356 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



work on natural history,* he depicted this tremendous 

 cuttle as throwing its arms over a three-masted vessel, 

 snapping off its masts, tearing down the yards, and on the 

 point of dragging it to the bottom, if the crew had not suc- 

 ceeded in cutting off its immense limbs with cutlasses and 

 hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtain- 

 ing information, for he was at one time an assistant in the 

 geological department of the Museum of Natural History, 

 in Paris ; and wrote a work on conchology,f besides that 

 already referred to. But it appears to have been his de- 

 liberate purpose to cajole the public ; for it is reported 

 that he exclaimed to M. Defrance : " If my entangled 

 ship is accepted, I will make my ' colossal poulpe ' over- 

 throw a whole fleet." Accordingly we find him gravely 

 declaring J that one of the great victories of the British 

 navy was converted into a disaster by the monsters 

 which are the subject of his history. He boldly asserted 

 that the six men-of-war captured from the French by 

 Admiral Rodney in the West Indies on the I2th of April, 

 1782, together with four British ships detached from his 

 fleet to convoy the prizes, were all suddenly engulphed in 

 the waves on the night of the battle under such circum- 

 stances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by 

 colossal cuttles, and not by a gale or any ordinary casualty. 

 Unfortunately for De Montfort, the inexorable logic of 

 facts not only annihilates his startling theory, but demon- 

 strates the reckless falsity of his plausible statements. The 

 captured vessels did not sink on the night of the action, 

 but were all sent to Jamaica to refit, and arrived there 



* Histoire Naturelle gdntrale et par ticu Here des Mollusques, vol. ii., 

 p. 256. 



t Conchy liologie Systtmatique. 



\ Hist. Nat. des Moll., vol. ii., pp. 358 to 368. 



