DALE DRINNON: Reconstruction of the Monongahela SS from the Published Dimensions

One of the more controversial reports given in the record of Ses-serpents is the case of the Monogahela, which supposedly engaged in the killing and flensing of a hundred-foot-long unknown sea creature of peculiarly snakelike anatomy in January of 1852, in the South Pacific ocean. Heuvelmans brands the account a hoax and using a version of the story evidently as in Oudemans' book, where it was also called a hoax. However at the end of the passage, on page 229, he acknowledges that the genuine Captain Seabury's records (together with the headboard of the wrecked Monongahela), are in the Whaling Museum at New Bedford, Mass. He says he has not confirmed this. Then he says Tim Dinsdale has published another version but he has not done the research to confirm or deny it.


Dinsdale in The Leviathans (AKA Monster Hunt) plainly identifies his source and says it is from the Frank Edwards book Stranger Than Science, and that Edwards cites the letters from the Whaling Museum as a source. Other sources confirm that the letters do exist in the museum and they are written in Captain Jason Seabury's own handwriting, as attested by depositions from his living relatives also preserved at the Museum. So it seems that Heuvelmans was basing his assessment on a retelling which had gotten some of the facts wrong, including the Captains' name. Another good source is Edward Rowe Snowe's Supernatural Mysteries And Other Tales, pages 97-110. Snowe indicates that an independant account was given in confirmation by members of the Rebecca Sims, the ship that went on to deliver Seabury's letters on the return trip while the Monogahela went on to smash up in the Aleutians while trying to make up a full cargo of whale-oil.



From Seabury's desription, and begging the question for the moment as to whether the account is genuine, it is still possible to make a reconstruction of the creature. This has never been attempted before, to my knowledge.

• Length is given as 103 ft 7 inches. Given that the creature was most likely measured over the curve and had a very fat belly, this could have actually been 90-92 feet long. but hardly any less than that.


• Around the neck was 19 ft and an inch over, diameter would thus be 6 feet


• Around the shoulders was 24 feet 6 inches, diameter over 8 feet 8 inches


• Around the distended belly was 49 feet 4 inches., diameter about 15 1/2 feet


• Head and neck together were 25 feet and the neck was 10 feet long of that (specified while the fighting was going on.) the blubber on the body lay 4 inches deep. four swimming limbs and a tail were mentioned but their measurements were not given.
  
  

Putting these measurements together makes a fair picture of a large mosasaur, and I have added the measurements to one of Charles R. Knight's reconstructions for Tylosaurus. I have modified the reconstruction scarcely at all, save to subtract the pouch of loose skin at the throat and to shorten the tail somewhat. The "distended belly" was almost that fat in the original reconstruction, believe it or not.

Knight chose to make a sort of continuous backfin on this reconstruction. Other reconstructions put a jagged crest on the center of the back. In this case, the profile of the back was reported as uneven and in fact the creature first appeared as a set of small projections taken to be "humps". The creatre elsewhere clearly undulates in the horizontal plane, twisting and squirming in its death-throes. It is also possible that this is yet another time the "humps" have nothing to do with the body of the creature but were merely waves in the wake.