in 
Attempts to discredit the Sea-Serpent. Cheats and Hoaxes. 
Home from their first voyage, sailor-lads, as Mr. Goss says, 
are commonly eagerly beset for wonders. And what tales do they 
palm upon their credulous listeners? If they do not draw on their 
own invention, they tell the old stories they have heard when on 
fine evenings they were together with the old tars talking and 
chatting on the fore-deck. Of the latter many have no other origin 
than the imagination of a sailor’s brain; they are merely hoaxes; 
others again are exaggerated and garbled reports of what they 
have seen with their own eyes, or of what their comrades or 
their captain saw! There are the tales of the Unicorn, of the 
White Whale, that terrible “Maby Dick” of the Polar Regions, 
there are the fables of the Mermaids and Mermen, there are the 
exaggerations of the Kraken and the Sea-Serpent! 
Except the last, all the other animals that gave rise to the 
terrible tales are known to Zoologists, and by their enlightenment 
even to the sailors themselves. This probably explains sufficiently 
why our sailors do not report any more encounters with Mermaids , 
or with the Kraken. They know now that they saw, or harpooned , 
manatees, or dugongs, and gigantic squids, or calamaries. 
But suddenly the newspapers spread the rumour of a Sea-Serpent 
having been seen by Captain So and So, of the Royal Navy, and 
by the master, several midshipmen, and some men of the crew! 
The news is printed in hundreds of newspapers, and passes from 
mouth to mouth, in short, it becomes the topic of the day! A 
schooner, or a brig runs into a harbour, say that of Liverpool, 
and the Captain, and the crew are immediately asked if they have 
seen the sea-serpent. Unaware of the existence of such an animal 
they of course answer in the negative! But soon convinced by the 
