LINK: The Sea Serpent That Got Away (Via Richard Freeman)

From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library:

After reading this description of a sea serpent as described on page 7 of the June 30, 1899 issue of The Tacoma Evening News, can anyone out there familiar with the creatures in Puget Sound identify what they really caught?

LOST THEIR SEA SERPENT

Party of Scientists Shipwrecked Off Moskito Island

Collecting Specimens of Giant Barnacles, Sponges, Sea Cucumbers and Other Things For The Ferry Museum

“Ferry Museum has a large and varied assortment of material added to the list of attractions, but not until after a campaign lasting three days, and a shipwreck that lost the entire collection of the first day’s work.”

“An extreme low tide on the straits between the west end of McNeil’s Island and Meridian, off Moskito Island, County Commissioner C.H. Dow has told of wonderful large barnacles, as big as a quart bowl, the beasts having a mouth and jaws on them like the beak of the dinasaurs of the reptilian age. Other strange and wonderful monsters were said to abound in those waters, and a party was fixed up to go after them.”

“Admiral Jacobs, of Puyallup, owner of the fine steam yacht Strea, took out his boat, with Professor Harlan I. Smith, of the New York Museum of Natural History; Professor Gilstrap, curator of the Ferry Museum; Commissioner Dow, Frank R. Baker and Mrs. Dow, Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Jacobs.”

“The barnacles were all that had been promised, and a big collection of them are now in place at the Museum, where their vicious snapping and terrific looking beaks are a terror to beholders. There is also a fine assortment of sea cucumbers, sea eggs, star fish; sea weed, shells of various kinds, some sponges and other specimens of much interest.”

“The catch of the season, however, was lost by the capsizing of the boat: the sea serpent, one of the most terrible and striking looking of the kind ever caught.”

“The animal, with a lot of other stuff, was in a yawl boat in tow of the steamer, when the struggles of the beast upset the boat, losing the entire collection in the Sound.”

Read on...