The appearance of sea monsters, monsters
Stories about monsters and creatures of the deep sea have been passed down by people for thousands of years. Ancient Chinese myths, the legends of Greece, Norway and Polynesia tell of the multitude of gigantic monsters that inhabit the seas and oceans and inspire fear in everyone who meets them. In the 1950s, there were a whole series of reports of encounters with sea monsters. A characteristic feature of such messages is that the facts stated in them prevail over their emotional coloring. Despite the fact that the entire knowledgeable scientific world in these cases denied the reality of the stories, it is unlikely that fictions, not supported by facts, could be universally and persistently repeated over such a long period of time.
• 1953, in a message made by a diver working in the South Pacific Ocean, it is said about just such an event, which is very similar to the stories and myths of our ancestors. The diver said that he was testing a new diving suit and descended to a record depth. “I was accompanied by a 15-foot shark on the descent. She circled around me, not daring to attack. How deep could this shark go? When she was 20 feet above me, I reached an underwater reef that rose from a black abyss.
It was dangerous to continue diving further, and I stopped, peering into the bottomless space. The shark stopped moving and froze, waiting for my further actions. At this time, the water temperature began to drop sharply. I saw a black mass rising from the abyss. She emerged very slowly. As soon as this moving mass reached the depth to which the light penetrated, I could see that it was brown. I was amazed at the enormous size of this monster, an acre. Without a doubt, it was alive, as it pulsed slowly. He did not have any parts of his body discernible from a distance and did not have eyes.
Still throbbing, this horrible sea monster slowly floated past me upstairs. At that moment, the cold became simply unbearable. The shark hovered over me, motionless, as if paralyzed by either cold or fear. Without taking my eyes off, I watched as the huge brown monster swam up to the shark and touched it with its top. The shark, convulsed, was drawn into the monster's substance.
I hesitated to move, waiting for this brown giant animal to return to the abyss. Finally the monster, as slowly as it had risen, began to descend. Darkness engulfed him, and the water began to warm. God knows what it was, but I have no doubt that this sea monster originated in the primordial mud that lies at the bottom of the ocean."
• It remains only to speculate whether this story has a connection with the more tragic events that played out in 1937. This year was marked by a series of mysterious disappearances of pearl seekers, mostly Japanese, off the coast of Australia. The Melbourne Leader newspaper reported that the skipper of the schooner Yatata Maru was busy harvesting pearls from the sunken ship. At the appointed time, he gave the signal to rise. But the team only lifted his rescue rope. Other divers could not find the slightest trace at the bottom. A series of this kind of strange disappearances for a long time deprived the rest of the divers working off the Australian coast.
• A year later, the mysterious events had a sequel. An unknown monster has learned to get tasty divers out of their spacesuits. Sunday Times, 1938, 7 August: “Diver Masao Matsumo (Japan) dives from the sailboat Felton off Darnley Island, northern Australia. He signaled to rise, but the lifters pulled only his helmet, corset and basket with pearl shells to the surface. Other divers, descending, found absolutely nothing. Masao Matsumo vomited something from the suit at a depth of 240 feet and disappeared forever."
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• 1879, January - the ship "Baltimore" sailing to India sailed in the Aden area. Major J. Senor strolled lazily across the deck. One accidental glance overboard dramatically changed his mood: being sane and completely sober, the major saw a sea snake. His screams roused the ship's doctor S. Hall and the passenger Mrs. Greenfield, who jumped out onto the deck. They looked in the direction the Señor was looking and saw the same thing. The screams of women and the screams of men drew other people onto the deck. All attention was riveted by an unusual sight.
The message from Major Senor said that the monster did not come closer than 500 yards to the ship, and retired so quickly that he did not have time to determine whether it was covered with scales or its skin was smooth.
“The head and neck, about two feet in diameter, protruded from the water to a height of 20-30 feet. When the sea monster rose high above the water, it opened its mouth wide, and closed before diving. It floated under the water at great speed, diving almost instantly, but after that it was already a hundred yards ahead.
His body was invisible under water, and was probably far below the surface, since it did not emit large waves from itself, although minor splashes were visible behind his head. The monster's head shape was not at all the same as the dragons in the pictures. She rather looked like the head of a bulldog, with her characteristic forehead and eyebrows.
Once, while moving, the monster raised its head high above the water, and then sharply dropped it, as if it were a log. This action caused a giant splash 15 feet high, shaped like a pair of wings."
• 1879, October 14 - at 5.30 a.m. In the afternoon, a sea snake was discovered in the Suez Canal by officers and crew of the British naval vessel Philomel. The snake stuck its head 15 feet out of the water and opened its fin for viewing.
Its huge mouth was dark gray with reddish reflections inside. The monster resembled the creature that Baltimore had met earlier, and it behaved in a similar way.
• Another snake was observed fighting a whale. 1879, April 5 - In the morning the Japanese ship "Kyushiu Maru" sailed near Cape Seitenou. Captain Davidson and Officer McKechnie spotted a whale behaving rather oddly. Keith tried to jump out of the sea as high as possible. This was so unusual that the officers took binoculars to get a better view of the jumping whale.
The animal again made a desperate jump, and at that moment they were able to see that some creature was grabbing the side of the whale. The next, highest jump followed, and the sailors saw a huge snake with a girth of a ship's mast. She rose 30 feet above the water. For a moment frozen in the air, the snake and the whale fell into the ocean and were no longer seen on the surface.
• 1874 - a cold brown monster from the abyss overturned the schooner "Pearl". This was watched by a multitude of witnesses who were aboard the Stefowen from Colombo to Madras. Several Indian newspapers published their creepy stories, which fully confirmed the 5 rescued crew members of the Pearl.
"Pearl", 150 tons, fell into a calm and was motionless. Meanwhile the steamer Strafowen was approaching the schooner. Suddenly, half a mile from the Pearl, a huge brown mass appeared on the starboard side of the sea surface. The crew of the schooner determined that it was neither a whale, nor a sea snake, nor an accumulation of algae. Taking the gun, the captain fired a shot towards the strange object. The gigantic mass immediately set in motion, heading towards the ship without visible efforts, it overturned the schooner and disappeared under the water. Strafowan approached and picked up 5 team members.
• The sea serpent was observed by officers from the British ship Dedalus. Some time later, drawings and descriptions of another sea serpent were published in "Graphic", which were made by the crew of a warship. Below is the story of an eyewitness of the incident, Hines: “The evening of June 6 - the sea was completely calm, and it was not difficult to see the fins that appeared on its surface. They rose 5-6 feet out of the water. Examining them with a telescope at a distance of one and a half cables, I clearly distinguished the head, two fins and the body of the creature.
The head was roughly six feet in size, the neck was 4-5 feet long, the torso 15 feet wide, and each fin up to 15 feet long. The movements of the fins resembled those of a turtle, and the sea monster itself resembled a giant seal. The nape of the head gave a special resemblance to a seal. The creature's head was not always above the water, but only appeared for a few seconds and then disappeared again. When it was moving, it did not make any noise."
• 1808 June - off the west coast of Scotland, a sea serpent tried to attack a priest. His name was Reverend Maclean. He was in a boat with several companions when this creature jumped out of the sea, gazed. With considerable physical effort, and not without the help of God, people managed to reach the nameless bay, leaving the snake with nothing.
• 1844 - "Atlantic Manfly" gave the description of the monster given by the Reverend Maclean: “His head was very wide, oval in shape, his neck was small; the upper body is very broad. The body tapered to a tail that went deep under the water so that I could not distinguish it. The animal had no fins, and it seemed to me that it moved forward in undulating up and down movements. I'm sure it was between 70 and 80 feet in length."
• The real epidemic of the appearance of sea snakes arose on the coast of New England, near Gloucester and Nahent, in the years 1815-1830. The Gloucester Telegraph reported that one such snake, approaching a boat 30 feet away, was met by gun shots from an experienced shooter. The unfortunate target had appeared several times in Gloucester Bay before and was said to have a head 6-8 feet in size, shaped like a horse's. The snake had a brown body about a hundred feet long with several humps, each about the size of a regular barrel.
• The next year the same snake or something similar appeared near Näkhent. Its description, by Mr. Samuel Cabot, appeared in the pages of the Atlantic Manfly in 1884: “The head of the snake was like a horse. She was two feet above the surface of the water, and her head dropped 6 to 8 inches as it moved forward. I looked at the whole snake and I think it was at least 80 feet in length."
In The Secrets of the Sea by JJ Lockhart, referred to by the Lipincots Magazine, there is testimony from Mr. Tom Prince, who saw Cabot's snake near Nahent a few days earlier: “Its head appeared three feet above the surface of the water. I counted 13 humps on her back. I have 7 testimonies of her from Long Beach, and according to some of them, the animal was no more than 100 yards away."
The snake reappeared in Nahent the following year. United Services Journal provided eyewitness testimony: “We saw a creature appearing at a short distance from the coast, whose body consisted of many blackish curves, of which I counted 13. Others brought their number to 15 … we can easily calculate that its length was at least 50-60 feet."
After a while from the sloop "Concorde", passing in the area, there was a shrill cry from the helmsman. The captain's mate ran out onto the deck and looked where the helmsman was pointing.
The captain's mate said: “I saw a huge snake swimming in the water. Her head towered 7 feet above the surface. The weather was clear and the sea calm. The color of all visible parts of the creature's body was black, and the skin appeared smooth and without scales. I saw her clearly for 6-7 minutes, she was sailing in the same direction as the sloop, and at about the same speed. On her back, humps or rings the size of a large barrel were visible. They were spaced three feet apart … they were like large barrels held together with a tail underwater."
• Sandy Beach, Australia's Great Reef lighthouse, has a reputation as a platform from which to see sea kites. Aborigines from the Great Sandy and Franuser Islands said they saw them frequently, over the centuries. This is probably why the appearance of "moka-moha", as they called them, does not make any impression on the natives. White-skinned peoples also have evidence of encounters with such creatures. I believed in all this unconditionally until I read not so long ago that the Australian government encourages tourism on the Great Reef. This made me suspicious of such messages.
Russell Eric Frank