Osborne SS Whale-Eater?

 Jay Cooney was looking at photos of the HMS Osborne Sea Serpent sighting and he thought it could indicate the presence of a large Marine Saurian type Sea Serpent. Because of the suggestion, it is best to review the case once more:

In June 1877 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty received official reports from the Royal Yacht Osborne, forwarded by Commander Pearson, regarding the sighting of an unidentified marine creature seen on the second day of that month off Cape Vito, Sicily.

Commander Pearson’s report read: -

“I myself saw the fish through a telescope, but at too great a distance (about 400 yards) to be able to give a detailed description; but I distinctly saw the seal-shaped head, of immense size, large flappers, and part of a huge body.” 

Lieutenant Douglas Forsyth’s report, written at sea on June 4^th is as follows, 

“At 5 p.m. on the 2^nd inst., while passing Cape St. Vito, north coast of Sicily, I observed a large, black-looking object on the starboard quarter, distant about two cables [a cable is 240 yards]; and on examining it with a telescope, I found it to be a huge monster, having a head about fifteen to twenty feet in length. The breadth I could not observe. The head was round, and full at the crown. The animal was slowly swimming in a south-easterly direction, propelling itself by means of two large flappers or fins, somewhat in the manner of a seal. I also saw a portion of the body of the animal, and that part was certainly not under forty-five or fifty feet in length.” 

 Another officer, Lieutenant Haynes, reported

“On the evening of June 2, the sea being perfectly smooth, my attention was first called by seeing a ridge of fins above the surface of the water, extending about thirty feet, and varying from five to six feet in height. On inspecting it by means of a telescope, at about one and a half cables' distance, I distinctly saw a head, two flappers, and about thirty feet of an animal's shoulder. The head, as nearly as I could judge, was about six feet thick, the neck narrower, about four to five feet, the shoulder about fifteen feet across, and the flappers each about fifteen feet in length. The movements of the flappers were those of a turtle, and the animal resembled a huge seal, the resemblance being strongest about the back of the head. I could not see the length of the head, but from its crown or top to just below the shoulder (where it became immersed) I should reckon about fifty feet. The tail end I did not see, it being under water unless the ridge of fins to which my attention was first attracted, and which had disappeared by the time   I got a telescope, was really the continuation of the shoulder to the end of the body. The animal's head was not always above water, but was thrown upwards, remaining above for a few seconds at a time, and then disappearing. There was an entire absence of ‘blowing’ or ‘spouting’.” 

Mr. Moore, engineer of the Osborne, writes, 

“When looking over the starboard quarter of the ship, my attention was called by observing an uneven ridge of what appeared to me to  be the fins of a fish above the surface of the water, about a cable's length distance from the ship. They varied in height, as near as I can judge, from seven to eight feet above water, and extended about forty feet along the surface. Not having a telescope with me, I regret I am unable to give a further description.” 

(if the fins were 6-8 feet high out of the water then they are certainly staged out over well more than 40 feet by that scale. It is more likely a hundred feet or more given the spacing of the fins)

Jay had noticed that one of the officers had seen an animal with the face of an alligator while the other officers described something they compared to a very large seal or turtle. Jay thought the ridge of pointed fins could be on the back of a large Marine Saurian This would then be comparable to the creature seen by the schooner Eagle off of Virginia, which had a head over 10 feet long and a total length of 75 feet. These proportions are in the range of the larger Marine Saurian, Dr, Shucker's Leviathan. The eagle creature was also reported to have a row of pointed projections on the back, possibly  a row of fins as in the illustration for the Osborne creature. "Pristichampsus" (Tim Morris) has put his artistic interpretation of the Eagle creature on Deviantart and it is reprinted below

 

Since there is a pretty definite  tradition of a whale-eater around Ireland that chases Humpback whales until they "Fly" out of the water in an attempt to escape (The story of the Gorramolooch and the Bo-Dre-More) it is just possible we have a different encounter of the same type as witnessed around Sicily instead. The fins may belong on the back of the Whale-eater as Jay guesses, but they could also belong to some innocent bystander basking sharks, or some opportunistic predatory sharks foillowing along after the Whale-eater in hopes of scavenging from a meal left by the larger creature.

I still feel the "Turtlelike" creature with the 15 foot flippers is a humpback whale, but from the description given, there could very well have been at least two creatures or sets of creatures.

 

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/12/dale-drinnon-irish-sea-serpent-addendum.html

 

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/07/some-other-pristichampsus-sea-serpent.html

Some Recent Developments in Pseudo-plesiosaur Cases

The first one of these updates came as a result of Michael Newton's posting on May Day. I made my reply to it, but I thought the information might need better exposure:

Friday, April 29, 2011
MICHAEL NEWTON: "Another One That Got Away"

...Dr J.B. Holder, a chronicler of Florida history, introduced readers of Century Magazine to our next globster in June 1892. According to his article—

In the spring of 1885 the Rev. Mr. Gordon of Milwaukee, President of the United States Humane Society, chanced to visit, in the course of his duties, a remote and obscure portion of the Atlantic shores of Florida.

While lying at anchor in the New River Inlet the flukes of the anchor became foul with what proved to be a carcass of considerable length. Mr. Gordon quickly observed that it was a vertebrate, and at first thought it was probably a cetacean. But, on examination, it was seen to have features more suggestive of saurians. Its total length was forty-two feet. Its girth was six. The head was absent; two flippers, or fore-limbs, were noticed, and a somewhat slender neck, which measured six feet in length. The carcass was in a state of decomposition; the abdomen was open, and the intestines protruded.

The striking slenderness of the thorax as compared to the great length of the body and tail very naturally suggested to Mr. Gordon, whose reading served him well, the form of some of the great saurians whose bones have so frequently been found in several locations along the Atlantic coast. No cetacean known to science has such a slender body and such a well-marked and slender neck....Appreciating the great importance of securing the entire carcase, Mr. Gordon had it hauled above the high-water mark, and took all possible precautions to preserve the bones until they could be removed....He counted without the possible treacherous hurricane; the waters of the “still-vexed Bermoothes,” envious of their own, recalled the strange waif.1

Before proceeding, we must note one error in Dr. Holder’s report—to wit, his reference to events occurring in spring 1885. That year’s hurricane season featured eight storms between 7 August and 13 October, with the first to pass Florida’s Atlantic coast occurring on 21 September. Another struck Florida’s eastern coast on 10 October. Clearly, neither date qualifies as “spring.”2

The location of the globster’s discovery is also problematic. The only New River Inlet recognized by name in modern America is found on North Carolina’s Onslow Bay, feeding the Atlantic Ocean after a meandering trip through the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune. Florida, however, does have two New Rivers: one rises from the Everglades and flows eastward through Fort Lauderdale, in Broward County, to reach the sea at Port Everglades; the other is a tributary of northern Florida's Santa Fe River, serving as the borderline between Bradford and Union Counties. Since the latter does not reach the ocean, we may safely discount it as Dr. Holder's New River.3

What was the beast described by Dr. Holder, seven years after its brief appearance and four years prior to the arrival of Florida's most famous globster off St. Augustine in 1896? Bernard Heuvelmans considered the question almost a century later, in his classic work on sea-serpents, and dismissed basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) on the theory that Florida’s waters are too warm, but noted historical strandings of whale sharks along the state’s coast, finally casting his vote for an unidentified “large selachian.”4

That judgment was hasty, however, since basking sharks have indeed been seen in Florida waters. Most recently, a large specimen was videotaped while shadowing a kayaker off Panama City, in March 2011 (see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6POpa3r_KA8). The first basking shark ever documented from the Gulf of Mexico was caught off Grassy Point, on the coast of Sarasota County, on 2 April 1969. It was an adult female twenty-seven feet long, classified as "very thin" for its length, although it tipped the scales at 4,356 pounds. A second specimen, this one a juvenile female, was netted off St. Augustine ten months later, on 24 February 1970. It measured 11 feet 8 inches long.5 Yet another basking shark was observed near Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 25 January 1994. It was allowed to feed and go in peace, its length estimated at 14 feet 7 inches.6

Clearly, then, the globster reported from New River Inlet may have been a decomposed basking shark, but Dr. Holder's vague reference to its "considerable length" leaves us to ponder what he meant—and whether the carcass surpassed the known maximum size for Cetorhinus maximus.

1 Bernard Heuvelmans, In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1968), p. 131.
2 “1885 Atlantic hurricane season,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1885_Atlantic_hurricane_season.
3 “New River (North Carolina),” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(North_Carolina); “New River (Broward County, Florida),” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Broward_County,_Florida); "New River (Santa Fe River)," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_(Santa_Fe_River).
4 Heuvelmans, p. 131.
5 Stewart Springer and Perry Gilbert, "The Basking Shark Cetorhinus maximus from Florida and California, with Comments on its Biology and Systematics," Copeia Vol. 1976, No. 1 (12 March 1976): 47-8.
6 Barry Choy and Douglas Adams, "An Observation of a Basking Shark, Cetorhinus maximus, Feeding along a Thermal Front off the East Central Coast of Florida," Florida Scientist Vo. 68, No. 4 (Autumn 1995): 313.
Posted by Jon Downes at 10:40 PM Labels: globster, michael newton

1 comments:
Dale Drinnon said...
There is a further complication in that the same Florida carcass is separately listed by Heuvelmans as an occurance in August,1896 in his table of Strandings and captures (p 586) but in the text credited as being retold in the Shipping Gazette of 1886 (p. 140). The story is attributed to the captain of the ship Crescent City and the location as Carabelle, Florida. 1896 is a typo and Carabelle, Florida is on the New River Inlet [The location is plotted on the endpapers map of R.T. Gould's The Case For The Sea-Serpent as the Florida location]. Those two things together make it much more likely that this is indeed the same carcass-but all in all, a less trustwothy story being told about it.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

Thus it is more likely that the 1886 magazine was referring to events in August of the prior year and it transmogrified into a "1896" date on Heuvelmans' table: The carcass which fouled the anchor line got turned into a live shark monster that towed the boat in a contrary direction by means of making an odd story more interesting: and the usual account of the carcass was indeed off in the date since the month of August IS specified in the other report, rather than the obviously-incorrect reference to "Spring." The Shipping Gazette publication of 1886 preceedes the more accurate account in Century Magazine by six years.

Now as to another matter which involves this blog.

Markus Hemmler was folowing the recent repostings and he noticed the additional statement I had made on the Gambo and Ambon reposting. He sent in a message to the Frontiers of Zoology group on Yahoo:


Hi Dale.

In the article about Gambo and Ambon you mention a "third report of a similar carcass off of South Africa [...] also likely to be another decayed basking shark". Have you found this in his archives or was it published elsewhere?

Best regards

Markus

After which came my reply:
It was easier to find than I thought. Here is the cited source link:

http://s8int.com/phile/dino37.html

The caption reads:
This is an armored sea creature washed up on a beach. This creature's history is a bit murky It's reported to have washed up on a South African Beach in 1931, but since this is a color photograph that's unlikely to be the case. If anyone has additional information we'd be glad to receive it. We note that it appears to look very much like a Mosasaur, an armord sea creature supposedly extinct millins of years ago. Click and Drag Photo to resize.


In fact the outer skin seems stripped away, so that you are looking at the muscle surface and not "Armour"

And in fact the vertebrae issuing out of the "mouth" is probably actually a continuation of the animal's own spine, the "Head" woulsd then actually be only the part of the body that was left fairly intact. "Globster" shows the outline added for emphasis, "Globster 1" is the original photo and "Globster 2" shows the comparison to a Mosasaur.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

"Globster"

"Globster 1"

"Globster 2"

And then Markus' final reply which cleared up the entire problem:

I've asked you because I've wondered about such a carcass of South Africa. After your first description I had an idea what were talking about and this is the confirmation. Now it's clear to me, thank you Dale.

This carcass washed ashore in 1991 in Chile not South Africa. There was the usual confusion among people and various "experts" but our creationist friend is one of the funniest...

Out of the "mouth" of the "Mosasaur" comes the vertebrae and continues into the upper lobe of the tail. You can also see the decomposed lower lobe of the tail. On the right side of the picture approximately in the middle of the picture you can see the claspers, so it's a male shark.

It was identified from chilean scientists as basking shark btw.

Regards Markus


So then I added the final remarks:
This conversation has been most interesting I would like to post it on the blog so that others who might otherwise not know the story might become better informed of the truth in this case.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

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REPOST: DALE DRINNON: Extractions from Heuvelmans, In The Wake of the Sea-Serpents, "Mistaken Observations" Category

Thursday, June 10, 2010
DALE DRINNON: Extractions from Heuvelmans, In The Wake of the Sea-Serpents, "Mistaken Observations" Category

After I got my copy of Heuvelmans' In The Wake of the Sea Serpents (1968), I did a number of comparisons and statistical extractions as a test of Heuvelmans' "Computer-punchcard" suggestion in the conclusions. This was essentially done as a series of discriminant-functions analysis which I did throughout my High School Years (I can do discriminant functions analyses on paper manually by pencil and figuring, but I was helped in part by a very early edition pocket calculator for some of the proceedure.)

Eventually (by my graduation from High School in 1974), I was left with few of Heuvelmans' categories intact and a growing impression that the majority of the reports were not only much the same world-wide, for the most part they were erroneous assessments of phenomena which did not require the rection of new species to explain them. Essentially, I found that around 75% of the sightings were either vague or were not realistic impressions of the phenomena under observation, with the largest category of recognisable reports describing wave actions (whether or not an unknown animal was leaving the waves by its passage: and that description pretty much eliminated the categories "Many-Humped" and "Super-Otter" right off) out of the last quarter of reports, the majority did decribe something like Heuvelmans' category of Longneck, and the assumption had also been made by others that the Merhorse was the same category and so these categories I combined. I found reports that indicated to me that the type was tailed and Plesiosaur-shaped, primarily through Dinsdale. However in the minority of the remaining reports I also found good reason to continue with Heuvelmans' categories of Super-eel and Marine Saurian, and even to further subdivide them into discrete types. But among the other things I did was to go through the category marked as mistaken observations of known animals, and I did the same analysis of these reports as a control sample.

The exact number of reports in the category I used was at variance to Heuvelmans (and even my own other analyses run separately)because I allowed more "Possible" errors which made a much larger number of mistaken observations to work with. My intial report gave very precise percentages of the total number of reports for the subcategories, but here I am not committing to all of the identifications/misidentifications that I had done in the original study. Hence in this report I shall simplify the percentages to the nearest half-percentages.

The control sample was broen down to statistical assessments of the creatures described especially noting estimates of length and width, proportions, colouration and other characteristics. At the end of the sorting process, identikits were made for the misidentifications exactly as a parallel of the "Unknowns".

Out of this proceedure came the following categories of marine creatures misidentified as Sea-serpents (a parallel analysis was subsequently made for the freshwater reports):

1) Oarfish, between 5% and 5.5% of all the reports. Commonly cited as the inspiration for the Scandinavian "Merhorse" in the earlies, the distinctive gray/reflective or silvery sides, and the distinctive long red mane that Heuvelmans ascribes to the "Merhorse" in his conclusions seems to be inherited solely from confusions with Oarfish reports. Oarfish are reported as up to 70-80 feet long whereas most scientists do not allow they can grow to anywhere near that length. Those estimates are however consistent with the "Merhorse" reports in question.

2) Basking Sharks.

Besides being the source for nearly all "Sea-serpent" carcasses reported over the years, basking sharks are most certainly being reported as sea monsters, especially around the British Isles and in the North Sea. I regard the SS Hillary encounter as being one, and if you doubt me I can produce a photo of a basking shark with its nose up out of the water, with a white stripe down the middle of its snout, looking exactly like a cow's nose as described in that WWI incident.




3-5) Three categories of Baleen whales, toothed whales and smaller toothed whales swimming in close formation

[insets on Whale Scale drawing, above: human, humpback whale and manta ray to scale. Below ruled scale: elephant seal photograph reduced to same scale]

These rate at somewhere between 2 and 3% of the mistaken observations each, hence an average of 2.5% each is appropriate. The more obvious types of whales such as humpbacks, orcas (killer whales) and sperm whales each weigh in at about 1% of reports apiece and in each series the description of the size and proportions in a very good match. Heuvelmans often uses the generic term "Rorqual" for the larger baleen whales and so that category is not so clearly subdivided into known species. Often in all of these whale reports the whale is seen in an unfamiliar or confusing posture, such as a sperm whale with a large cylindrical head swimming with the head pointed vertically like a column, or a baleen whale lying on its back (possibly dead but not necessarily) I regard the better views of the Osbourne Sea-serpent to be a mistaken view of a humpback whale from the rear, and the row of fins either a school of sharks or else the whale's pod of comerades in "fin-up" position. The Osboune Sea-serpent had 15-foot long foreflippers, a head like an alligator and was about 15 feet broad and 60 feet long. All of that matches a humpback.

As to the "Many-finned" Sea-serpent's being often based on confused viewings of small schools of whales, Heuvelmans does admit that is the most likely explanation in the case of the Narcissus sighting. Most often the whales would appear to be pilot whales (blackfish) and the different sightings also vary quite a bit as to the spacing of the fins ("Width" of the animal, between the long and thin aspect of several animals in a row, up to the very wide aspect of animals scattered over enough space to make the apparent width half, two-thirds, or even three-quarters of the "Length")

There are also very large series of humps that might well be several large whales following each other in a line, such as in the case of a "Sea-serpent" reported by a British ship and subsequently presented in one of William Corliss' sourcebooks, as presenting the spectacle of three 60-foot-long humps with adequare spacing in between.

6) Manta rays are reported at about 2% of the cases or less, and they are described as about 20 feet wide, of square aspect with a long thin tail, and sometimes "Skimming the surface"

7) Elephant seals are included in the "Merhorse sightings at a fairly regular frequency especially in the Southern Hemisphere around South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The common description is about 20-30 feet long with a large squarish head, big snout, and shortish rather thick neck. It is because of the inclusion of such reports that Heuvelmans states the "Merhorse's" neck is not so long as the "Longneck". Such reports are also included off the Northwest coast area or "Cadborosaurus'" territory.

8) Ocean sunfish or Mola, about 1% of the reports. Not only are Ocean sunfish sometimes at the base of some "Sea Monster Captured!" headlines, the high rear fin sticking up out of the water looks like a "Periscope". I do not know if two or more of them are known to follow each other around displaying their fins above water, though.

9) Giant squids are dubious candidates. There is the mechanical problem that they are probably not even mechanically capable of heaving the long arms vertically out of the water, hence it is very unlikely that any "Periscope" sightings are mistaken views of giant squids waving their tentacles aloft. Several reports have also been explained as witnesses seeing battles between sperm whales and giant squids they have brought up out of great depths, but this has never been verified.

10) Other known pinnepeds, other sharks and other fishes, known eels of unusually large size, sea snakes, pythons swimming out at sea, seaweed, flights of birds, seaworms and all other possible cases of confusion are all less than 1% of the reports, and all put together are not as many as 2.5%

As a comparison to this, I also count the reports of my Giant eel categories as under 2% of all reports apiece, and the Marine Saurian subcategories as less than 1% of all reports apiece. The only type of Sea-serpent to be seen at any appreciable frequency would be the Longnecked and Plesiosaur-shaped type creature. It also seems to head inland on exceptional occasions. This part of its behavior has been blown way out of proportion. From a statistical analysis of all such reports world-wide, such creatures ordinarily only head inland at long intervals, never in mass numbers, only go into rivers or lakes with direct access to the sea, and only remain in freshwater temporarily. That description might well also hold for the Giant eel types, however.

In any event, the real "Sea-Serpent" is not even an animal but is a wave action. Calling even the Longnecked type a Sea-serpent is only a matter of convention, but probably the habit is so ingrained that the name will be very difficult to avoid forevermore.

Posted by Jon Downes at 2:31 AM

2 comments:
Dale Drinnon said...
I did have a couple of questions sent to my personal email after this blog was posted. I shall attempt to answer those questions in this note.

Heuvelmans' number for "Certain or Probable Mistakes" was 52: my reclassified number was at least twice that (106) and possibly as many as 126 certain or possible misidentifications. I left some margin for error.

The "large-whales-in-indian-file" reports are typically three humps 50-60 feet long, separated by 50-60 feet in between, hence 250 to 300 feet from the beginning of one hump to the end of the last one. Such reports occur all the way from the 1700s up to the 20th century in New England and off Norway, but also in other places including the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Heuvelmans typically calls such cases hoaxes, but in Scandinavia he allows they could be exaggerations of "Super-otters". There has to be a distinction made between trains of "Super-otter" humps each 6-7 feet long and these trains of much larger humps at 20-30 feet long or more apiece.

On my checklist listing published in the CFZ yearbook I mentioned that there is some residual evidene for a truly gigantic baleen whale possibly 250 to 500 feet long: the most important modern sighting in the category would be the sighting of June 25 1966 reported by Henry Bown in the letter column of Science Digest magazine, as seen off the Azores. The other reports that could be used to support the idea are in this improbable-dimensions category of Sea-serpent sightings.

Brown's sighting was just possibly some sort of a wierd wave action. The report of this series mentioned in one of the Corliss Sourcebooks was in the Red Sea in 1876 as seen by the ship El Dorado.

9:31 AM
Dale Drinnon said...
I see the percentage for basking shark mistaken observations was also left off inadvertantly. It was 4% in this report-the original paperwork said 3.9%

1:51 PM