Scottish Sea serpent on the radio

On Saturday night’s Morton Through Midnight show the regular cryptozoology feature Morton’s Mystery Creatures focused on a mystery sea serpent spotted in Orkney  

Just over a hundred years ago, one fine day in August, nineteen hundred and ten, three men were out hunting ducks off the coast of Orkney when they encountered something far larger than wildfowl. 

The companions, a fellow by the name of Hutchinson, his father and a cousin, headed out towards the Skerry of Work located in Meil Bay. The day was perfect: bright, clear and tranquil as they sailed quietly out toward the Skerries. Suddenly the tranquility was broken by a school of whales leaping clear out of the water, making a great commotion and traveling at great speed as if in fear for their lives. This sudden surge of cetaceans, seemingly heading straight at the boat in a blind panic, just managed to avoid the fragile craft, much to the relief of its occupants.

But what was the reason for the whales’ panicked flight? The men first thought they were looking at an enormous stalk of kelp rising high above the water. However in place of a tangle of seaweed there was a head! They then realised that what they were seeing was actually a long snake-like neck topped by a horse-like head.

Now there appears to be two schools of thought on what to do in such a situation. The first is that displayed by Hutchinson; he thought the best thing to do was to aim his gun; after all what could be finer than the head of a sea serpent mounted on your wall. 

While our souvenir hunter was all for taking a potshot with his fowling piece, his father disagreed. He belonged to the second school of thought that can be summed up as - just run away as fast as possible, on no account shoot it. Nothing to do with the rarity and wonder of sea serpents, rather the fact that shooting an animal that has just scared away a school of whales could leave you confronted by one very annoyed sea serpent.

Common sense prevailed, no shots were fired, no one was harmed and thus we have a description of the creature.

The visible parts of the animal were dark brown with the impression of lighter bands running across the neck which might have just been wet streaks. All agreed that the head was some 18ft above the sea’s surface, darker in colour and likened to that of a horse or camel. Particularly odd was the neck, appearing to be too slender for the size of the head; the top part resembled a snake that gradually thickened until it was the width of a man.

The men watched the animal for around five minutes before it sank slowly back into the water, making not the slightest splash and leaving no bubbles as it disappeared below the waves.

So what did frighten the whales that August day? The first impression would seem to indicate a half-kelp half-triffid beast. However, from the fuller description it was almost certainly a member of the animal kingdom. It would appear that our duck hunters had seen an example of what Bernard Heuvelmans, the great cryptozoologist, would describe as a merhorse. Interestingly, this wasn’t the only encounter Hutchinson was to have with a sea monster. But that’s for another day.

If you want to read more about this sea serpent and others in Orkney you can find them all in my book Mystery Animals of the Northern Isles, which is available in both paperback from Amazon

 

You can listen to this show on the following link Morton through Midnight  it is 1 hour 26 minutes 10 seconds into the show.

NEIL ARNOLD: All Bizarre Creatures Great & Small Part One

I have known Neil for fifteen years now since he was a mod schoolboy with ambitions for adventure and I was an earnest young hippie who merely wanted to start a club for people interested in unknown animals. Nothing much has changed over the years. We are just both a tad older...

A SEA MONSTER?
From the Rochester Gazette & Weekly Advertiser, Tuesday January 12th 1836 – Number 460 (Page 2) – extracted from Enniskillen Chronicle

‘The huge monster of the deep that recently cut the fishing-boat across, whereby three men met an appalling death off St. John’s Point, on the Donegal coast, has been since thrown ashore dead. It’s said to be one of the largest ever seen in this country, and our correspondent adds that on being opened, a young one, measuring 10 ft in length was found inside. Its death is said to have been occasioned by a part of the boat which it may have swallowed at the time, but this is to be questioned as the gullet of the animal is not sufficiently capacious to admit a large portion of timber. We expect to hear further particulars next week. It is to be hoped the produce of the fish will be applied to the relief of the families of the unfortunate sufferers.’

AN EAGLE!
From the Rochester & Weekly Gazette Advertiser, Tuesday February 16th 1830 – Number 465 (Page 4).

‘A large eagle was washed ashore at Deal (Kent) a few days ago, and has been presented to the Canterbury Philosophical Institution.’

A MONSTER!
From the Rochester Gazette & Weekly Advertiser, Tuesday May 3rd 1831 – Number 528 (Page 2)

‘On Saturday April 16th, a ewe, the property of Mr M. Lawson, of Fullford, nr York, yeaned a lamb of perfect conformation and healthy appearance, and which is alive and well; together with it was also produced an animal of the following singular malformation. Its head assimilates with no genus or species of the animal creation that we are acquainted with. Its forehead is arched, and the top of the head covered with a greyish hair, resembling that of a dog. It has cheek bones, high and prominent, like those of the human species, and only one eye of diamond form, remarkably large, and fixed in the middle of the brow, being projected over by a flesh protuberance somewhat resembling the ears, which are fixed in their natural position. There are no nostrils, and the mouth is wide, the upper jaw projecting considerably beyond the upper part of the mouth. The tongue, which is large, is thrust out so that the top extends over the jaw. The body partakes more of the form of a dog. Altogether it forms a curious object, when viewed in front and in an upright position, the countenance, from its unnatural association with some human form, reminds one of the fabled Cyclops, of mythological note. This curious freak of nature has been presented to Mr Phillips for the Yorkshire Museum.

GLEN VAUDREY: Where have all the sea-serpents gone?

During the nineteenth century the Western Isles of Scotland would on average have sightings of a sea serpent every twenty years. They would range from the great sinuous many humped type to the merhorse and long necked sea serpent. These sightings would continue at the same frequency all the way up to the end of the First World War and then they appear to have upped flippers and headed off somewhere else.

It would be in the late 1950s before these waters would once more see a mystery sea creature, on that occasion a giant turtle would be seen swimming in the waters between Soay and Skye. Impressive as a giant turtle is it is not a sea serpent.

So where have they all gone? It would be extremely sad to think that some of the great mystery animals of the deep have become extinct before they can be positively identified but it is quite possible that that could be the case in this instance.

But perhaps there are other less extreme reasons than extinction to explain their absence from these waters, before we give up the search let’s consider some possible explanations for the recent dearth of sightings. The first thing to consider is the effect technology has had on sea vessels, they have not only got bigger they have got louder, and despite the much larger size of the ships there are perversely less crew members needed to man them and therefore less people to look out across the waves. Add to that ships rarely drift out of the shipping lanes and into unexpected sea serpent-infested waters. So perhaps the sea serpent prefers the quieter waters where it can have no fear of being run down by a passing cargo ship as it happily basks on the surface.

But then again the reason for the sea serpent’s absence may have more to do with fish stocks. In the early part of the twentieth century the herring stocks in these waters collapsed, gone for good were the days when the local harbours would be full to bursting with fishing boats, today you would be lucky to find more than a handful. So perhaps this lack of fish is the cause that drove the sea serpents away, if so perhaps one day if the fish stocks improve we may once again see the return of sea serpents to the Western Isles.

MEDWAY MONSTER MISTAKE MOOTED

In Animals & Men #42 we published the following story:

Numerous people reported seeing something unusual swimming against the tide in the River Medway as it passed through the town of Rochester in Kent, England.Several people thought that it may have been a school of dolphins but one lady reported seeing a single 9m (30ft) long creature. She said the animal was grey to mottled brown and moved like an eel in the direction of the Amadeus nightclub. This picture, by the way, was a mock up by the paper’s art department.

Yesterday teatime we received this e-mail from a CFZ member called Patrick Noble:

"Afternoon Jon (and probably Oll as you wrote the article), After seeing the article mentioned above I had a little chuckle to myself, as I live about 100yds downstream on a houseboat, and am very much aware of the natural way of things in the river. Needless to say 9m long sea serpents are not something I can attest to seeing on a regular basis! I though the dolphins to be a plausible but unlikely theory, however they are not unheard of in this area.

I thought it more likely to be a piece of tree floating along as this is frequent at this spot. I took these photos today of the lesser horned sea serpent from the back of the boat earlier today, hope you enjoy! Seriously freak high tide today as well, flooded the boatyard, about 4ft higher than I've ever seen it before.

On a more naturalist than crypto note, I firmly belive that the new british record Thick Lipped Grey Mullet will be caught from the medway in the next 5 years, even though the species is in decline for a variety of reasons not helped by it's slow growing and late maturing nature.

Kind Regards
Patrick"

GUEST BLOGGER GLEN VAUDREY: Seeing is believing

Glen is a very new recruit to Planet CFZ. Indeed, we had never heard from him until a few months ago when he wrote - slightly diffidently - to us, asking whether he could write a volume in our ongoing series The Mystery Animals of The British Isles. We asked him for a proposed synopsis and a sample of his writing, and were overawed by what we received. Here was a man who loved both words and the countryside, and could use one to describe the other in poetic but always down to earth terms. We were beginning to come to the conclusion that here was someone that Bob Marley would have described as a `Natural Mystic`, when the final manuscript arrived, and we knew that we were right. So we asked him to be a guest blogger..

When looking for mystery creatures does our current knowledge affect our perception of what we are going to see? For example whenever I catch the briefest glimpse of a great northern diver as it swims past in the distance, would it ever even cross my mind that I might have seen a Great Auk if I didn’t already know what one looked like.

It was a little over a year ago on a particularly foggy day when I saw what I at first suspected to be a long necked sea serpent popping up its head in the most unusual of places, Stornoway harbour! After both the initial excitement of the sighting and the obligatory cursing at not having a camera upon me I soon realised that what I had been privileged to observe was not an unidentified sea serpent but rather a grey seal as it was periscoping, it raised what appeared to be getting on for nearly half its body clean out of the water as it struggled to see around.

The reason all this came to mind was that as I set about researching mystery animal sighting in the Hebrides I became aware that not all the things reported over the years were necessarily mystery animals, for instance there is one sighting of a long necked sea serpent the description of which sounds remarkably like a submarine.

But not all reports come out so negatively, on the Isle of Mull in the years leading up to the First World War there were reported sightings of a large mystery black dog. Fast forward a few decades to the late ’70s and reports start to appear of sightings of a large mystery black cat.

Maybe those two sighting are not connected in any way other than my mind running ahead of itself, but perhaps we should consider that if today you see a large black animal in the distance it is almost certainly chalked up as a cat because that’s what people see, even if the sighting might be couched with ‘I thought it was a dog till it moved’.

What then are the chances that those earlier mystery dog sighting had more to do with the viewer being secure in the knowledge that it had to be a dog because such a thing as a large black cat on the Isle of Mull just couldn’t possibly exist.