In a discussion about the "Long necked seal" illustration posted at Jay Cooley's Bizzare Zoology site, artist Thomas Finlay made the remark that the Longnecked Sea Serpent was a creature that Cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson had advocated as covering the larger part of Sea Serpent reports up through the 1940s ("Don't Scoff at Sea Monsters" reproduced following) Because the matter had come up I thought it was necessary to review what Sanderson had actually said.
It is to be emphasized that the drawing made by Finlay bears no resemblance to Sanderson's composite, which was by far the most Plesiosaurian looking Sea-serpent recontruction .
I slightly modified Sanderson's version of the 1918 Mackintosh Bell/Hoy Island sighting
in the versions above because Sanderson had included a tail that was most certainly NOT a part of the original sighting. Just for purposes of comparison, I also included a scale with this creature as compared with a moose (the more usual "Water Horse" as reported all over Eurasia and North America)
The Figure 1 is reproduced below, I did not include Sanderson's redrawing of Oudemans' Sea Serpent model because I considered it to be inaccurate and misleading
I am going to enter in a copy of the following document but parts of the text were corrupted and did not transcribe well. In the case of the reports, they are all stock reports easily obtainable in most of the standard sources, but the gist of this is basically that Sanderson is going by Oudeman's model for the Great Sea Serpent but saying that the creature had a shorter tail. Basically, Sanderson was not offering a new theory but only offering a few modifications to the previous pronouncements by AC Oudemans in the only major systematic review monograph published to that date that had made an attempt to make a scientific description, .
Don't Scoff at Sea Monsters.
Authors:
Sanderson, Ivan T.
Source:
Saturday Evening Post
Date:
1947
Publication Type:
Periodical
Subjects:
SEA monsters; ZOOLOGISTS; MYTHICAL animals; SEA lions; DEEP-sea animals; MARINE mammals
Abstract:
The article presents the accounts of those who witnessed sea serpents that were described by zoologists as animal species. Some of these incidents included the detection of sea monster in Norway known as kraken which belonged to the squid family, the existence of huge creatures in South Africa known as Latimeria which was later claimed by zoologist as a type of fish considered to be extinct, and the identification of sea lions.
Database:
MasterFILE Premier
Dont Scoff at Sea Monsters
Saturday Evening Post, Ivan T Sanderson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Few subjects have aroused
more controversy—sonnc of it
wonderfully acrimonious —
than the possible existence of
sea nionsters. Tbere is little
concrete evidence lliat they
livie but Ivan Sanderson has
reviewed the findings and concludes
that we had better not
write lhem olTon that occount.
reuder» huve mel Mr.
Sanderson before. A recognized
zoologist, he has contributed
several arliclos to ihie magazine,
tbe last being THE RIDDLE
OF THE MAMMOTHS, which
appeared December 7, 1946,
He is the author of three widely
read books on zoology and
exploration, all of which were
illustrated by himself.
— The Editors
.
Many reliable witnessess, includng preachers and scientists,
have seen {incredible?} creatures rising from the deep.
Analyzing a fascinating mystery, an expert presents evidenee
that will make you wonder if this fuble is not a fantastic fact.
hundreds of years, if not since the dawn of
history, people have believed that there are
great, unknown animals in tbe sea. These used
to be called sea serpents, but are nowadays more
popularly referred to as sea monsters.
What is more, it can be sbown that a report of
such a beast has come from some part of the world
almost every year since 1800. In some years there
have heen as many as balí a dozen, and they increase
rather than diminish Ln number, so that the
hody of eo-called evidence has now reached a point
where even the august Encyclopaedia Britannica
states: "When, however, all these and similar possihilities
have been explored, tbere still remain a
number of independent and apparently credible
stories which are not satisfactorily explained." Such
a statement challenges UB to inquire what these
credihle stories might be tuid, on inquiry, they tum
out to be amazing.
One cannot hut feel a certain element of doubt
and a not inconsiderahle sense of shock wben, upon
setting out to exaniine tbese "credihle stories,"
we read a detailed statement made by a Capt. F. W.
Dean, of tbe Royal Navy, on an incident that occurred
on the moming of May 22, 1917, aboard the
armed merchant cniiser, the Hilary, off Iceland,
while maintaining the blockade between the Scottish
coast and the Arctic iceline during World War I.
This statement, duly signed and witnessed, may
be read in any one of several books and articles on
the subject. It states tbat at nine o'clock on a clear
sunny moming, the officer of the watch reported to
Captain Dean that tbere was sometbing moving off
the starboard quarter. Upon examination through
glasses, this was seen to be an animal, and tbe ship
was turned toward it, passiog within thirty yards.
Tbe whole crew observed it closely and estimated
it to be at least sixty feet long and to have a long,
slender neck, at least twenty feet in length, which
it could tum in a semicircle. Its bead looked like
that of a seal; it was slick and shiny, and bad a tall,
triangular, flabby dorsal fin tbat turned over like
"the tip of a terrier's ear wben cocked." Tbey used
it as a target for antisubmarine guimery practice
and ñnally "sank" it.
Captain Dean, in answer to a very specific questionnaire,
later stated tbat this creature could not
have been any kind of wbaie or sbark; nor could it
have been a giant ribbonfish— a species that is believed
to grow to twenty feet in length. These are
tbe usual explanations of such creatures.
Thia case presents tbe most typical features o£
almost all reports of tbe supposed unknown sea
animal—tbe seal-like head, the serpentine neck and
the great size. These are important points, as we
shall see presently, for they fly directly in the face
of the most convincing explanations put forward
by trained zoologists.
If we dig back into the distant past of almost any
race or people, we seldom fail to stumble upon some
evidence of serpent worship, with its attendant
mysteries and borrors so productive of rigid taboo
and later of superstition and myth. Continental
peoples beheved in monstrous snakes beyond their
borders, wbile maritime peoples envisaged tbem in
tbe sea. Thus it was only natural that tales of fabulous
serpents, often with the bonifie attributes of
dragons, dwelling in the deeps and occasionally
coming up to pluck benigbted marinera from cranlty
boats, grew up along most seaboards.
About the sixteenth century, however, the precepts
of modem science, founded on observation of
fact and deduction therefrom, brought forth, among
other things, tbe first real attempts to describe the
animal life of the world. These early writings produced
a quota of quite fabulouB nonsense and hearsay.
Among the latter were descriptions of great
sea serpents which took their places in seriously
intended treatises on zoology as recognized animal
species. They were described as being immense,
scaly reptiles of prodigious dimensions that enveloped
whole ships. Supported thus by the early fumblings
of science, the ancient belief in tbe great sea
serpent became still further fixed in tbe popular
fancy. At the same time, however, it waa also instilled
into scientific tbought, but for quite contrary
reasons. These reasons only became apparent two
centuries later, and were aa follows:
As the faurfa of the woild was catalogued, it became
obvious to Berious students of natural history,
and subsequently to tbe public at large, tbat the
old accounts of fabulous, lOOO-foot, marine serpents
were but figments of our ancestral imagination. A
gigantic reaction of wbolesale skepticism set in,
which has risen like a tide until today, and which
shows no signs of abating. Nor can tbe vahdity of
this outlook be serioiisly questioned, for with airplanes
and modem shipping crisscrossing every sea
on tbe glohe almost daily, it is manifest tbat no such
monatrouB reptileB can be. Thus science, not unreasonably,
adopted the attitude that not only was
the great sea serpent a fable hut also that any re-
port of a large unknown animal in tbe sea, especially
if described as snakelike, was either a hoax, a
delusion, a lie or a case of mistaken identity.
At the same time tbe public—tbat is, all persons
otber tban zoologists, wbo might or might not know
tbe difference between a whale, a seal, a shark and a
ribbonfish—had only the mytb of tbe great sea
serpent to fall back upon wben and if tbey saw something
unknown to them in tbe sea. Thus we find tbat
up till tbe middle of tbe nineteenth century nearly
all reports start off witb tbe statement: "I saw a
strange marine animal, that I believe to be a
serpent"—vide, all affidavits collected around 1817
by the Linnaean Society, of Boston, from eyewitnesses
to the famous unknown animal's visit to
Gloucester harbor during that year.
Skeptics, believers and ordinary folk who try to
preserve an open mind on tbis most enigmatical
subject must therefore beware of the ancient and
evil influence of tbis term "sea serpent" when
weighing the evidence of any report on the subject
of an as yet unknown animal of the sea.
It must be clearly understood, therefore, that the
"credible stories" of which the Encyclopaedia
Britannica speaks are in no case concerned with
"sea serpents" as such, Sucb reports as warrant
serious consideration by zoologists concern simply
any marme animal—u.jally of considerable length
but apparently never of greater bulk than tbe blue
whale—tbat is Btated to exist, hut wbich has not, as
yet, fallen, either dead or alive, into the hands of
any competent scientist or museum curator.
Whether any Bucb animals have ever been seen or
not, and if so, whether they represent only a single
type or several is another matter, and one which we
will now proceed to examine.
Now, as one wbo was brougbt up on tbe sea, has
lived on it for montbs on end, and has spent a great
deal of time sailing, steaming or flying over its surface,
hut who has never seen nor ever expects to see
an unknown sea monster, I must admit to baving
taeen profoundly sbaken hy what I have found to be
recorded on this subject. Tbis surprise, moreover, is
caused not so mucb hy the 200-odd reports of eyewitnesses,
some of wbich might conceivably be accepted
as valid, nor even by tbe remarkable degree
of concurrence among tbem—althougb tbey come
from all over tbe world and are made by people wbo
have never heard of any other sucb reports—but
more especially by two other facts whicb show tbat
tbe skeptics may any day be reduced to naught.
The firet of these is the now indubitably established
fact that tbe once-fabled kraken, whicb was
accepted at by everybody as a figment of Norwegian
fishermen's imagination, is a real animal and quite
common. It haa turned out to be a tremendous
squid, an animal of tbe same order of sbellfisb as tbe
octopus, witb a body weigbing, on occasion, aa mucb
as one and a balf tons, twenty feet in length and
with tentacles up to thirty-five feet long. Tbe most
disturbing aspect, to my mind, ahout thia complete
collapse of aU disbelief in the kraken is, however, tbe
fact that even before a certain Professor Verrill, by
producing tbe hody, convinced tbe scientific world
that it really existed, pieces of tbe same animal had
been lying ahout in eeveral important museums for
yearn. Furtber, kraken bodies bad been used by tbe
Grand Bankfl fiahing fleet aa cod bait for generations!
Tbe second disturbing disclosure, wbicb demonstrate
» even more forcibly tbat negative evidence is
bighly dangerous in zoological prognostication,
came to light in 1938. In tbat year a nine-foot fish,
now named Latimeria, wbich was trawled from
shallow coastal waters off South Africa in an ordinary
commerciat catcb, proved to be of a type wbich
bad confidently been considered hy all scientists to
have heen extinct, along with aU its relatives, for
55,000,000 years—in fact, since wbat is known to
geologists as tbe Cretaceous Period.
In tbe face of such "facts"—not just "credible
stories," mind you—bow can we state witb any confidence
tbat anything witbin reasonable timita of
size and specific gravity may not exist in tbe sea?
Tbis is a question tbat I am not prepared to answer,
and I cannot see how anybody can do so, even the
well-known icbl tiyologUt who stated in print not so
long ago that "there are no sea serpents. The
trouble is that too many people see things and then
do not know how to describe what they see."
There are serpents that live by tbe millions all
over tbe Indian Ocean and in the seas around tbe
East Indies. They are small poisonous snakes of
many species, but witb laterally compressed tails,
and they are not well represented in museum collections.
Ttie trouble from our point of view is indeed
thnt "too many peopte see tbings" such as the
fifty-five sworn witnesses to tbe "monster" of Locb
Ness in Scotland, Captain Dean and bis officers on
ttie Hilary, find the numerous others wbo come later.
A further troubte, moreover, is tbat a scientific
journal of such unquestionahle standing as tbe
Proceedings of the Zoological Society, of London...
saw ñt to publisb the accounts of two trained zoologists
named E. G. B. Meade-Waldo and M. J.
Nicoll, who therein claim in no uncertain terms that
they do "know bow to describe wbat tbey see."
Tbey affirm, forsooth, that they watched for ten
minutes, at 100 yards' distance tbrough field glasses,
a small-headed, long-necked mammal, witb a soft
frill on its back two feet high and six feet long. Further,
its neck stuck seven to eigbt feet out of the
water and was "ahout the thickness of a slight
man's body." Tbis, they say, they saw at 10:15 A.M.
on December 7, 1905, from the yacht Valballa off.
Parahiha on the coast of Brazil. It is, therefore,
perhaps unwise to state categorically tbat anytbing
which could exist does not exist. Tbe okapi, for
instance, an animal tbe size of a large borse, did not
tum up Ln the Congo until 1900, and it ÍB certainly
improbable enough to bebold.
On tbe other band, tbere is tbe insurmountable
fact that the people most likely to have encountered
unknown sea animals and beat fitted to recognize
them—tbe whalers—have never in 100 years even
reported one. Add to tbis tbe fact that no piece of
one has ever certainly been found and the whole
business begins to look odd, if not even fisby.
Nonetbetess. the volume of reports, invariably
witnessed and usually notarized, that is in existence
is little short, of astonishing wben critically examined.
Let us compare tbe descriptions of hut a few
wbo bave claimed to have seen such unknown sea
animals, but in doing this let us also bear in mind
two facts. First, tbat it was during the middle part
of tbe nineteenth century that tbe existence of fossil
skeletons of the extinct [Plesiosaurs],lon^-tK'i'ki'il, HTniill-lu'iiilcd miirino diiiiiMinir.
|il(
HJiiirim. wilh ÍIH four flip-
¡«•ix mill lii]n'riin;, l>nrn'l-nlni[i('(l body,
\\rvt hi'i'iiim' widi'ly liiiuwn. Secondly,
noli' (lull Ilii- p'l'porlH from I,ho iniflrllu
of llu' niiii'lci'iiih ci'nlury until tlie
pri'Honl (iiiy liiivi' lnH-n inatlo by per-
HIIHH iif hij^hiT oiliiciil ion who were
liki'ly lo lidvc wen (lniwiii};H of such
n'coMHiriicU'd )>k-HtoM)urH.
In fact, the
rL'jil or iinaf^inod appearance of the
unknown animal of the seas seems
to change both radically and rather
abruptly after 1848.
Ill thiw ycjir perhaps the most celebrated
caae of (ill bunit upon a bigbly
skeptical world Ibat bad been lulled
into complacency by half a century
during which roiwrlB, tbougb numerous,
were so often either patently
ridiculous or subsequently exposed ae
plnin hoiixes. On October 4, 1848, Her
Britannic Majeaty'B corvette Daedalus
arrived nt Plymouth. England, from
tbe East Indies, Capt. Peter M'Quahae
commnndinfj. A week later, tbe London
Times carried a somewhat flamboyant
story beaded NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.
and stating that the Daedalus had.
when in passage hetween tbe Cape of
Good Hope and St. Helena, sighted
a vast sea animal with a long neck,
traveling at fifteen miles an bour. Here
the matter might bave rested as just
another newspaper boax, but, possibly
because of the paper concerned, tbe
Admiralty figuratively raised its collective
eyebrows so abruptly tbat they
caused an oflicial minute to be dispatcbed
tbat: very day to tbe commander
in cbief at Plymoutb, instructing
bim to investigate tbe veracity of
Captain M'Quhae'a statement. Tbis
prompt action resulted in an equally
prompt rpply from tbe captain.
His report stated, in most nautical
and official terms, tbat at five o'clock
on tbe sixth of August, in latitude
twenty degrees, forty-four minutes S.
and longitude nine degrees, twenty-two
minute.s E., sometbing "very unusual"
was seen by bimself. tbe officer of the
watcb, a Mr. William Barrett, the
quarter master, tbe boatswain's mate
and the man at the wheel. It passed
so close to the ship on a steady course
that Captain M'Quhae aaid that "had
it been a man of my acquaintance, I
should have easily recognized his features."
Sixty feet of the animal showed
above water, it had a bead like a snake,
carried constantly four feet above the
water on a long, thin neck. Tbere was
a sort of mane on this neck.
This report caused tbe most tremendous
rumpus, not only in tbe Britisb
press but tbrougbout a large part of
tbe world. In fact, the only people wbo
seem to have kept, tbeir heads were
the Lords Commissionere of the Admiralty,
wbo. after reading its contents,
seem to bave filed it and Baid not a
word. Appeal WUH finally made to tbe
great Sir Richard Owen, tben probably
the best-known European naturalist
and paleontologist, who took it upon
himself to blaHt tbe whole report, not
on the grouiidH (but it was a pure
hoax, but on the; much more subtle
tb(-'me that Captain M'Quahe and his
officers, not being trained zoologists.
were incapable of recognizing any living
thing in the sea.
Had he rested his case tbere. little
harm might have resulted, for his name
commanded tbe greatest respect, but,
being a somewhat peppery old gentlemiin,
IK' muni nrvdH put forward an
t'X|>lniinliori of whnl. thoy hnd neon.
Woixf' still, bo pounc:ed oti tbe capliiin'H
Hliit.t'moiit. thnt, it "had a bond
lilt« a Hnnkn" anrl wont, on to fltatc
c(il.üg(iri(!iilly thdl, Hucb ii thinR did not
fxÍM(.. In thiH ho wnH, an wo bnvo Heon
nliovo, douhtlc'HH correct., bul. bo had,
nonclheleHH, fallen into the trap unwittingly laid for us by our Herponiffîiiriiifi
ancestors, for in r stupidly denied the existence
of any unknown marine monster. Captain
M'romtiinodlhrougluni(
dimTi-ollylM'lowtlipBurfnctv Tlii>huni]>H
ci>nHl,nn(.ly roHO in orderly procession,
one after the other, behind the head,
but they always till sank togethor!
Sometimes the head alone, like a
curved periscope of enormous dimensions,
careered about the sound, causing
a "bow wave" and an audible rushing
noise.
Then, in
Then, in 1877, a quite horrid report
was submittod to i\w British Admiralty
hy Comdr. H. L. Peanwn, R. N.,
of thu royal yachi Osborne. This stated
thiU when the yacht—which hnd sail
and paddles—was olT tbe nor(h coast
of Sicily, homeward bound, three officers
nnd the commander liimself Imd
seen two appnrently connected apparitions
of immense pro|portions and unaccountable
appenrance. To condense
the somewhat lengthy report, he it said
that tbeir attention was ftrat drawn to
a row of irregular fins sticking out of
the calm sea in a perfect line mid proceeding
as one. The largest fin waa
some SL\ feet tall. As the yacht approached,
these sank and in their
stead there rose out of tbo sea the
forepart of a gigantic animal. The
head was seal-shaped and about six
feet in diameter, the neck slender and
long enough to allow tbe animal io
throw its head far hack out of tbe
water from time to time. Tbe neck
joined a vast forehody, fifteen to
twenty feet broad at the aboulders, and
two fifteen-foot paddles, wbich flailed
right out of the water with a semirevolving
motion, propelled the beast.
The visible part of the animal was
fifty feet long and smooth, like a seal.
Ï. .1. t
llHi Na
yonrn later, a corlain Capt.
Klo, of lbo S.S. Umfuli, of
Lmi., produced uneven more
rt'm.irkubl., ropnrt. Hi..((or adil. ho
»IHO »ul.mi((e,| u .Iniwing which ÍH both
compotoiK jinci (iÍH( ui bingly convincinf,'.
H. slidwH 11 ploHinHimruHlilto 1)P(IH( proccodirig
M Hpood uvor tho avn. Captain
Cringle uncouiid.red OIÍH nt ñ.M) v.M.
on DüciMiibor 1, 18MH, in latitude
twenty-one degrees, forty minutes N.,
longitude Bovciid'oii degrees, thirty
minutes W., wliile on hi« way to the
Cape of Good Hope. The head and neck
of tlK- iiniiniil wore fifteen feet long. It
was traveling at an extraordinary
speed, apparently with great singleness
of purpose, and the body, which had
three distinct humps and was much
larger in girth than the neck, was
visible all the time. Ii had a smooth
skin and toothed jaws. The Captain
put about and chased the animal till
dark. It was seen by several of the
crew and was entered in the log.
The Valhalla incident, mentioned
before, occurred in 1905, and that of
the Hilary in 1917, and then came a
quite different account in 1919 from a
Scottish civil servant named J. Macintosh
Bell, who had taken a vacation
on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys, off
the northem tip of Scotland. Mr. Bell
spent his time there with two local
fisbermen, and on the day of his arrival
was told by them that a large unknown
animal had been seen almost
every day around those parts. The
first day he also saw it.
This animal was allegedly some [twelve to sixteen]
feet in total length [NOT counting the rear flippers] and the
[head and] neck alone was six or seven feet long.
The body was ovoid and terminated
behind by two large flippers. There was
another pair of flippers by the ahoulders,
while the neck was [elongated] and
[Illegible]. I d o
kiuiw f.lml. llii'HD iHiopIo iiro extremely
HiilicI nnd ri'lialilo, JUHI IIH, curiously
i'nou^;li, iiro niosl. people who purport
(i> liiivo Hi'i'ii Iho cnifiiiiii. It ia surely
VL-ry slriuific Ihnt IIK; English, Scots,
Norveigianns, Au.i(.niHiinM, and particuInrly I IK- Newfoundlanders and the
New ZeaIanders. all of whom have an
accepted reputation for skepticism,
conservâtism and solid honesty, are
yet the very ones—and practically the
only ones—who have made this claim.
Further, they are, with one exception,
seafaring folk, even if well educated—
n point that is made much of by the
believers in strange sea beasts.
Since 1919 also tbere have occurred
several incidents that are hard to explain.
Of these, the best known is unquestionably
the famous I.och Ness
monster, of Scotland, Since the reports
of this affair, which extended over
many months, are in the files oí almost
every newspaper and since two lengthy
treatises have been written on the subject,
we need not repeat them at
length. Suffice it to say that there is no
doubt that some large animal cruised
about this twenty-three-mile-long inland
lake for more than a year, showing
itself in a tentative and shy manner
to hundreds of witnesses, many of
whom made sworn statements to the
fact. These statements include all the
detail» that will have become irksomely
repetitious to any who have
waded through Doctor Oudemans'
tome or who have read the other array
of literature on the subject—lines of
humps peeping out of the water, paddles,
a long neck and small head, a
large wake traveling about at speed,
and masses of churned-up water. So
well authenticated and protracted were
these manifestations that all the leading
British papers and international
cable services kept permanent correspondents
at the lakeside for weeks.
The humps, wakes and chums were
even photographed.
This case reached a crescendo on
January 5, 1934, when a young
veterinary student named Arthur
Grant declared that, while motorcycling
along the side of the lake at 1:30
A.M., he had seen the animal on shore-
His description states: "It had a long
neck with eel-like head and large, oval-shaped
eyes just on top of its small
head. The body was very hefty, and
I distinctly saw two front flippers.
There were two other flippers which
seemed to be webbed behind, and there
was a tail which I estimated to he five
or six feet long. The curious thing about
the tail was it did not, as far as I could
Bee, come to a point, but was rounded
off. The total length of the creature
would be fifteen to twenty feet. It looked like a hybrid—something between a plesiosaurus and the seal
tribe."
Now, this description raises the very
potent question as to why Arthur'
Grant, if he wanted to perpetrate a
hoax about a sea serpent or sea
monster, should say that be had seen
it. on land. This, in turn, leads to the
first conclusion: Why anybody
indulge in all this bunkum fit iiny timi.>,
in view of the ridicule that they may
expect. to have heaped upon them?
If the reports of the animal or
animals are examined — both old and
recent, explicable on other grounds or
not, and rrimi all parts of the world
it must be admitted that there is an
extraordinary degree of concurrence
among them. Time and time again the
same physical features and the same
behavior are ascribed to the benHt.H.
Further, there is no evidence to show
that Ho-ciiiled wiCnesHCH Lo an appearance
ill AuHtrnIi« hiul ovor heard of incidents
in the South Atlantic, nor thfit
those were known to Scottish fishermen
or civil servants. As for the New Englanders,
of whom hundreds said they
saw such beasts for months on end in
1817-1819, about Gloucester, it. cannot
be believed that they bad then all
read tbe fabulous sixteenth-century
works on the sea serpent, and certainly
none of them had ever heard of a
plesiosaurus.
Tben, again, bow many strange
beasts like Latimeria may not have
been físhed out of the sea and either
thrown back because they had no commercial
value or been boiled down because
they bad?
Yet it seems that nearly every case
of a strange animal remnant washed
ashore turns out to have a perfectly
logical explanation—that is, it proves
to belong to some known form.
I have, however, found an instance
where there was some doubt as to what
tbe creature was. A thirty-foot, much decomposed
string of vertebrae, with a
skull and four paddlelike appendages
attached, was found on the beach of
Henry Island, British Columbia, in
November, 1914, and on this scientists
disagreed. Doctor Clemens, of the
government biological station at Nanaimo,
affirmed that it was a basking
sbark—as is so often the case with
such jetsam—while officials of the
Provincial Museum at Vancouver said
it was the remains of the last Steller's
sea cow—a large marine mammal related
to the manatee of tropical rivers
and seas—which was thought to have
become extinct in 1854.
No sufficient nmotint nf ovirlonct'
i"i(b('r for or ngnniHl thi» oxiHdmw of
one or more unknown mn iniMualH of
lt(r^> itiKo can IH» given \\\ nu nrtirk' of
thi« coinniiKH. ' Shinitd, however, wo
H(;w with the Encyclopedia Britainnica
and say "there still remain a number of independent and apparently credible reports that are not satisfactorily explained",
what do the reports that are not otherwise
explicable indicate?
That» there is to a substantial agreement
among them. The creature may
vary from twenty to 275[!] feet in length.
It has a long and slender neck and long,
tapering tail, a small bead and one or
two pairs of paddles. It seems to be
smooth. which is to say, scale-less or
sleek-haired. liko a seal, and it may
have whiskers. Now, these characters
are mammalian rather than reptilian
and, taken together with the only report
from "trained zoologists"—those on
the Valhalla, [one of which] also asserted that
what they saw was a mammal [The other
one thought it was a reptile]—would
seem to make the idea that the creature
or creatures are plesiosaurs unnecessary.[I must interject here that Sanderson has just made the extraordinary claim that a creature in the shape of a Plesiosaur is more likely to be a mammal on the basis of reports which say it looks like a Plesiosaur, the hair and whiskers are almost never reported and not any evidence as regards the majority of reports: and that the following statement that this "would seem to make the idea that such creatures were Plesiosaurs unnecessary" has no justification to be included whatsoever]
However, it might be pointed
out that the survival of dinosaurs is by
no means impossible, not only on the
lines laid down by Latimeria but for
the simple reason that millions have
survived—for example the crocodiles.
Even Doctor Oudemans' imaginary
construction, which looks exactly like
an attenuated plesiosaur, is not an impossible
form for a mammal to take. In
fact, it is really odd that none has done so
until now, for thís is an
convenient shape' for a marine creature
that must pursue swift, finny food. A
lJi nil wi.uld HL'om to be 11 Hilly
rudder, but f.hoii almost every report
of the fnijimji N;i(.(ik8 of liiiH or frills,
wbicb would act as a stabilizer. There
is, therefore, really no reason why such a mammal could not exist.
This, of course, pronipin the question
an to which group of animals it would
prove to be related to, if it were eventually
captured. Doctor Oudemans has
been over all this speculation in great
detail, and I must, admit, that, given
the only feasible types of marine mammals
to choose from—whales, seal« and
manatees, with the extinct, whalelike
beasts known an Zeuglodonts—he was
not too unreasonable in selecting the
seals.
Many reports say the head of the
unknown is seal-like, and seals have
four flippers, which resembles Mr.
Grant's description of the Loch Ness
monster. All we need, in fact, is one
or more species of huge seal with long
necks and tails, and the enigma would
be solved.
Yet, I repeat, we have not got one,
and in the meantime we had perhaps
better take our cue from the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and admit merely
that "there still remain a number of
independent and apparently credible
stories which are not satisfactorily explained."
THE END
