Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained Part 3

The appearance of so many of these great squids on the sh.o.r.es of Newfoundland during the term of seven years, and after so long a period of popular uncertainty as to their very existence had previously elapsed, might lead one to suppose that the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean which wash the north-eastern coasts of the American Continent were, at any rate, temporarily, their princ.i.p.al habitat, especially as a smaller member of their family, _Ommastrephes sagittatus_, is there found in such extraordinary numbers that it furnishes the greater part of the bait used in the Newfoundland cod fisheries. But that they are by no means confined to this locality is proved by recent instances, as well as by those already cited.

Dr. F. Hilgendorf records[20] observations of a huge squid exhibited for money at Yedo, j.a.pan, in 1873, and of another of similar size, which he saw exposed for sale in the Yedo fish market.

[20] 'Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin,' pp. 65-67, quoted by Professor Owen, _op. cit._

When the French expedition was sent to the Island of St. Paul, in 1874, for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, which occurred on the 9th of December in that year, it was fortunately accompanied by an able zoologist, M. Ch. Velain. He reports[21] that on the 2nd of November a tidal wave cast upon the north sh.o.r.e of the island a great calamary which measured in total length nearly 23 feet, namely: length of body 7 feet; length of tentacles 16 feet. There are several points of interest connected with its generic characters, and M. Velain's grounds for regarding it as being of a previously unknown species, but they are too technical for discussion here. This specimen was photographed as it lay upon the beach by M. Cazin, the photographer to the expedition.

[21] 'Comptes Rendus,' t. 80, 1875, p. 998.

The following account of the still more recent capture of a large squid off the west coast of Ireland was given in the _Zoologist_ of June 1875, by Sergeant Thomas O'Connor, of the Royal Irish Constabulary:--

"On the 26th of April, 1875, a very large calamary was met with on the north-west of Boffin Island, Connemara. The crew of a 'curragh'

(a boat made like the 'coracle,' with wooden ribs covered with tarred canvas) observed to seaward a large floating ma.s.s, surrounded by gulls. They pulled out to it, believing it to be wreck, but to their astonishment found it was an enormous cuttle-fish, lying perfectly still, as if basking on the surface of the water. Paddling up with caution, they lopped off one of its arms. The animal immediately set out to sea, rushing through the water at a tremendous pace. The men gave chase, and, after a hard pull in their frail canvas craft, came up with it, five miles out in the open Atlantic, and severed another of its arms and the head.

These portions are now in the Dublin Museum. The shorter arms measure, each, eight feet in length, and fifteen inches round the base: the tentacular arms are said to have been thirty feet long.

The body sank."

Finally, there is in our own national collection, preserved in spirit in a tall gla.s.s jar, a single arm of a huge cephalopod, which, by the kindness and courtesy of the officers of the department, I was permitted to examine and measure when I first described it, in May, 1873. It is 9 feet long, and 12 inches in circ.u.mference at the base, tapering gradually to a fine point. It has about 300 suckers, pedunculated, or set on tubular footstalks, placed alternately in two rows, and having serrated, h.o.r.n.y rings, but no hooks; the diameter of the largest of these rings is half an inch; the smallest is not larger than a pin's head. This is one of the eight shorter, or pedal, and not one of the long, or tentacular, arms of the calamary to which it belonged. The relative length of the arms to that of the body and tentacles varies in different genera of the _Teuthidae_, and it is not impossible that this may be the case even in individuals of the same species. But, judging from the proportions of known examples, I estimate the length of the tentacles at 36 feet, and that of the body at from 10 to 11 feet: total length 47 feet. The beak would probably have been about 5 inches long from hinge socket to point, and the diameter of the largest suckers of the tentacles about 1 inch. So much for De Montfort's "suckers as big as saucepan-lids." From a well defined fold of skin which spreads out from each margin of that surface of the arm over which the suckers are situated, Professor Owen has given to this calamary the generic name of _Plectoteuthis_, with the specific t.i.tle of _grandis_ to indicate its enormous size. No history relating to this interesting specimen has been preserved. No one knows its origin, nor when it was received, but Dr.

Gray told me that he believed it came from the east coast of South America. It has, however, long formed part of the stores of the British Museum, and, although previously open to public view, was more recently for many years kept in the bas.e.m.e.nt chambers of the old building in Bloomsbury, which were irreverently called by the initiated "the spirit vaults and bottle department," because fishes, mollusca, &c., preserved in spirits were there deposited. I hope the public will have greater facility of access to it in the new Museum.

Here, then, in our midst, and to be seen by all who ask permission to inspect it, is, and has long been, a limb of a great cephalopod capable of upsetting a boat, or of hauling a man out of her, or of clutching one engaged in sc.r.a.ping a ship's side, and dragging him under water, as described by the old master-mariner Magnus Dens. The tough, supple tentacles, shot forth with lightning rapidity, would be long enough to reach him at a distance of a dozen yards, and strong enough to drag him within the grasp of the eight shorter arms, a helpless victim to the mandibles of a beak sufficiently powerful to tear him in pieces and crush some of his smaller bones. For, once within that dreadful embrace, his escape, unaided, would be impossible. The clinging power of this _Plectoteuthis_ is so enormously augmented by the additional surface given by the expanded folds to the under side of the arms, that I doubt if even one of the smaller whales, such as the "White Whale," or the "Pilot Whale," could extricate itself from their combined hold, if those eight supple, clammy, adhesive arms, each 9 feet long, and 5 inches in diameter at the base on the flat under surface, and armed with a battery of 2400 suckers, were once fairly lapped around it.

Ought it to surprise us, then, that an uneducated seafaring population, such as the fishermen of Fridrichstad, mentioned by Pontoppidan, absolutely ignorant of the habits and affinities, and even unacquainted with the real external form of such a creature, should exaggerate its dimensions and invest it with mystery? All that they knew of it was that whilst their friends and neighbours, whom we will call Eric Paulsen, Hans Ohlsen, and Olaf Bruhn were out fishing one calm day, a shapeless "something" rose just above the surface of the tranquil sea not far from their boat. They could see that there was much more of its bulk under water, but how far it extended they could not ascertain. Mistrusting its appearance, and with foreboding of danger, they were about to get up their anchor, when, suddenly, from thirty feet away, a rope was shot on board which fastened itself on Hans; he was dragged from amongst them towards the strange floating ma.s.s; there was a commotion; from the foaming sea upreared themselves, as it seemed to Eric and Olaf, several writhing serpents, which twined themselves around Hans; and as they gazed, helpless, in horror and bewilderment, the monster sank, and with a mighty swirl the waters closed for ever over their unfortunate companion. The men would naturally hasten home, and describe the dreadful incident--their imagination excited by its mysterious nature; the tale would spread through the district, losing nothing by repet.i.tion, and within a week the fabled Kraken would be the result.

The existence, in almost every sea, of calamaries capable of playing their part in such a scene has been fully proved, and this vexed question of marine zoology set at rest for ever. The "much greater light on this subject," which, as Pontoppidan sagaciously foresaw, was "reserved for posterity," has been thrown upon it by the discoveries of the last few years; and the "further experience which is always the best instructor," and which he correctly antic.i.p.ated would be possessed by the "future writers," to whom he bequeathed the completion of his "sketch," has been obtained. Viewed by their aid, and seen in the clearer atmosphere of our present knowledge, the great sea-monster which loomed so indefinitely vast in the mist of ignorance and superst.i.tion, stands revealed in its true form and proportions--its magnitude reduced, its outline distinct, and its mystery gone--and we recognise in the supposed Kraken, as the Norwegian bishop rightly conjectured that we should, an animal "of the Polypus (or cuttle) kind, and amongst the largest inhabitants of the ocean."

THE GREAT SEA SERPENT.

The belief in the existence of sea-serpents of formidable dimensions is of great antiquity. Aristotle, writing about B.C. 340, says[22]:--"The serpents of Libya are of an enormous size. Navigators along that coast report having seen a great quant.i.ty of bones of oxen, which they believe, without doubt, to have been devoured by the serpents. These serpents pursued them when they left the sh.o.r.e, and upset one of their triremes"--a vessel of a large cla.s.s, having three banks of oars.

[22] 'History of Animals,' book 8, chap. 28.

Pliny tells us[23] that a squadron sent by Alexander the Great on a voyage of discovery, under the command of Onesicritus and Nearchus, encountered, in the neighbourhood of some islands in the Persian Gulf, sea-serpents thirty feet long, which filled the fleet with terror.

[23] 'Naturalis Historiae,' Lib. vi., cap. 23.

Valerius Maximus,[24] quoting Livy, describes the alarm into which, during the Punic wars, the Romans, under Attilius Regulus (who was afterwards so cruelly put to death by the Carthaginians), were thrown by an aquatic, though not marine, serpent which had its lair on the banks of the Bagrados, near Ithaca. It is said to have swallowed many of the soldiers, after crushing them in its folds, and to have kept the army from crossing the river, till at length, being invulnerable by ordinary weapons, it was destroyed by heavy stones hurled by balistas, catapults, and other military engines used in those days for casting heavy missiles, and battering the walls of fortified towns. According to the historian, the annoyance caused by it to the army did not cease with its death, for the water was polluted with its gore, and the air with the noxious fumes from its corrupted carcase, to such a degree that the Romans were obliged to remove their camp. They, however secured the animal's skin and skull, which were preserved in a temple at Rome till the time of the Numantine war. This combat has been described, to the same effect, by Florus (lib. ii.), Seneca (litt. 82), Silvius Italicus (l. vi.), Aulus Gellius (lib. vi., cap. 3), Orosius, Zonaras, &c., and is referred to by Pliny (lib. viii., cap. 14) as an incident known to every one. Diodorus Siculus also tells of a great serpent, sixty feet long, which lived chiefly in the water, but landed at frequent intervals to devour the cattle in its neighbourhood. A party was collected to capture it; but their first attempt failed, and the monster killed twenty of them. It was afterwards taken in a strong net, carried alive to Alexandria, and presented to King Ptolemy II., the founder of the Alexandrian Library and Museum, who was a great collector of zoological and other curiosities. This snake was probably one of the great boas.

[24] 'De Factis, Dictisque Memorabilibus,' Lib. i., cap. 8, 1st century.

The "_Serpens marinus_" is figured and referred to by many other writers, but as they evidently allude to the Conger and the Murena, we will pa.s.s over their descriptions.

The sea-serpents mentioned by Aristotle, Pliny, and Diodorus were, doubtless, real sea-snakes, true marine ophidians, which are more common in tropical seas than is generally supposed. They are found most abundantly in the Indian Ocean; but they have an extensive geographical range, and between forty and fifty species of them are known. They are all highly poisonous, and some are so ferocious that they more frequently attack than avoid man. The greatest length to which they are authentically known to attain is about twelve feet. The form and structure of these _hydrophides_ are modified from those of land serpents, to suit their aquatic habits. The tail is compressed vertically, flattened from the sides, so as to form a fin like the tail of an eel, by which they propel themselves; but instead of tapering to a point, it is rounded off at the end, like the blade of a paper-knife, or the scabbard of a cavalry sabre. Like other lung-breathing animals which live in water, they are also provided with a respiratory apparatus adapted to their circ.u.mstances and requirements--their nostrils, which are very small, being furnished, like those of the seal, manatee, &c., with a valve opening at will to admit air, and closing perfectly to exclude water.

Leaving these water-snakes of the tropics, we come, next in order of date, upon some very remarkable evidence that there was current amongst a community where we should little expect to find it, the idea of a marine monster corresponding in many respects with some of the descriptions given several centuries later of the sea-serpent. In an interesting article on the Catacombs of Rome in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_ of February 3rd, 1872, allusion is made by the author to the collection of sarcophagi or coffins of the early Christians, removed from the Catacombs, and preserved in the museum of the Lateran Palace, where they were arranged by the late Padre Marchi for Pope Pius IX.

There are more than twenty of these, sculptured with various designs--the Father and the Son, Adam and Eve and the Serpent, the Sacrifice of Abraham, Moses striking the Rock, Daniel and the Lions, and other Scripture themes. Amongst them also is Jonah and the "whale." A facsimile of this sculpture (Fig. 11) is one of the ill.u.s.trations of the article referred to. It will be seen that Jonah is being swallowed feet foremost, or possibly being ejected head first, by an enormous sea monster, having the chest and fore-legs of a horse, a long arching neck, with a mane at its base, near the shoulders, a head like nothing in nature, but having hair upon and beneath the cheeks, the hinder portion of the body being that of a serpent of prodigious length, undulating in several vertical curves. This sculpture appears to have been cut between the beginning and the middle of the third century, about A.D. 230, but it probably represents a tradition of far greater antiquity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.--JONAH AND THE SEA MONSTER.

_From the Catacombs of Rome._]

We will now consider the accounts given by Scandinavian historians, of the sea-serpent having been seen in northern waters. Here, I suppose, I ought to indulge in the usual flippant sneer at Bishop Pontoppidan. I know that in abstaining from doing so I am sadly out of the fashion; but I venture to think that the dead lion has been kicked at too often already, and undeservedly. Whether there be, or be not, a huge marine animal, not necessarily an ophidian, answering to some of the descriptions of the sea-serpent--so called--Pontoppidan did not invent the stories told of its appearance. Long before he was born the monster had been described and figured; and for centuries previously the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Fins had believed in its existence as implicitly as in the tenets of their religious creed. Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, in Sweden, wrote of it in A.D. 1555 as follows:[25]--

"They who in works of navigation on the coasts of Norway employ themselves in fishing or merchandize do all agree in this strange story, that there is a serpent there which is of a vast magnitude, namely 200 foot long, and moreover, 20 foot thick; and is wont to live in rocks and caves toward the sea-coast about Berge: which will go alone from his holes on a clear night in summer, and devour calves, lambs, and hogs, or else he goes into the sea to feed on polypus (octopus), locusts (lobsters), and all sorts of sea-crabs.

He hath commonly hair hanging from his neck a cubit long, and sharp scales, and is black, and he hath flaming, shining eyes. This snake disquiets the shippers; and he puts up his head on high like a pillar, and catcheth away men, and he devours them; and this happeneth not but it signifies some wonderful change of the kingdom near at hand; namely, that the princes shall die, or be banished; or some tumultuous wars shall presently follow. There is also another serpent of an incredible magnitude in an island called Moos in the diocess of Hammer; which, as a comet portends a change in all the world, so that portends a change in the kingdom of Norway, as it was seen anno 1522; that lifts himself high above the waters, and rolls himself round like a sphere.[26] This serpent was thought to be fifty cubits long by conjecture, by sight afar off: there followed this the banishment of King Christiernus, and a great persecution of the Bishops; and it shewed also the destruction of the country."

[25] 'Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus,' Lib. xxi. cap. 43.

[26] "Coils itself in spherical convolutions" is a better translation of the original Latin.

The Gothic Archbishop, amongst other signs and omens, also attributes this power of divination to the small red ants which are sometimes so troublesome in houses, and declares that they also portended the downfall, A.D. 1523, of the abominably cruel Danish king, Christian II., above mentioned. His curious work is full of wild improbabilities and odd superst.i.tions, most of which he states with a calm air of unquestioning a.s.sent; but as he wrote in the time of our Henry VIII., long before the belief in witches and warlocks, fairies and banshees, had died out in our own country, we can hardly throw stones at him on that score. It is a most amusing and interesting history, and gives a wonderful insight of the habits and customs of the northern nations in his day.

Amongst his ill.u.s.trations of the sea monsters he describes are the two of which I give facsimiles on the next page. In Fig. 12 a sea-serpent is seen writhing in many coils upon the surface of the water, and having in its mouth a sailor, whom it has seized from the deck of a ship. The poor fellow is trying to grasp the ratlins of the shrouds, but is being dragged from his hold and lifted over the bulwarks by the monster. His companions, in terror, are endeavouring to escape in various directions.

One is climbing aloft by the stay, in the hope of getting out of reach in that way, whilst two others are hurrying aft to obtain the shelter of a little castle or cabin projecting over the stern. I am strongly of the opinion that this is but the fallacious representation of an actual occurrence. Read by the light of recent knowledge, these old pictures convey to a practised eye a meaning as clear as that of hieroglyphics to an Egyptologist, and my translation of this is the following: The crew of a ship have witnessed the dreadful sight of a serpent-like form issuing from the sea, rising over the bulwarks of their vessel, seizing one of their messmates from amongst them, and dragging him overboard and under water. Awe-stricken by the mysterious disappearance of their comrade, and too frightened and anxious for their own safety to be able, during the short s.p.a.ce of time occupied by an affair, which all happened in a few seconds, to observe accurately their terrible a.s.sailant, they naturally conjecture that it must have been a snake. It was probably a gigantic calamary, such as we now know exist, and the dead carcases of which have been found in the locality where the event depicted is supposed to have taken place. 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 ill.u.s.tration 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.--A SEA SERPENT SEIZING A MAN ON BOARD SHIP.

_After_ OLAUS MAGNUS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13.--A GIGANTIC LOBSTER DRAGGING A MAN FROM A SHIP.

_After_ OLAUS MAGNUS.]

In Fig. 13 an enormous lobster is in the act of similarly dragging overboard from a vessel a man whom it has seized by the arm with one of its great claws. From the crude image of a lobster having eight minor claws and two larger ones, to that of a cuttle having eight minor arms and two longer ones, the transition is not great; and I believe that this also is a pictorial misrepresentation of a casualty by the attack of a calamary similar to that above described, possibly another view of the same incident. The idea is that of a sea animal capable of suddenly seizing and grasping a man, and we must remember that we have evidence, in the writings of Pontoppidan and others, that, even two centuries later than Olaus Magnus, the Nors.e.m.e.n's knowledge of the cuttles was exceedingly vague and indistinct. Any one who has seen, as I frequently have at the Brighton Aquarium, and as they doubtless had whilst lobster-catching, the threatening and ferocious manner in which a lobster will brandish, and, if I may use the term, "gnash" its claws at an intruding hand, even if held above the surface of the water, can well imagine a party of fishermen discussing such a tragic occurrence as the foregoing, and differing in opinion as to the ident.i.ty of the creature which had caused the catastrophe, some maintaining that it must have been a sea-serpent, and others shaking their heads and a.s.serting that nothing but a colossal lobster could have done it.

Pontoppidan, in writing his history of Norway, of course had before him the statements of Olaus Magnus; but, though their author was an archbishop, he did not accept them with the childlike simplicity generally ascribed to him. Quoting, and, singularly enough, misquoting, the Swedish prelate as referring to a sea-serpent, when he is describing, incorrectly, one of the _Acalephae_, or sea-nettles, Pontoppidan says:--

"I have never heard of this sort, and should hardly believe the good Olaus if he did not say that he affirmed this from his own experience. The disproportion makes me think there must be some error of the press.... He mixes truth and fable together according to the relations of others; but this was excusable in that dark age when that author wrote. Notwithstanding all this, we, in the present more enlightened age, are much obliged to him for his industry and judicious observations."

Of the sea-serpent Pontoppidan writes:--

"I have questioned its existence myself, till that suspicion was removed by full and sufficient evidence from creditable and experienced fishermen and sailors in Norway, of which there are hundreds who can testify that they have annually seen them. All these persons agree very well in the general description; and others who acknowledge that they only know it by report or by what their neighbours have told them, still relate the same particulars.

In all my inquiry about these affairs I have hardly spoke with any intelligent person born in the manor of Nordland who was not able to give a pertinent answer, and strong a.s.surances of the existence of this fish; and some of our north traders that come here every year with their merchandize think it a very strange question when they are seriously asked whether there be any such creature: they think it as ridiculous as if the question was put to them whether there be such fish as eel or cod."

The worthy Bishop of Bergen did his best to sift truth from fable, but he could not always succeed in separating them. Many stupendous falsehoods were brought to him, and some of them pa.s.sed through his sieve in spite of his care. Of these are the accounts of the "sp.a.w.ning times" of the sea-serpent, its dislike of certain scents, &c. We must pa.s.s over all this, and confine ourselves to the evidence offered by him of its having been seen.

The first witness he adduces is Captain Lawrence de Ferry, of the Norwegian navy, and first pilot in Bergen, who, premising that he had doubted a great while whether there were any such creature till he had ocular demonstration of it, made the following statement, addressed formally and officially to the procurator of Bergen:--

"Mr. JOHN REUTZ--

"The latter end of August, in the year 1746, as I was on a voyage, on my return from Trundhiem, on a very calm and hot day, having a mind to put in at Molde, it happened that when we were arrived with my vessel within six English miles of the aforesaid Molde, being at a place called Jule-Naess, as I was reading in a book, I heard a kind of a murmuring voice from amongst the men at the oars, who were eight in number, and observed that the man at the helm kept off from the land. Upon this I inquired what was the matter, and was informed that there was a sea-snake before us. I then ordered the man at the helm to keep to the land again, and to come up with this creature of which I had heard so many stories. Though the fellows were under some apprehension, they were obliged to obey my orders. In the meantime the sea-snake pa.s.sed by us, and we were obliged to tack the vessel about in order to get nearer to it. As the snake swam faster than we could row, I took my gun, that was ready charged, and fired at it; on this he immediately plunged under the water. We rowed to the place where it sunk down (which in the calm might be easily observed) and lay upon our oars, thinking it would come up again to the surface; however it did not. Where the snake plunged down, the water appeared thick and red; perhaps some of the shot might wound it, the distance being very little.

The head of this snake, which it held more than two feet above the surface of the water, resembled that of a horse. It was of a greyish colour, and the mouth was quite black, and very large. It had black eyes, and a long white mane, that hung down from the neck to the surface of the water. Besides the head and neck, we saw seven or eight folds, or coils, of this snake, which were very thick, and as far as we could guess there was about a fathom distance between each fold. I related this affair in a certain company, where there was a person of distinction present who desired that I would communicate to him an authentic detail of all that happened; and for this reason two of my sailors, who were present at the same time and place where I saw this monster, namely, Nicholas Pedersen Kopper, and Nicholas Nicholsen Anglewigen, shall appear in court, to declare on oath the truth of every particular herein set forth; and I desire the favour of an attested copy of the said descriptions.

"I remain, Sir, your obliged servant,

"L. DE FERRY.