Reports about sea snakes began to appear in the press since the middle of the 19th century. Information continues to flow in our time, and, apparently, there are "giant creatures", as they are called, in the most varied waters of the World Ocean.
Monsters in the waters of Nova Scotia
One of the first encounters with these strange creatures took place near Nova Scotia (southeastern Canada) in 1845, when fishermen John Bockner and James Wilson saw a 30-meter "snake" in St. Margaret's Bay. They related the incident to their priest, the Reverend John Ambrose, who soon encountered a similar monster himself.
And in 1855, people on the shores of Green Harbor watched in dismay as "something long, disgusting-looking, undulating" pursued the boats of local fishermen. A description of this incident, made from the words of eyewitnesses, was published in one of its issues by the American magazine Ballou's, published in the 19th century: “Immediately behind what was, apparently, the head of an animal, a raised eminence, similar to a hump and crowned with a dense mass long hair that hangs down and sways, reminiscent of a horse's mane. Further, for 12 or 15 meters, the rings of the giant body of a mysterious monster slowly wriggled, or rolled. These wave-like movements took place in a vertical plane, with the rings appearing and falling, moving from head to tail, and left a trace behind on the mirror surface of the sea,similar to the wake jet from a steamer propeller."
When the creature approached the shore, there was a sound, as if from a jet of steam or air coming out of the beast's interior. His shiny teeth became visible, eyebrows protruding steeply above evil looking eyes, dark blue, with a metallic sheen, scales on the head and back and dirty yellow on the belly. The monster's head was at least two meters long.
In the end, he stopped pursuing the fishermen, and they, emaciated and seriously frightened, safely reached the shore.
The next meeting took place in 1883. Six soldiers who were fishing in Mahoney Bay suddenly noticed a huge snake nearby - its two-meter head, as in the case of the Green Harbor fishermen, was sticking out of the water. The creature's neck, as thick as the trunk of a good tree, was dark brown or black, with white stripes scattered randomly over the skin. The fishermen did not see the whole body of this miracle beast, but, in their common opinion, it was at least 25 meters long.
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Cow's head without horns and ears
One of the most impressive and documented "dates" with the sea serpent happened in the summer of 1905 in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Paraíba, the easternmost state of Brazil. Almost the entire crew of the Valhalla saw a large animal with a very long neck and an outgrowth on the back, resembling a folded fin. The neck stuck out of the water for two and a half - three meters, and the whole body of a fast-swimming animal was clearly visible under the surface of the water. The ship's crew included two experienced naturalists - Michael Nicholl and Mide Waldo. Both unanimously declared that they had never met anything like this in their life.
… The First World War was going on. On May 23, 1917, an armed merchant ship "Hillary" with a displacement of six thousand tons was off the coast of Iceland. The sea was calm, it was completely calm. Suddenly, the lookout noticed "something very large" on the water surface. Fearing a covert attack by a German submarine, Captain F. V. Dean raised the alert for the combat crews of his guns and sent the ship towards an unknown object, which turned out to be not a German submarine, but … something incredible. From a distance of about 25 meters, the captain watched in amazement as "a head similar to a cow's, only larger" and without horns and ears emerged from under the water. It was "black, only on the front of the muzzle there was a distinct whitish stripe, such as occurs in the same place on cows."And above the surface of the water, a thin and flabby-looking dorsal fin protruded about a meter. The total length of this outlandish creature was estimated by sailors at 20 meters, of which about six fell on a muscular neck.
And then, making one of the most fatal mistakes in the entire history of navigation and zoology, Captain Dean decided that his gunners had a good opportunity to practice shooting. Having commanded to move away from the "target" at a distance of a thousand meters, he ordered to open fire on it. A direct hit killed the animal. His death throes caused excitement on the surface of the sea, and soon the "living submarine" disappeared under water.
Eyes the size of a tea saucer
Let's go back to the south of Nova Scotia. On July 5, 1976, Eisner Penny, a resident of Sable Island, saw an unusual huge animal in the sea and told some of his friends about it. They, of course, made Penny laugh, but a few days later one of them, Kate Ross and her son Rodney, saw the subject of their recent ridicule.
“His huge round eyes the size of a tea saucer sparkled with a red light,” Kate told excitedly, shocked by what he saw. Two huge fangs protruded from its gigantic, wide-open mouth. In size, they approached the tusks of a walrus or even an elephant and hung down from the upper jaw. This monster swam behind us, very close. And we got a good look at his body, 12-15 meters long, covered with grayish, snake-like skin, speckled with a large number of some kind of bumps, protrusions and shells stuck to it. And it seemed to us that he had a tail like a fish, with a vertical blade, not like a whale.”
Ross swiftly guided his boat away from the "sea serpent", and soon it disappeared from view in the fog.
Captured plesiosaur
In April 1977, the team of the Japanese fishing vessel "Zuiyo-Maru", fishing off the coast of New Zealand, brought to the surface a 15-meter carcass of an unknown sea animal, in appearance - the oldest monster of the ocean depths. The crew members took him to the deck and managed to take several color photographs of the mysterious creature, before the captain, fearing that the dead monster, which had already begun to decompose, would spoil his entire catch, ordered the corpse to be thrown overboard.
Professor Takeo Shikama, who studies ancient animals and teaches at Yokohama National University, after examining the pictures, said that the ashes did not belong to any of the mammals or fish he knew. And in appearance, the monster most of all resembles the plesiosaur that lived in the seas, which became extinct more than 100 million years ago.
After such a sensational statement by a famous scientist, several ships went in search of the remains of a mysterious creature thrown out by the unlucky captain, but they were never found. The drama of this situation lies in the fact that, through human thoughtlessness, science has lost a rare exhibit, the value of which would many times exceed the value of the catch saved by the captain along with his vessel.
They are not snakes
In early 1999, the editorial board of the American magazine Fate Magazine received a letter from a reader who accidentally stumbled upon an old clipping from a local newspaper in Astoria, Oregon in his archives. The man put this clipping into his letter, since the photographs and text presented on it could, in his opinion, be of interest to the magazine.
Fate Magazine included a clipping from 1940 in its February 1999 issue. The text accompanying the photographs read:
“The sea monster has baffled the local population. Ilwako, Washington.
The remains of an unprecedented marine animal with long fins located on both sides of the head, and with a five-meter tail studded with thorns, on Friday remained unidentified at Cape Long Beach, despite the fact that they were examined by dozens of people. The drawing, made on the basis of the remains found on the shore, depicts the outlandish creature as it probably looked during life. Its length was supposed to be about 15 meters, it weighed 1500-1800 kilograms. The whole body of the mysterious beast was covered with thick stubble."
Despite the fact that "sea snakes" for centuries have come across to people in the seas and oceans of almost the whole world, no one can really explain what these monsters are, although for almost two centuries zoologists have been heated debates around them. But whoever the "giant creatures" are, it's safe to say that they are not snakes. Snakes cannot swim while wriggling in a vertical plane. And of course they don't have fish-like tails.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century № 1-2. Author: Vadim Ilyin
