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The Sea-Serpent: Gosse

Mr. Z. Newman was the first scientific man to absolutely affirm his belief in its existence, and to indicate its probable zoological affinities; and he was ably followed by Mr. Gosse, who, in the charming work* already frequently quoted, exhaustively discusses the whole question. Mr. Gosse, however, to my mind, forgoes a great portion of the advantage of his argument by a too limited acceptance of authorities, and leaves untouched, as have all who preceded him, the question of the breathing apparatus of the creature, and also omits insisting, as he might well have done, on the remarkable coincidence of the seasons and climatic conditions at and under which the creature ordinarily exhibits itself, which may be quoted first as an argument in favour of the reality of the different stories, and, secondly, as affording indica- * The Romance of Natural History, P. H. Gosse, F.R.S., First Series, London, 1880, 12th edition; Second Series, 1875, 5th edition. tions of the nature and habits of the creature to which they relate.

Both Mr. Newman and Mr. Gosse, moreover, laboured under the disadvantage of being unacquainted with some of the later stories, such as that of the Nestor sea-serpent seen in the Straits of Malacca, which appears to amply substantiate the general conclusion at which they had already, happily, as I conceive, arrived.

In nearly all the cases quoted, and in all of those where the creature has appeared in the deep fjords of Norway or in the bays of other coasts, the date of its appearance has been some time during the months of July and August, and the weather calm and hot. These last summer conditions, in high latitudes, do not obtain for long together, so that the auspices favourable to the appearance of the creature would probably not exist for more than a few weeks in each season, and during the remainder of the year it would rest secluded in the depths of the fjords, presuming those to be its permanent habitation, or in some oceanic home, if, as would seem more likely to be the case, its appearance in the bays and fjords was simply due to a temporary visit, made possibly in connection with its reproduction; for, were its habitation in the fjords constant, we should expect it to make its appearance annually, instead of at irregular and distant intervals.

We must also infer that it is a non-air-breathing creature. Professor Owen, in his very able discussion of the Dædalus story, bases his main argument against the serpentine character of the creature seen in this and other instances on there being either no undulation at all of the body, or a vertical one, which is not a characteristic of serpents, and on the fact of no remains having ever been discovered washed up on the Norway coasts. He says:-- "Now, a serpent, being an air-breathing animal, with long vesicular and receptacular lungs, dives with an effort, and ... • commonly floats when dead, and so would the sea-serpent, until decomposition or accident had opened the tough integument and let out the imprisoned gases. During life the exigencies of the respiration of the great sea-serpent would always compel him frequently to the surface; and, when dead and swollen, it would Prone on the flood, extended long and large, Lie floating many a rood.

Such a spectacle, demonstrative of the species if it existed, has not hitherto met the gaze of any of the countless voyagers who have traversed the seas in so many directions."

But, assuming it to be neither a serpent nor an airbreathing creature, the very cogent arguments which he applied so powerfully fall to the ground, and I may at once state that a review of the whole of the reported cases of its appearance entirely favours the first assumption, while a little reflection will show the necessity of the latter. No airbreathing creature, or rather a creature furnished with lungs, could possibly exist, even for a season only, in the inland bays of populous countries like Norway and Scotland without continually exposing itself to observation; but this is not the case. Whereas there is no difficulty in conceiving that a creature adapted to live in the depths of the ocean could breathe readily enough at the surface, even for considerable periods; for we know that fish of many kinds, and notably carp, can retain life for days, and even weeks, when removed from the water, provided they happen to be in a moist situation.

Again, a power of constriction, a characteristic of boas and pythons, and therefore implying an alliance with them, is not necessarily indicated, as might be supposed, even by the action affirmed in Captain Drevar's story; for a creature of serpentine form, attacking another, might coil itself round for the mere purpose of maintaining a hold while it tore its victim open with its powerful jaws and teeth. This action is simply that of an eel which, on being hooked, grasps weeds at the bottom to resist capture.

Nor are we bound to accept in any way the captain's suggestion that the monster gorged its victim after the fashion of a land-serpent. It may as readily have torn it open and fed on it as an eel might; and it is, indeed, not unreasonable to suppose that so powerful a monster would find its prey among large creatures, such as seals, porpoises, and the smaller cetaceæ.

That the sea-serpent was formerly more frequently seen on the Norwegian coasts than now I consider probable, as also that its visits were connected with its breeding season, and discontinued in consequence of the greater number and larger size of vessels, and especially of the introduction of steam. As a parallel instance, I may mention that, in the early days of the settlement of Australia, sperm whales resorted to the harbours along its coasts for calving purposes, and were sufficiently numerous to cause the maintenance of what were called "bay whaling stations" at Hobart Town, Spring Bay, and many other harbours of Tasmania and South Australia. At the present time, the sperm whale rarely approaches within ten miles of the coast, and the small whaling fleet finds scanty occupation in the ocean extending south from the great Australian bight to the south cape of Tasmania. Mr. Gosse eliminates from his concluding analysis of sea-serpent stories all those recorded by Norwegian and American observers, and argues only upon a selected number resting on British evidence.

By this contraction he loses as a basis of argument a number of accounts which I consider as credible as those he quotes, and from which positive deductions might be drawn, more weighty than those of similar, but merely inferential, character which he employs.

The account of the monster seen by Hans Egede, for example, where the creature exhibited itself more completely than it did in any of the instances selected by Mr. Gosse, specifically indicated the possession of paws, flippers, fins or paddles, while this can only be surmised at, in the latter cases to which I refer, from the progressive steady motion of the creature, with the head and neck elevated above the surface, and apparently unaffected by any undulatory motion of the body. This at once removes it from the serpent class, without any necessity for the additional confirmation which the enlarged proportions of the body in comparison with those of the neck, as given in Egede's amended version, afford us.