Research source

“Extract from an Officer’s Letter written between the Cape and Madras. You will be surprised to hear that we…

Date of account: Late nineteenth-century survey
Source: The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise
Reference: The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise · selected passage 123
Rights: public_domain
Language: English edition of a European scholarly compilation
Translation: English edition of A. C. Oudemans's historical survey
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

“Extract from an Officer’s Letter written between the Cape and Madras. You will be surprised to hear that we have actually seen the great sea-serpent, about which there has been so much discussion

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

“_Extract from an Officer’s Letter written between the Cape and Madras._ You will be surprised to hear that we have actually seen the great sea-serpent, about which there has been so much discussion. Information was given by a sailor to the captain, just as we were going to dinner. I was in my cabin at the time, and from the noise and excitement, I thought the ship was on fire. I rushed on deck, and on looking over the side of the vessel I saw a most wonderful sight, which I shall recollect as long as I live. His head appeared to be about sixteen feet above the water, and he kept moving it up and down, sometimes showing his enormous neck, which was surmounted with a huge crest in the shape of a saw. It was surrounded by hundreds of birds, and we at first thought it was a dead whale. He left a track in the water like the wake of a boat, and from what we could see of the head and part of his body, we were led to think he must be about sixty feet in length, but he might be more. The captain kept the vessel away to get nearer to him, and when we were within a hundred yards he slowly sank into the depths of the sea.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical compilation of unusual-animal reports and argument. Witness testimony, repetition between publications and the author's zoological assumptions all affect independence and reliability.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares morphology, behaviour and setting while keeping misidentification, folklore, exaggeration, error and known animals available as alternatives.

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