Confining myself to English witnesses of known character and position, most of them being officers under the Crown, I have adduced the following testimonies.”

Here again I must point out that there is not a single reason to exclude all testimonies not coming from British navigators. With such reasoning Mr. GOSSE makes himself ridiculous in the eyes of all reasonable persons of his own and of other nations! That it is wrong to exclude reports, because they are of Americans or Norwegians, the reader himself will be ready to admit, I think, after having read the different reports mentioned in this volume.

“The following testimonies” now, alluded to by Mr. GOSSE, are:

“1. That of five British officers, who saw the animal at Halifax, N. S., in 1833” (n^o. 97).

“2. That of Captain M’Quhae and his officers, who saw it from the Daedalus in 1848,” (n^o. 118).