4 i8 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



the ship Royal Saxon, on a voyage to India, in 1829. The 

 features of this incident are consistent with his having seen 

 one of the, then unknown, great calamaries. 



Dr. Scott, of Exeter, sent to the Editor of the Zoologist 

 (p. 2459), an extract from the memorandum-book of Lieu- 

 tenant Sandford, R.N., written about the year 1820, when 

 he was in command of the merchant ship Lady Combermere. 

 In it he mentions his having met with, in lat. 46, long. 3 

 (Bay of Biscay), an animal unknown to him, an immense 

 body on the surface of the water, spouting, not unlike the 

 blowing of a whale, and the raising up of a triangular ex- 

 tremity, and subsequently of a head and neck erected six 

 feet above the surface of the water. This was evidently a 

 great squid seen under circumstances similar to those 

 described by Hans Egede (p. 393). 



In the Sun Newspaper of July 9th, 1849, was published 

 the following statement of Captain Herriman, of the ship 

 Brazilian : 



" On the morning of the 24th February, the ship being becalmed in 

 lat. 26 S., long. 8 E. (about forty miles from the place where Captain 

 M'Quhae is said to have seen the serpent), the captain perceived some- 

 thing right astern, stretched along the water to a length of twenty-five 

 or thirty feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship, with a steady 

 sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet 

 above the water, had something resembling a mane running down to the 

 floating portion, and within about six feet of the tail. Of course Captain 

 Herriman, Mr. Long, his chief officer, and the passengers who saw 

 this, came to the conclusion that it must be the sea-serpent. As the 

 Brazilian was making no headway, to bring all doubts to an issue, the 

 captain had a boat lowered, and himself standing in the bow, armed 

 with a harpoon, approached the monster. It was found to be an 

 immense piece of sea-weed, drifting with the current, which sets con- 

 stantly to the westward in this latitude, and which, with the swell 

 left by the subsidence of a previous gale, gave it the sinuous snake- 

 like motion." 



