Page 113 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

Mysterious Creatures 93

Mackal, Roy P. The Monsters of Loch Ness. Chicago: Meade-Waldo prepared a paper on the sight-
Swallow Press, 1976. ing, which he presented to the society at its
“Monster Hunter.” 60 Minutes II, December 5, 2001. meeting on June 19, 1906. In his report, he
[Online] http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/ told how his attention was first drawn to a
0,1597,320220-412,00.shtml. “large brown fin…sticking out of the water,
Russell, Davy, ed. “When Lake Monsters Attack!” X- dark seaweed-brown in color, somewhat crin-
Project, August 16, 2001. [Online] http://www. kled at the edge.” The creature’s fin was an
xprojectmagazine.com/archives/cryptozoology/ astonishing six feet in length “and projected
lmaattack.html. from 18 inches to two feet from the water.”
Under the water and to the rear of the fin, the
zoologist said that he could perceive “the
Sea Serpents
shape of a considerable body. A great head
“Any fool can disbelieve in sea serpents,” and neck did not touch the [fin] in the water,
commented Victoria, British Columbia, news- but came out of the water in front of it, at a
paper editor Archie Willis in 1933. Willis’s distance of certainly not less than 18 inches,
pronouncement came as a sharp rejoinder to probably more. The neck appeared to be the
the skeptics who laughed at the hundreds of thickness of a slight man’s body, and from
witnesses who swore that they had seen a large seven to eight feet was out of the water.”
snakelike creature swimming in the waters off
The head, according to Meade-Waldo’s
the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Willis
expert observation, had a “very turtlelike
christened the sea monster “Cadborosaurus,”
appearance, as had also the eye…it moved its
and the nickname stuck.
neck from side to side in a peculiar manner;
The creature with its long serpentine body, the color of the head and neck was dark
its horselike head, humps on its back, and its brown above and whitish below.” Meade-
remarkable surface swimming speed of up to Waldo also stated that since he saw the crea-
40 knots, has been a part of coastal lore from ture, he has reflected on its actual size and
Alaska to Oregon for hundreds of years. While concluded that it “was probably considerably
the waters of the Pacific Northwest border larger than it appeared at first.”
one of the deepest underwater trenches on the
planet—where almost any massive seabeast Nicoll discussed the incident of the Valhal-
could reside—the greatest number of sightings la sea monster sighting two years later in his
of Cadborosaurus have occurred in the inland book Three Voyages of a Naturalist: “I feel cer-
waters around Vancouver Island and the tain that [the creature] was not a reptile…but
northern Olympic Peninsula. a mammal. The general appearance of the
creature, especially the soft, almost rubberlike
In Cadborosaurus: Survivor of the Deep
fin, gives one this impression.”
(2000), Vancouver biologist Dr. Edward L.
Bousfield and Dr. Paul H. Leblond, professor of Off shore on the Atlantic seacoast of
oceanography at the University of British North America, there is a sea serpent that has
Columbia, describe the creature as a classic sea been paying periodic visits to the Cape Ann
monster with a flexible, serpentine body, an area and Gloucester, Massachusetts, for more
elongated neck topped by a head resembling than 340 years. An Englishman named John
that of a horse or giraffe, the presence of anteri- Josselyn, who was returning to London, made
or flippers, and a dorsally toothed or spiky tail. the first sighting of the creature as it lay
“coiled like a cable” on a rock at Cape Ann.
When the crew of the yacht Valhalla sight-
ed a sea monster off Parahiba, Brazil, on Seamen would have killed the serpent, but
December 7, 1905, it was fortunate to have two Native American crew members protest-
among its passengers E. G. B. Meade-Waldo ed such an act, stating that all on board would
and Michael J. Nicoll, two expert naturalists, be in danger of terrible retribution if the sea
Fellows of the Zoological Society of Britain, creature was harmed.
who were taking part in a scientific expedition On August 6, 1817, Amos Lawrence,
to the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. founder of the mills which bore his name,

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