Research source

I have not had the opportunity of consulting this work, but the passage about the sea-serpent runs m

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 167
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

Though PONTOPPIDAN did not seem to believe that this animal was his sea-serpent, I am convinced that such was indeed the case, because the whole description is exactly that of the animal

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

Though PONTOPPIDAN did not seem to believe that this animal was his sea-serpent, I am convinced that such was indeed the case, because the whole description is exactly that of the animal. It is remarkable that all the persons who saw the sea-serpent so close to their boat, as this fisherman did, agree in giving it a smooth skin; now seals when wet have also a smooth skin, and our fisherman was near enough to the animal to detect the real nature of such a skin, viz. that it is _hairy_, or as he expresses himself _woolly_. We shall afterwards more than once meet with statements in which the head is compared with that of a seal. The head, though resembling that of a seal, was of course much larger. The body was as thick and as long as a yacht of fifty tons, say about forty feet, and the tail was about thirty-five feet in length, and tapered to its pointed end, like the animal of EGEDE and those of the former writers MAGNUS, OLEARIUS and RAMUS, who compared the body with that of a snake.

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.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.