automotive monster

Who doesn’t believe in sea serpents? Since Biblical times, they have been rippling the waters and the minds of incredulous observers. Great Britain reveres its elusive “Nessie,” generator of a lucrative traveler trade. A similar monster achieved momentary notoriety in 1996 when a Norwegian Tvg2 newscaster interviewed two fishermen who observed it surfacing in a fjord only 100 yards distant from their trawler.

A strange “Creature of the Finny Tribe” was sighted along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana in 1856, and a triple-humped serpent with a small head was observed during October and November of 1983 near California’s Stinson Beach by numerous onlookers. But few sea serpents have captured the imagination of the public like those sighted along the Atlantic Coast of North America.

Monster

The sea monster difficulty erupted in earnest during the early Nineteenth Century when extended sightings by mariners operating out of New England and Canadian ports prompted the chase of a mammal dubbed “The Great Sea Serpent.” The creature’s antics were first publicized in a newspaper account, dateline Boston, May 14, 1818. Three days earlier, during a passage from Penobscot, Maine to Hingham, Massachusetts, Joseph Woodward, specialist of the schooner Adamant, was alerted at two o’clock in the afternoon by a crew member who observed something on the water’s outside that he presumed to be the wreck of a vessel.

In his affidavit, Woodward stated that he made toward it and discovered to his surprise and that of his crew that it was a monstrous sea serpent. As they approached it, the serpent threw itself into a coil and came over the bow with breathtaking velocity. Upon discharging the article of his gun at the beast’s head, he distinctly heard the ball and shot charge and rebound as though fired against a rock.

The serpent was unperturbed. He shook his head and tail “most terribly” and again threw himself into a coil and lunged toward the men on deck with his mouth wide open. Once again, Woodward discharged his gun. With that, the serpent sank down under the vessel so the men could see his head at a length on one side of the vessel with his mouth wide open and the end of his tail on the other.

For five hours, the serpent played around the boat, allowing the men to correlate his size. Woodward judged him to be at least twice the length of the schooner, about one hundred thirty feet. His body below the neck appeared to be about six feet in diameter and his head was large in proportion to his body. His tail was formed like a squid’s and his body of a dark color “resembled the joints of a shark’s backbone.” His gills were almost twelve feet from the end of his head. He threw himself into a coil and, by contracting his body in a whole of places, was able to impel himself transmit with great force.

Woodward’s affidavit is added substantiated by an addendum signed at Plymouth on the same date by Peter Holmes and John Mayo, crew members, in the presence of Jotham Lincoln, Justice of the Peace.

On August 21 that same year, various newspapers devoted space to Captain Richard Rich’s encounter with the serpent the old day recorded in his log entered at 12 noon on August 20, dateline Squam River. Rich described several unsuccessful attempts before astonishing the sea serpent with a harpoon. Despite receiving a graphic wound, the serpent sped away, taking with him a great length of rope before dislodging the harpoon from his back. Captain Rich’s record is supported by a letter from Samuel Dexter of Gloucester detailing the adventure as seen straight through the eyes of his brother, a seaman on Rich’s vessel.

The serpent is next showcased on September 6, 1818 in a blazing headline: “The Sea Serpent – Caught!” This time, undeterred by his earlier failure, Captain Rich overpowered the mammal and bore him triumphantly into Boston Harbor. The Palladium reported: “Captain R. Rich, who caught him on Thursday off Squam Light House, arrived with the animal on Friday. He is only ten feet long and seven in circumference. His appearance is very different from what it was when alive and swimming.”

The account states that the serpent’s back, for five or six feet from his head, “is of a hard scaly substance that a harpoon cannot penetrate.” It also mentions several “bunches” on his back. These are not described in detail. Captain Rich told the reporter he was convinced that it was the same animal so often seen and described. Although the newspaper hinted that the mammal would be dissected by a jury of doctors and naturalists during the next few days, no reports were forthcoming.

So much for the serpent. But was it?

On August 15, 1830, the Kennebunk Gazette reported an additional one sighting of the “far-famed Sea Serpent.” He was seen by three men fishing a few miles distant from the shore. Two of the men were so alarmed at his nearness to the boat that they went below. The third, however, Mr. Gooch, remained on deck and returned the glances of the serpent for a necessary length of time.

The account quoted Mr. Gooch’s calculation that the serpent was sixty feet in length and about six feet in circumference. He reported his head as being about the size of a ten gallon keg with long flaps, or ears, hanging down, and attractive eyes about the size of those of an ox projecting from his head. His skin was dark gray and covered with scales. The serpent made no effort to swim, but sank down alongside the boat. Mr. Gooch admitted he could have admittedly struck him with his oar, but decided against it. Attached to the record was a note by the editor surmising that a sea serpent was to blame for destroying Mr. Blaney of Lynn, “an account of whose melancholy fate we lately published.”

Was the Great Sea Serpent fact or fancy? Without radio, television, and film to corroborate these and hundreds of similar stories, early publishers relied upon written and oral accounts. The mere fact that some observers took the time and problem to carry their experiences indicates a spark of truth, for publicity seekers in those days did not have the satisfaction of hearing themselves quoted over the airwaves or seeing their own faces on television screens during the evening news roundup.

It is conceivable that hundreds of witnesses truly saw something out there; it is equally inherent that Loch Ness harbors an evasive relative of these creatures. If so, Lake Champlain, and the Chesapeake Bay are attractive contenders for a similar honors.

On July 7, 1982, ten Ymca counselors and 25 of their wide-eyed charges at Camp Greylock in Vermont saw something attractive gliding in Lake Champlain. Intrigued by ripples on the water, they watched two brownish-colored humps outside about a half foot out of the water.

Is “Champ,” as they dubbed him, a descendant of The Great Sea Serpent that captured the fancy of New England whalers, or possibly an offspring of the Sandy Hook Monster, a comparable mammal seen by a life-saving crew off Sandy Hook, New Jersey in November of 1879?

One hundred years later, in June 1980, the Washington Star published an account of a monster sighted in the Potomac River near Oak Grove, by Virginia farmer Goodwin Muse and four friends. The mammal observed straight through binoculars, they reported, looked like a snake from 10 to 14 feet in length.

Muse’s sighting recalled those of a similar mammal near the mouth of the Potomac the summer of 1978. Residents named that beast “Chessie.” They done that it was an anaconda descended from South American ancestors accidentally movable years ago in the wooden hulls of industrial navigation vessels. When the ships were left to rot in the Potomac and other estuaries of the Bay, the snakes escaped to roam the Atlantic waters off Virginia.

A sighting off Kent Island, Maryland on May 31, 1982 is the first one documented by electronic age paraphernalia. Robert Frew, a computer salesman, captured the scene on a three-minute color videotape in the presence of house guests whose astonished screams were picked up by the audio.

Succumbing to the subsequent media hype and public fervor, Smithsonian zoologist George Zug studied the tape in the hope of answering, once and for all, the burning question: Are sea serpents for real?

Although Zug’s findings were inconclusive, Roy Mackal, a professor at the University of Chicago and founder of the International community of Crypto-Zoology, Robert Lazzara of Baltimore’s Enigma Project, and other students of the foreseen, are convinced that such creatures do exist.

Wallace Cartwright, a lobsterman from Cape Breton Island, may have proof that they summer in northern waters. On June 25, 2003, he encountered what he first believed to be a floating log. A second behold revealed “…a head like a sea turtle…a body like a snake…about as big around as a five-gallon bucket.”

Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology at the Nova Scotia Museum, thinks that Cartwright might have seen an oarfish, which is long, thin, and can grow to 40 feet in length, but he is open to more esoteric explanations.

Until Champ, Chessie, and contemporary Sea Serpent contenders are captured, examined, and disclaimed, their stories will continue to generate shivers on chilly, starless nights at sea.

Sea Serpents straight through History – Fact Or Imagination?

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