Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

On August 28, 1852, Captain Steele and the
Ninth Lancers regiment, on the British ship
Barham in the Mozambique Channel, watched
a green animal with the head and neck of an
enormous snake. Its head was 16–20 feet out of
the water, and it had a huge, saw-shaped crest
down its back. It spouted water a long distance
away from its head.
On July 8, 1856, about 50 miles south of the
Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, Capt. A. R.
N. Tremearne and the crew of the Princess saw
a large fish with a walruslike head and twelve
forward-pointing dorsal fins. Someone fired a
rifle at the animal, hitting it in the head.
Lieutenant Lagrésille and the crew of the
gunboat Avalanche observed two 65-foot, undulating
animals in Halong Bay, Vietnam, in July
1897. They dived after the crew fired on them.
The Avalanche chased two similar animals for
ninety minutes on February 15, 1898, but they
outpaced the boat. A similar incident occurred
on February 26, when the officers and crew of
the Bayard were also on board. The animals had
seal-like heads and three large bodily coils with
saw-tooth crests.
A monster with an “immense number of fins”
was seen in the Mediterranean by the crew of
the HMS Narcissus off Cape Falcon, Algeria, on
May 21, 1899. It was more than 150 feet long
and swam by means of an “immense” number
of fins on both sides of its body. It spouted
water like a whale from several points.
In July 1920, off the Florida coast between
Miami and Fort Lauderdale, the captain and crew
of the merchant ship Craigsmere watched a large
sea animal with several porpoiselike dorsal fins.
In 1935, Lt. W. C. Hogan of the U.S. Coast
Guard vessel Electra saw a 40- to 50-foot animal
with six fins on its back off the coast of Norfolk,
Virginia. Each fin was 2 feet high and 2 feet 6
inches wide at the base. The crew fired at it unsuccessfully.
Possible explanations:
(1) An archaic whale, possibly a
basilosaurid, with heavy, armored scales,
suggested by Bernard Heuvelmans.
However, scales found with these fossil
whales are now known to come from other
animals.
360 MULTIHUMPED SEA MONSTER
(2) A giant crustacean of an unknown type,
suggested by Karl Shuker, especially for the
Con Rít.
Sources: Ælian, De natura animalium, xiii.
23; Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus
marinus (Lyon, France: Matthiam Bonhomme,
1554); “The Sea Serpent,” Times (London),
November 17, 1852, p. 6; Edmund J.
Wheeler, “The ‘Sea-Serpent’ Again,” Illustrated
London News 29 (1856): 347–348; “Sea
Serpent at It Again,” Daily Mail (London),
May 31, 1899; Bernard Heuvelmans, In the
Wake of the Sea-Serpents (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1968), pp. 463–464, 550–552,
567–568; Paul H. LeBlond, “A Previously
Unreported ‘Sea Serpent’ Sighting in the South
Atlantic,” Cryptozoology 2 (1983): 82–84.
Multihumped Sea Monster
A category of Sea Monster identified by
Bernard Heuvelmans.
Scientific names: Misnamed Scoliophis atlanticus
in 1817, based on confusion with a deformed
black snake; Plurigibbosus novaeangliae,
given by Heuvelmans in 1965.
Variant names: American sea serpent, Caddy,
Cassie, Dorsal Finner, Multicoiled S ea
Monster, Many-humped sea monster.
Physical description: Elongated body, with
many regularly placed humps that form a conspicuous
ridge along the spine. Length, 60–115
feet. Diameter, 9–15 feet. Dull green to dark
brown or black on top. Throat and underside
pure white. Skin is usually smooth, though
sometimes reported as rough. Scales are occasionally
mentioned. Ovoid head, flat on top.
Large eyes, 6 inches in diameter. Broad snout
like an ox’s. Slender neck, with one or two white
stripes on the side. Throat and underside are
white. Small, triangular fin sometimes seen on
the shoulder. Single pair of frontal flippers.
Sometimes seen with a straight fin or fan on its
back. Bilobate tail, one lobe of which sometimes
appears at the surface.
Behavior: Usually appears in the summer in
New England and in the spring farther north.
Swims with vertical undulations that resemble a
caterpillar’s motion. Splashes and lashes the