The history of the ancient belief in the existence of gigantic cephalopods is somewhat obscure. All that we know of it is from passages in the works of a few old Greek and Latin authors, and a series of Scandinavian traditions. I have already referred to the “monstrous polypus” mentioned by Pliny,[30]which, atCarteia, in Grenada, used to come out of the sea at night, and carry off salted tunnies from the curing depôts on the shore, and also to the incident recorded by Ælian,[31]who describes his monster as crushing up the barrels of salt-fish in its arms, to get at the contents. In the legends of northern nations stories of the existence of a marine animal of such enormous size that it more resembled an island than an organised being frequently found a place; and though the descriptions given of it were wild and extravagant, it is not difficult to recognise in the ill-drawn and distorted portrait the attempted likeness of one of the cephalopoda. Olaus Magnus[32]relates many wondrous narratives of sea-monsters,—tales which had gathered and accumulated marvels as they were passed on from generation to generation in oral history, and which he took care to bequeath to his successors undeprived of any of their fascination.
Eric Pontoppidan, the younger, Bishop of Bergen, is generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the fabulous Kraken, andis constantly misquoted by authors who have never read his work,[33]and who, one after another, have copied from their predecessors erroneous statements concerning him. More than half a century before him Christian Francis Paullinus,[34]a physician and naturalist of Eisenach, who evinced in his writings an admiration of the marvellous rather than of the useful, had described as resembling Gesner’s “Heracleoticon,” a monstrous animal which occasionally rose from the sea on the coasts of Lapland and Finmark, and which was of such enormous dimensions that a regiment of soldiers could conveniently manœuvre on its back. Pontoppidan was not a fabricator of falsehoods; but, in collecting evidence relating to the “great beasts” living in “the great and wide sea,” was influenced, as he tells us, by “a desire to extend the popular knowledge of the glorious works of a beneficent Creator.” His fault, or mistake, was that he gave too much credence to old narratives and traditions of floating islands and sea-monsters, and to the superstitious beliefs and exaggerated statements of ignorant fishermen. If those who abuse him had lived in his day they would probably have done the same. The tone of his concluding remarks is not that of an intentional deceiver and knave. He says he “believes the accounts given to be true and well attested,” and that he “leaves it to future writers to complete what he has imperfectly sketched out, by further experience, which is always the best instructor.” No wonder, therefore, that his evident sincerity and the respectability of episcopal advocacy obtained belief for the fable of the Kraken.
Drawing of a giant squid attacking a shipFig. 12.—Facsimile of De Montfort’s “Poulpe colossal.”
Fig. 12.—Facsimile of De Montfort’s “Poulpe colossal.”
The Norwegian bishop was a conscientious, if over-credulous man: but the same cannot be said of Denys de Montfort, who, half a century later not only professed to believe in the existence of the Kraken, but also of another gigantic animal distinct from it; a “colossalpoulpe,” or octopus, compared with which Pliny’s was a mere pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside ofa showman’s caravan at a fair than seriously to illustrate a work on natural history,[35]he depicted this tremendous cuttle-fish 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 succeeded in cutting off its immense limbs with cutlasses and hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtaining 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,[36]besides that already referred to. But it appears to have been his deliberate 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’ overthrow a whole fleet.” Accordingly we find him gravely declaring[37]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 12th 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 circumstances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by colossal cuttle-fishes, 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 demonstrates 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 safely. Five months afterwards, however, a convoy of nine line-of-battle-ships (amongst which were Rodney’s prizes), one frigate, and about a hundred merchantmen, were dispersed, whilst on their voyage to England, by a violentstorm, during which some them unfortunately foundered. The various accidents which preceded the loss of these vessels was related in evidence to the Admiralty by the survivors, and official documents prove that De Montfort’s fleet-destroyingpoulpewas unequivocally a “devil-fish of fiction,” and that the “devil-fish of fact” had no part in the disaster he ascribes to it.[38]
I have been told, but cannot vouch for the truth of the report, that De Montfort’s propensity to write that which was not true, culminated in his committing forgery, and that he died in the galleys. But he records a statement of Captain Jean Magnus Dens, said to have been a respectable and veracious man, who, after having made several voyages to China as master of a trader, retired from a seafaring life and lived at Dunkirk. He told De Montfort that in one of his voyages, whilst crossing from St. Helena to Cape Negro, he was becalmed, and took advantage of the enforced idleness of the crew to have the vessel scraped and painted. Whilst three of his men were standing on planks slung over the side, an enormous cuttle-fish rose from the water, and threw one of its arms around two of the sailors, whom it tore away, with the scaffolding on which they stood. With another arm it seized the third man, who held on tightly to the rigging, and screamed for help. His shipmates ran to his assistance, and succeeded in rescuing him by cutting away the creature’s armwith axes and knives, but he died delirious on the following night. The captain tried to save the other two sailors by killing the animal, and drove several harpoons into it; but they broke away, and the men were carried down by the monster. The arm cut off was said to have been 25 feet long, and as thick as the mizenyard, and to have had on it suckers as big as saucepan-lids. I believe the old sea-captain’s narrative of the incident to be true: the dimensions given by De Montfort are an embellishment of his own.
It is remarkable that there exists in the East a strong belief in the power of these animals to sink a ship and devour her crew. I have been told by a friend that he saw in a shop in China a picture of a cuttle-fish embracing a junk, apparently of about 300 tons burthen, and helping itself to the sailors, as one picks gooseberries off a bush. Mr. Laurence Oliphant, in his “China and Japan,” describes a Japanese show, which consisted of “a series of groups of figures carved in wood, the size of life, and as cleverly coloured as Madame Tussaud’s wax-works. One of these was a group of women bathing in the sea. One of them had been caught in the folds of a cuttle-fish; the others, in alarm, were escaping, leaving their companion to her fate. The cuttle-fish was represented on a huge scale, its eyes, eyelids, and mouth being made to move simultaneously by a man inside the head.”
The old stories of colossal cuttle-fishes, though gross exaggerations, are “founded on facts.” They are based on the rare occurrence of specimens, smaller certainly, but still enormous, of some known species. The means of observation on the duration of growth and life in the cephalopods have been, of course, difficult to obtain; but, from watching the rate of increase of size in young specimens, De Ferussac, D’Orbigny, and other naturalists have arrived at the conclusion that they sometimes live for many years, and continue to grow till the end of their lives. That some of them, therefore, should attain to a considerable magnitude is hardly surprising.
Passing over the earlier records of the appearance of cuttle-fishesof unusual size, and the current as well as traditional belief in their existence by the inhabitants of many countries, let us take the testimony of travellers and naturalists, who have a right to be regarded as competent observers.
Peron,[39]the well-known French zoologist, mentions having seen at sea, in 1801, not far from Van Diemen’s Land, at a very little distance from his ship, “Le Géographe,” a sepia (calamary?) of the size of a barrel, rolling with noise on the waves; its arms, between 6 and 7 feet long, and 6 or 7 inches in diameter at the base, extended on the surface, and writhing about like great snakes.
Quoy and Gaimard[40]report that in the Atlantic Ocean, near the equator, they found the remains of an enormous calamary, half-eaten by the sharks and birds, which could not have weighed less, when entire, than 200lbs.
Captain Sander Rang[41]records having fallen in with, in mid-ocean, a species distinct from the others, of a dark red colour, having short arms, and a body the size of a hogshead.
Molina, in his “Natural History of Chili,” describes, amongst other species of cuttle-fishes, one, which he callsSepia tunicata, and of which he says some specimens, armed with hooks in their suckers, weighed 150lbs.
Although, in the face of recent discoveries, it is now comparatively unimportant, I may here mention that Schneider,[42]a most able and scrupulously careful naturalist, finding that, in many instances, Molina was utterly unworthy of confidence, plainly declared that it was necessary to search in the works of others for description of the species of which he wrote, and expressed doubts of the correctness of his assertions concerning the hook-furnished cuttle-fish on the coast of Chili. He could not discoverthe source whence Molina had derived his information on this subject, but M. de Ferussac[43]found that he had taken it from a translation of the narrative of Captain Cook’s first voyage, and had dishonestly transferred to Chili a specimen (to which I shall presently refer), described by Sir Joseph Banks as captured in the South Seas, and which is now in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. De Montfort quoted Molina, and, with his usual love of exaggeration, greatly embellished his description. Shaw reproduced De Montfort’s figure, and Leach and Lesueur accepted Molina’s statements.[44]
In a manuscript by Paulsen, referred to by Professor Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, is a description of a large calamary cast ashore on the Danish coast, which the latter namedArchiteuthis monachus. Its body measured 21 feet, and its tentacles 18 feet, making a total of 39 feet.
In 1854 another was stranded at the Skag in Jutland, which Professor Steenstrup believed to belong to the same genus as the preceding, but to be of a different species, and called itArchiteuthis dux. The body was cut in pieces by the fishermen, and furnished many wheelbarrow-loads. Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys[45]saysDr. Mörch informed him that the beak of this animal was nine inches long. He adds that another huge cephalopod was stranded in 1860 or 1861, between Hillswick and Scalloway, on the west of Shetland. From a communication received by Professor Allman, it appears that its tentacles were 16 feet long, the pedal arms about half that length, and the mantle-sac 7 feet. The largest suckers examined by Professor Allman were three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
We have also the statement of the officers and crew of the French despatch steamer, “Alecton,” commanded by Lieutenant Bouyer, describing their having met with a great calamary on the 30th of November, 1861, between Madeira and Teneriffe. They say that the body of the creature, which, like Rang’s specimen, was of a deep red colour, measured 16 feet to 18 feet in length, without reckoning that of the formidable arms. The harpoons thrust into it drew out of its soft flesh; so they slipped a rope with a running knot over it, which held at the juncture of the fins; but when they attempted to haul it on board, the enormous weight caused the rope to cut through the flesh, and all but the hinder part of the body fell back into the sea and disappeared. M. Berthelot, the French Consul at Teneriffe, saw the fins and posterior portion of the animal on board the “Alecton” two days afterwards, and sent a report of the occurrence to the Paris Academy of Sciences.[46]
These are statements made by men who, by their intelligence, character, and position, are entitled to respect and credence, and whose evidence would be accepted without question or hesitation in any court of law. There is, moreover, a remarkable coincidence of particulars in their several accounts, which gives great importance to their combined testimony. The public, after being deceived by Pliny with his rapacious colossal polypus, and byOlaus Magnus, Pontoppidan and De Montfort with their fabulous or grossly exaggerated “Kraken,” leaped hastily across the path of truth from easy gullibility on the one hand to unreasoning incredulity on the other. “In medio tutissimus ibis” is a rule which may be safely applied to this case, as to many others. The accumulated weight of such aggregate testimony as had been adduced should, even if unsupported by confirmatory facts, have been sufficient to convince any thoughtful inquirer of the existence of very large cephalopods, individuals of which have occasionally been seen, and correctly described by some trustworthy observers, although absurdly exaggerated and misrepresented by others.
But fortunately, we are not left dependent on documentary evidence alone, nor with the option of accepting or rejecting, as caprice or prejudice may prompt us, the narratives of those who have told us they have seen what we have not. Cuttle-fishes of extraordinary size are preserved in several European museums. In the collection of the Faculty of Sciences at Montpellier is one six feet long, taken by fishermen at Cette, which Professor Steenstrup has identified asOmmastrephes pteropus. One of the same species, which was formerly in the possession of M. Eschricht, who received it from Marseilles, may be seen in the museum at Copenhagen. The body of another, analogous to these, is exhibited in the museum of Trieste. It was taken on the coast of Dalmatia. At the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth in 1841, Colonel Smith exhibited drawings of the beak and other parts of a very large calamary preserved at Haarlem; and M. P. Harting, in 1860, described in the Memoirs of the Royal Scientific Academy of Amsterdam portions of two extant in other collections in Holland, one of which he believes to be Steenstrup’sArchiteuthis dux, a species which he regards as identical withOmmastrephes todarusof D’Orbigny. Dr. J. E. Gray scientifically described, many years ago, in his “Spicilegia Zoologica,” a specimen ofSepioteuthis majorfrom the Cape of Good Hope, the body of which measured 27 inches, the head 6 inches, and the fins andbody 7 inches each in breadth, and mentions one seen by Mrs. Graham, which had arms 28 feet long.
In the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons are portions of anOnychoteuthisorEnoploteuthis(a squid, the suckers of which are furnished with prehensile hooks), found floating by Drs. Banks and Solander between Cape Horn and the Polynesian Islands, and described as having been 6 feet in length, including the tentacular arms.[47]The lower portion of the body, with the fins attached, in a dried and shrunken condition, is 18 inches long; the beak, 3½ inches. A part of one of its arms, with the hooked suckers, is also to be seen, which, however, being only the tip of one, gives no clue to its entire length.
Still there remained a residuum of doubt in the minds of naturalists and the public concerning the existence of gigantic cuttle-fishes until, towards the close of the year 1873, two specimens were encountered on the coast of Newfoundland, and a portion of one and the whole of the other were brought ashore and preserved for examination by competent zoologists.
The circumstances under which the first was seen, as sensationally described by the Rev. M. Harvey, Presbyterian minister of St. John’s, Newfoundland, in a letter to Principal Dawson, of McGill College, were, briefly and soberly, as follows:—Two fishermen were out in a small punt on the 26th of October, 1873, near the eastern end of Belle Isle, Conception Bay, about nine miles from St. John’s. Observing some object floating on the water at a short distance they rowed towards it, supposing it to be thedébrisof a wreck. On reaching it one of the men struck it with his “gaff” when immediately it showed signs of life, and shot out its two tentacular arms, as if to seize its antagonists. One of the men severed both arms with an axe as they lay on the gunwale of the boat, whereupon the animal moved off, and ejected a quantity of inky fluid which darkened the surrounding water for a considerable distance.
The men went home and magnified their adventure. They “estimated” the body to have been 60 feet in length and 10 feet across the tail fin; and declared that when the “fish” attacked them “it reared a parrot-like beak which was as big as a six-gallon keg.”
All this Mr. Harvey appears to have been willing to believe, and relates without the expression of a doubt. Fortunately, he was able to obtain from the fishermen a portion of one of the tentacular arms which they had chopped off with the axe, and it is now in the St. John’s Museum. By careful calculation of its girth, the breadth and circumference of the expanded sucker-bearing portion at its extremity, and the diameter of the suckers, Professor Verrill, of Yale College, has computed its dimensions as follows:—Length of body 10 feet; diameter of body 2 feet 5 inches. Long tentacular arms 32 feet; head 2 feet—total length about 44 feet. The upper mandible of the beak, instead of being “as large as a six-gallon keg” would be about 3 inches long, and the lower mandible 1½ inch long. From the size of the large suckers relatively to those of another specimen to be presently described, he regards it as probable that this individual was a female.
In November, 1874,—about three weeks after the occurrence in Conception Bay—a calamary somewhat smaller than the preceding, but of the same species, also came into Mr. Harvey’s possession. Three fishermen, when hauling their herring-net in Logie bay, about three miles from St. John’s, found the huge animal entangled in its folds. With great difficulty they succeeded in despatching it and bringing it ashore, being compelled to cut off its head before they could get it into their boat.
The body of this specimen was over 7 feet long; the caudal fin 22 inches broad; the two long tentacular arms 24 feet in length; the eight shorter arms each 6 feet long, the largest of the latter being 10 inches in circumference at the base; total length of this calamary 32 feet. Professor Verrill considers that this and theConception Bay squid are both referable to one species—Steenstrup’sArchiteuthis dux.
Excellent woodcuts from photographs of these two specimens were given in the “Field” of January 31st, 1874, and December 13th, 1873, respectively.
In the “American Journal of Science and Arts,” of March, 1875, Professor Verrill gives particulars of several other examples of great calamaries, varying in total length from 30 feet to 52 feet, which have been taken in the neighbourhood of Newfoundland since the year 1870.
The following account of the still more recent capture of a large squid off the west coast of Ireland was given in the “Zoologist” of June, 1875, by Sergeant Thomas O’Connor, of the Royal Irish Constabulary:—
“On the 26th of April, 1875, a very large calamary was met with on the north-west of Boffin Island, Connemara. The crew of a ‘curragh’ (a boat made like the ‘coracle,’ with wooden ribs covered with tarred canvas) observed to seaward a large floating mass, surrounded by gulls. They pulled out to it, believing it to be wreck, but to their astonishment found it was an enormous cuttle-fish, lying perfectly still, as if basking on the surface of the water. Paddling up with caution they lopped off one of its arms. The animal immediately set out to sea, rushing through the water at a tremendous pace. The men gave chase, and, after a hard pull in their frail canvas craft, came up with it, five miles out in the open Atlantic, and severed another of its arms and the head. These portions are now in the Dublin Museum. The shorter arms measure each 8 feet in length, and 15 inches round the base: the tentacular arms are said to have been 30 feet long. The body sank.”
Finally, there is in the basement chambers of the British Museum (irreverently called the “spirit vaults and bottle department,” because fish, mollusca, &c., in spirits are there deposited) a tall glass jar, in which is preserved a single arm of a hugecephalopod, which, by the kindness and courtesy of the officers of the department, I was permitted to examine and measure when I first described it, in May, 1873. It is 9 feet long, and 10 inches in circumference at the base, tapering gradually to a fine point. It has about 300 suckers, pedunculated, or set on tubular footstalks, placed alternately in two rows, and having serrated, horny rings, but no hooks; the diameter of the largest of these rings is half an inch; the smallest is not larger than a pin’s head. This is one of the eight shorter, or pedal, and not one of the long, or tentacular, arms of the calamary to which it belonged. Judging from the proportions of known examples, I estimate the length of the tentacles at 36 feet, and that of the body at from 11 to 12 feet: total length 48 feet. The beak would probably have been about 5 inches long from hinge socket to point. No history relating to it has been preserved; but Dr. Gray told me that he believed it came from the east coast of South America.
Here, then, in our midst, and to be seen by all who wish to inspect it, is, and has long been, a limb of a once-living cephalopod capable of upsetting a boat, or of hauling a man out of her, or of clutching one engaged in scraping a ship’s side, and dragging him under water, as described by the old master-mariner, Magnus Dens; possessing, also, a beak powerful enough to tear him in pieces, and crush some of his smaller bones. I confess that until I saw and measured this enormous limb, I doubted the accuracy of some early observations which this specimen alone would suffice to prove worthy of confidence. The existence of gigantic cephalopods is no longer an open question. I, now, more than ever, appreciate the value of the adage:
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
THE END.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.