Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1913 — SEA SERPENTS OLD AS SANTA CLAUS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SEA SERPENTS OLD AS SANTA CLAUS

#0 many hoaxes dealing with the sea serpent have been played by imaginative travelers, who have described and sketched the “modern saurian,” that the very name of the brute is avoided by all but the brave. To say that you have seen the sea serpent is to put with your own tongue a blot on your own character. Skippars who have beheld the monster have made no entry of the fact in their log book lest they be derided when their vessels are snug in port. Naturalists have hemmed and hawed In their writings regarding it. Poets have been reticent upon the themeall except John Milton, whose remarks upon Leviathan in “Paradise Lost” have been construed by a modern authority to mean Sea Serpent pure and simple. For a century the scientific world has looked at sea serpents askance. And yet there is one professional field in life whose members have supplied more data concerning sea serpents and giyen more profuse informai tion in regard to them than all the skippers and travelers who have ever circled the globe. From the earliest times it has remained for the ministry to supply its with our greatest number of “facts'* regarding the marine descendant of Adam’s happiness. Dea- . cons, priests and bishops have seen sea serpents galore, and there are on file the names of at least a dozen clerical men who are involved in the coils of sea serpent stories, from Olaus Magnus, the archbishop of Upsala, down to Rev. P. W. Demboldt, archdeacon of Molde; Rev. William Jenks, Rev. Alden Bradford, Rev. Mr. Cummings of Sullivan, and Rev. Alexander Maelean, all good names and honest, some of them from puritanical New England. The bishop of Pontopiddan, another worthy divine, believed implicitly in sea serpents, and even altered the descriptions and drawings of other men go gratify his own enthusiasm in regard to them. The bishop of Pontopldden, who lived in the middle of the eighteenth century, advanced the theory that the mermaids of mediaeval lore were nothing more nor less than sea cows that browse upon salt water greens with their front flippers and open mouths sideways. But in regard to sea serpents the bishop was not skeptical. He described them on hearsay as numerous, lengthy and (terrible, often 100 feet in length, possibly 600, with eyes as large as pewiter plates, lilac or blue in color, and sometimes fiery red with anger. The good divine even made a Jourjney down the Scandinavian coast to (investigate a tale that a tablecloth (had been made by a fisherman’s faultily from the skin of a sea serpent twhlch the reptile had sloughed off In the pleasant waters of the harbor of Kobberveug. The bishop was honest ■enough to Btate that he had been igulled in this respect, but did not alter Ills opinion regarding sea serpents in (general. The illustration in his book showing a sea Berpent reared on his tall, squirting profuse gallons of waiter out of his snout, was drawn and exaggerted by the bishop of Pontopid•dan from the sketch made by Bing, rwho had forever immortalized a sea serpent beheld by Hans Egede. It is notable that Hans Egede was himself •an evangelist, whose work as a misisionary was taking him to the wilds ■of Greenland when the sea serpent appeared before him. Olaus Magnus, the archbishop of Upttala, writes at length of a sea serpent, to it a length of 200 feet and ta girth of 20, and stating the beliefs •of the sailors of his time regarding it < —how It was fond of calves and sheep land swine, and used to snap the seaimen from the decks of their own vessels. '

Rev. Mr. Cummings of Sullivan demcribes a whopping sea serpent that the saw not far from Long Island in July of 1808. Thirty-seven years [later another divine, Rev. P. W. Dem'boldt, made the startling statement that not only had he seen the sea serpent In the water near his home on (the Norwegian coast, but that he had |shot at it with a musket and evidently [wounded it quite badly, from the ruction that took place in the water afterward. Rev. Alexander Maclean, who flourished at about the same time as Rev. Mr. Cummings, observed off the island of Coll what he first called, In hlB clerical manner, an "object.” It appeared like a small rock, he said, but after looking at it for some time he saw it elevated above the surface of the sea and move in his direction with la measured and dignified'motion. In [intense alarm the minister steerod for tphore, with the sea serpent apparently pursuing him. It drew so near that

he could see its shining eye, but on finding the water shallow it apparently became discouraged and moved off to sea again, where later, according to the minister’s story, it was reported as having frightened nearly to death the crews of half a dozen fishing vessels. These accounts of the findings of reverend gentlemen were gathered together by Anthony Oudemans, who published a voluminous book on sea serpents. This book contains all ported appearances. Dr. Oudemans, from whose volume part of this material has been gathered, not only goes into all the “veracious” reports of the sea serpent’s appearance, but into all the hoaxes that have been played In regard to it. He has even described a hoax that was perpetrated against the sea serpent by a learned writer who desired to show that the reptile was non-existent, and in connection with this piece of false work the present writer unearthed a fraud that has lain dormant for 60 years. Nearly 100 years ago a certain Samuel L. Mitchell wrote a paper designed to throw discredit on the sea serpent Btories that were current at that date. The paper appeared in the American Journal of Arts and Sciences for 1829. Almost a century later Dr. Oudemans rakes up Mr. Michell’s article and says that Mr. Mitchell lied, quoting that gentleman’s entire paper to prove It. But this quotation was responsible for the discovery of even another fraud than the one laid at the •.door of Mr. Mitchell. For in 1862 there appeared in Leisure Hour an article entitled “Sea Serpent Stories,” by John Hollingshead, who, after praising Mr. Mitchell for the “first honest exposure” of the sea serpent, and quoting him for a paragraph, proceeds to steal his article verbatim and use it as his own, which was ascertained by the present writer when comparing the quotation of Mitchell’s article with the article by Mr. Hollingshead. One of the most famous pro-sea serpent hoaxes, according to Dr. Oudemans, is a fraud that was achieved by the correspondent of a French newspaper, who gives a* thrilling account of a sea serpent beheld by C. Renard and seven others from the deck of the Royal Mail steamship Dea* bn the evening of the 10th of August, 1881. M. Renard and the others were Bitting pn deck, so it is alleged, enjoying a perfect evening and the gleam of a moonlit sea, when a horrible and nauseating nymster came to the surface at no great distance from the ship, while at the same time an overpowering stench attacked the nostrils of the travelers. The monster, runs the report, measured from 40 to 60 meCers, in so far as the numerous coils made measurement possible. From the dorsal ridge to the middle of the belly the body appeared to be covered by ranges of scales, and the general roughness of the surface and the moss-grown skin appeared to indicate a great and assured age. The head / was pointed, with teeth “sharp and enormous,” and from the throat, “attached to a kind of cushion,” there projected a hard tongue, "pointed, provided with suckers and glittering like steel.’’ This horrible brute stayed on the surface of the water in full view for at least ten minutes, when it sank again beneath the surface of the water. The alleged beholders of the terrible Bight gave solemn testimony of their experience to the editor by letter, in which it was stated with most remarkable assurance that all these facts were truths of refined and intrinsic purity. A

sketch accompanied the letter and is printed here. But after all the cavil and falsehood pro and con regarding enormous serpents of the ocean, a residue of truth remains in some of the tales of the sea serpent’s appearance that cause the present day scientists to shrug their shoulders. Some of the reports of the monster are not easily explained away, and in the early part of the nineteenth century so many reputable witnesses are said to have beheld it that even the conservative Encyclopedia admits that some strange sea monster must have existed and put in his appearance at that time. So manjttimes did the sea serpent show itself off the New England coast that it gained for itself the name of the “American sea serpent,” and so many sturdy old Puritans testified to its general shape, size and appearance that a pretty good idea has been gained of the kind of animal that showed itself. According to most descriptions, the sea serpent was about 60 feet long, dark in color, but lighter below, in the manner of an eel, with a fiat head and a neck about 16 inches in diameter. An English naval officer, Captain McQuhal, of H. M. S. Daedalus, inserted in his official report to Admiral Sir W. H. Gage in 1845 the statement that he had seen an animal of this description rapidly approaching his ship in 24 degrees 44 minutes south latitude by 9 degrees 22 minutes east longiture. He described it as an “enormous serpent,” with its head raised about four feet above the water, swimming along at an even and speedy rate and at least 60 feet in length. Captain McQuhal’s account encouraged other officers to tell of similar experiences, where previously they had not dared for fear of ridicule. The sea serpent has appeared toy often to mention in detail, but in 1906 it was reported by Messrs. Meade-Waldo and Nicall, two members of the Royal Zoological society, who insist that they saw the sea serpent 100 yards away while qruising in the earl of Craw ford’s yacht, the Valhalla, off the coast of Brazil, on December 7, 1905.

Whil© standing together on deck the two zoologists declare that suddenly they saw a great fin come out of the water 100 yards from the ship. Field glasses were brought to bear, and Mr. Meade-Waldo beheld an enormous head rise slowly, followed by a neck that was about the thickness of a man’s body. The head, the zoologists say, was distinctly turtle-esque In its appearance, but, as the animal came no nearer and shortly disappeared, its exact size could not be ascertained. A long flock of birds skimming the waves once gave the effect of a mlghtly serpent swimming at considerable speed, and trailing seaweed has been approached and even harpooned in the belief that it was a serpent Giant squid, which are aB fearful and wonderful as the serpent itself, have been mistaken for the latter, and it is probable that the serpent alleged to have been seen by Claus Egede was of this variety. In fact, in spite of all the ridicule and all the hoaxes that have been given forth in the name of this strange animal, there is no reason after all to deny that it may be living. Holder has commented on the fact that the bivalves of the Mesozoic age have been preserved to the present time. Why then is it not possible for Mother Earth to have stored in her sea caverns some uncouth, cretaceous monster that occasionally shows Itself, and each time elicits the well-known and highly rediculous cry: “The sea serpent?"